your kiss on her thin, motionless face. And I thought of your
heart, your poor heart--that poor heart, of which half belongs to me and
which is breaking, which suffers so much, which stifles you, making me
suffer also at this moment.

"With profound pity, I kiss your eyes filled with tears.

"OLIVIER."

"Roncieres, July 24.

"Your letter would have done me good, my friend, if anything could do me
good in the horrible situation into which I have fallen. We buried her
yesterday, and since her poor lifeless body has gone out of this house
it seems to me that I am alone in the world. We love our mothers almost
without knowing or feeling it, for such love is as natural as it is
to live, and we do not realize how deep-rooted is that love until the
moment of final separation. No other affection is comparable to that,
for all others come by chance, while this begins at birth; all the
others are brought to us later by the accidents of life, while this
has lived in our very blood since our first day on earth. And then, and
there, we have lost not only a mother but our childhood itself, which
half disappears, for our little life of girlhood belonged to her as
much as to ourselves. She alone knew it as we knew it; she knew about
innumerable things, remote, insignificant and dear, which are and which
were the first sweet emotions of our heart. To her alone I could still
say: 'Do you remember, mother, the day when--? Do you remember, mother,
the china doll that grandmother gave me?' Both of us murmured to each
other a long, sweet chapter of trifling childish memories, which no
one on earth now knows of but me. So it is a part of myself that is
dead--the older, the better. I have lost the poor heart wherein the
little girl I was once still lived. Now no one knows her any more; no
one remembers the little Anne, her short skirts, her laughter and her
faces.

"And a day will come--and perhaps it is not far away--when in my turn I
too shall go, leaving my dear Annette alone in the world, as mamma has
left me to-day. How sad all this is, how hard, and cruel! Yet one never
thinks about it; we never look about us to see death take someone every
instant, as it will soon take us. If we should look at it, if we should
think of it, if we were not distracted, rejoiced, or blinded by all that
passes before us, we could no longer live, for the sight of this endless
massacre would drive us mad.

"I am so crushed, so despairing, that I have