Lussia has no fortune, but we shall be entirely guaranteed by the increase in my salary.
It is very regrettable that the event should be retarded by the customary formalities; in any case it will certainly end by taking place.
I beg you to write to me, dear mother that I love, anything that comes into your head à propos of my affair.
Rejoice that I am now very happy and wish that it may last.
I ask the same of Papa, whom I beg you to salute from me. I embrace you, dear Mamma, and I remain your very affectionate son,
E. Metchnikoff.
As Elie learnt to know his fiancée better, he became more and more attached to her. Their happiness seemed likely to be complete, but a cruel Fate had decided otherwise. The girl’s health was not improving: her supposed bronchitis was assuming a chronic character. Yet the marriage was not postponed, and the bride had to be carried to the church in a chair for the ceremony, being too breathless and too weak to walk so far.
Elie did his utmost to procure comforts for his wife, and hoped that she could still be saved by care and a rational treatment. It was the beginning of an hourly struggle against disease and poverty; his means being insufficient, he tried to eke them out by writing translations. His eyesight weakened again from overwork, and it was with atropin in his eyes that he sat up night after night, translating. There was but one well-lighted room in his flat, and he turned it into a small laboratory for the use of his pupils; his own researches he had to give up, his time being entirely taken up by teaching and translations.
He hid his precarious position from his parents in order not to add to their heavy expenses nor to confirm their previsions concerning his marriage. His wife’s illness, the impossibility of carrying on scientific work, the lack of friendly sympathy to which he thought himself entitled, all this weighed on him, making him bitter, suspicious, and distrustful; he thought himself persecuted. The situation became intolerable and, in spite of his pride, he forced himself to apply for a subsidy to take his wife abroad and to go on with his researches. Having obtained it in 1869, he immediately left Petersburg, which he now hated.