f hope for me--the hope of
recognizing you, whether you approach me from a distance, or whether
I divine your identity in following you. And then the city becomes
charming to me, and the women whose figures resemble yours stir my heart
with all the liveliness of the streets, hold my attention, occupy my
eyes, and give me a sort of hunger to see you.

"You will consider me very selfish, my poor friend, to speak to you in
this way of the solitude of an old cooing pigeon when you are shedding
such bitter tears. Pardon me! I am so used to being spoiled by you that
I cry 'Help! Help!' when I have you no longer.

"I kiss your feet so that you may have pity on me.

"OLIVIER."

"Roncieres, July 30.

"MY FRIEND: Thanks for your letter. I need so much to know that you
love me! I have just passed some frightful days. Indeed, I believed that
grief would kill me in my turn.

"It was like a block of suffering in my breast, growing larger and
larger, stifling me, strangling me. The physician that was called to
treat me for the nervous crisis I was enduring, which recurred four or
five times a day, injected morphine, which made me almost wild, and the
great heat we have had aggravated my condition and threw me into a state
of over-excitement that was almost delirium. I am a little more calm
since the great storm of Friday. I must tell you that since the day of
the funeral I could weep no more, but during the storm, the approach
of which upset me, I suddenly felt the tears beginning to flow from my
eyes, slow, small, burning. Oh, those first tears, how they hurt me!
They seemed to tear me, as if they had claws, and my throat was so
choked that I could hardly breathe. Then the tears came faster, larger,
cooler. They ran from my eyes as from a spring, and came so fast that my
handkerchief was saturated and I had to take another. The great block of
grief seemed to soften and to flow away through my eyes.

"From that moment I have been weeping from morning till night, and that
is saving me. One would really end by going mad or dying, if one could
not weep. I am all alone, too. My husband is making some little trips
around the country, and I insisted that he should take Annette with
him, to distract and console her a little. They go in the carriage or on
horseback as far as eight or ten leagues from Roncieres, and she returns
to me rosy with youth, in spite of her sadness, her eyes shining with
life, animated by the country air and