(No date.)
"As I have a bad headache to-night, I have just simply, and at haphazard, written down some thoughts of Fénelon's for you, so as to keep my promise:
'"We are confined within narrow limits when we shut ourselves up in our own existence; on the contrary, we feel at liberty when we quit this prison to enter into the immensity of God.'
"'We shall soon find once more all that we have lost We are daily approaching it with rapid strides. Yet a little while, and we shall no more have cause to weep. It is we who die: what we love still lives and shall never die.'
"'You impart to yourself a deceitful strength, such as a raging fever gives to a sick man. For some days past, a sort of convulsive movement has been visible in you, from the effort to affect an air of gaiety and courage, whilst a silent anguish filled your soul.'
"That is as much as my head and my bad pen permit me to write to you this evening. If you like, I will begin again to-morrow, and perhaps tell you some more. Good-evening, dear. I shall never cease telling you that my heart prostrates itself before that of Fénelon, whose tenderness seems to me so profound, and his virtue so exalted. Good-bye, dear.
"I am awake, and offer you a thousand loves and a hundred blessings. I feel well this morning and am anxious as to whether you will be able to read me, and whether those thoughts of Fénelon's will seem to you well chosen. I fear my heart has concerned itself too much with the selection."
(No date.)
"Could you think that since yesterday I have been madly occupied in correcting you? The Blossacs have trusted me with one of your novels in the greatest secrecy. As I do not think that you have made the most of your ideas, I am amusing myself by trying to render them in their full value. Can audacity go further than that? Forgive me, great man, and remember that I am your sister, and that I have some little right to make an ill use of your riches."
"Saint-Michel.
"I will no longer say, 'Do not come to see me again,' because, having from now but a few days to spend in Paris, I feel that your presence is essential to me. Do not come to-day until four; I expect to be out till then. Dear, I have in my head a thousand contradictory ideas touching things which seem to me to exist and not to exist, which to me have the effect of objects of which one only caught sight in a glass, and of which, consequently, one could not make sure, however distinctly one saw them. I wish to trouble about all this no longer; from this moment I abandon myself. Unlike you, I have not the resource of changing banks, but I feel sufficient courage to attach no importance to the persons and things on my shore, and to fix myself entirely and irrevocably in the Author of all justice and all truth. There is only one displeasure to which I fear that I shall grow insensible with great difficulty, that of unintentionally, in passing, striking against the destiny of some other person, not because of any interest that might be taken in me: I am not mad enough for that."
"Saint-Michel.
"Dear, never did the sound of your voice give me so much pleasure as when I heard it yesterday on my staircase. My ideas then strove to overcome my courage. I was seized with content to feel you so near me; you appeared, and my whole inner being returned to orderliness. I sometimes feel a great repugnance at heart to drinking my cup. How can that heart, which is so small a space, contain so much existence and so much grief? I am greatly dissatisfied with myself, greatly dissatisfied. My affairs and my ideas carry me away; I scarcely occupy myself with God now, and I confine myself to saying to Him a hundred times a day, 'O Lord, make haste to hearken unto my prayer, for my spirit waxeth faint.'"
More letters from Lucile.
(No date.)
"Brother, do not grow weary of my letter, nor of my company; think that soon you will be for ever released from my importunities. My life is casting its last light, like a lamp which has burnt out in the darkness of a long night, and which sees the rise of the dawn in which it is to die. Please, brother, cast a single glance at the early moments of our existence; remember that we have often been seated on the same lap, and pressed both together to the same bosom; that already you added tears to mine, that from the earliest days of your life you protected and defended my frail existence, that our games united us and that I shared your first studies. I will not speak to you of our adolescence, of the innocence of our thoughts and of our joys, nor of our mutual need to see each other incessantly. If I retrace the past, I candidly confess, brother, that it is to make me revive the more in your heart. When you left France for the second time, you placed your wife in my hands, you made me promise never to part from her. True to this dear engagement, I voluntarily stretched out my hands to the irons, and entered into the regions destined alone for the victims vowed to death. In those abodes I have had no anxiety save as to your fate; incessantly I questioned the forebodings of my heart touching yourself. When I had recovered my liberty, amidst the ills which came to overwhelm me, the thought alone of our meeting kept me up. To-day, when I am irretrievably losing the hope of running my course by your side, bear with my griefs. I shall become resigned to my destiny, and it is only because I am still fighting against it that I suffer such cruel anguish; but when I shall have grown submissive to my fate.... And what a fate! Where are my friends, my protectors and my treasures! To whom matters my existence, that existence abandoned by all, and weighing down entirely upon itself? My God, are not my present woes enough for my weakness, without yet adding to them the dread of the future? Forgive me, my too dear friend, I will resign myself; I will fall asleep, in a slumber as of death, upon my destiny. But, during the few days which I have to spend in this town, let me seek my last consolations in you; let me believe that my presence is sweet to you. Believe me, among the hearts that love you, none approaches the sincerity and tenderness of my impotent friendship for you. Fill my memory with agreeable recollections, which prolong my existence beside you. Yesterday, when you spoke to me of coming to you, you seemed to me anxious and serious, while your words were affectionate. Why, brother, could I be to you also a subject of aversion and annoyance? You know it was not I that proposed the amiable distraction of going to see you, and that I promised you to make no ill use of it; but, if you have changed your opinion, why did you not tell me so frankly? I have no courage to set against your politeness. Formerly you used to distinguish me a little more from the common herd and to do me more justice. As you reckon upon me to-day, I will come to see you presently, at eleven o'clock. We will arrange together what seems best to you for the future. I have written to you, feeling sure that I should not have the courage to say to you a single word of what this letter contains."
This so affecting and quite admirable letter is the last which I received; it alarmed me through the increase of sadness of which it bears the impress. I hurried to the Dames Saint-Michel; my sister was walking in the garden with Madame de Navarre; she went in when she knew that I had gone up to her room. She made visible efforts to collect her ideas, and at intervals she had a slight convulsive movement of the lips. I entreated her to return entirely to reason, to cease writing such unjust things to me, things that rent my heart, to cease thinking that I could ever grow weary of her. She appeared to grow a little calmer at the words which I repeated to distract and console her. She told me that she believed that the convent was doing her harm, that she would feel better living alone, in the neighbourhood of the Jardin des Plantes, there where she could see doctors and walk about. I urged her to please her own taste, adding that in order to help Virginie, her maid, I would give her old Saint-Germain. This proposal seemed to give her great pleasure, in memory of Madame de Beaumont, and she assured me that she would go to look out for her new lodging. She asked me how I was thinking of spending the summer. I said that I should go to Vichy to join my wife, and then to M. Joubert at Villeneuve, to return to Paris from there. I suggested to her to accompany us. She answered that she wished to spend the summer alone, and that she was going to send Virginie back to Fougères. I left her; she was more at ease.
Madame de Chateaubriand left for Vichy, and I prepared to follow her. Before leaving Paris I went again to see Lucile. She was affectionate; she spoke to me of her little writings. I encouraged the great poet to work; she kissed me, wished me a good journey, made me promise to come back soon. She saw me to the landing of the staircase, leant over the baluster, and quietly watched me go down. When I reached the bottom I stopped, and lifting my head, cried to the unhappy woman who was still looking at me:
"Farewell, dear sister! I shall see you soon! Take great care of yourself! Write to me at Villeneuve. I will write to you. I hope that next winter you will agree to live with us."
Death of Lucile.