“So I am consumptive, and have been so for the last two or three years. It is not yet bad enough to die of it.... Let them give me ten years longer, and in these ten years, fame or love, and I shall die contented, at the age of thirty.”
The following year:—
“No, I never was in love, and I never shall be any more; a man would have to be very great to please me now, I require so much....
“And simply to fall in love with a handsome boy,—no, it would not answer. Love could no longer wholly occupy me now; it would be a matter of secondary importance, a decoration to the building, an agreeable superfluity. The idea of a picture or a statue keeps me awake for nights together, which the thought of a handsome man has never done.”
In another place:—
“Whom shall I ask? Who will be truthful? Who will be just?”
“You, my only friend, you at least will be truthful, for you love me. Yes, I love myself, myself only.”
Two weeks before her death, after a visit from Bastien Lepage:—
“I was dressed entirely in lace and plush, all white, but different kinds of white; Bastien Lepage opened his eyes wide with joy.
“‘If only I could paint!’ he said.