"Thursday, 6 August.
"Still crying. I grow unhappier every day. But I feel that, even if I became still more so, I would not desist. Besides, how can I go to him when he does not want to have anything more to do with me and does not even write? Love me? Why, he loathes me! I am the daughter of a woman whom he hates above all things in the world. How unspeakably horrible! If he thinks like that of my mother and if I fail in my task, we shall never see each other again! That is the life I have before me.
"Friday, 7 August.
"I have made Jérôme and Rosalie tell me all about mother. They only knew her for a few weeks, but they remember her quite well; and what they said made me feel so happy! She was so good, it seems, and so pretty; everybody worshiped her.
"'She was not always very cheerful,' said Rosalie. 'I don't know if it was her illness already affecting her spirits, but there was something about her, when she smiled, that went to one's heart.'
"My poor, darling mother!
"Saturday, 8 August.
"We heard the guns this morning, a long way off. They are fighting 25 miles away.
"Some French soldiers have arrived. I had seen some of them pretty often from the terrace, marching down the Liseron Valley. But these are going to stay at the house. The captain made his apologies. So as not to inconvenience me, he and his lieutenants will sleep and have their meals in the lodge where Jérôme and Rosalie used to live.
"Sunday, 9 August.