d a prompt
and kind reply. On the 18th of March Toru wrote again to this, her
solitary correspondent in the world of European literature, and her
letter, which has been preserved, shows that she had already descended
into the valley of the shadow of death:--

Ma constitution n'est pas forte; j'ai contracte une toux opiniatre,
il y a plus de deux ans, qui ne me quitte point. Cependant j'espere
mettre la main a l'[oe]uvre bientot. Je ne peux dire, mademoiselle,
combien votre affection,--car vous les aimez, votre livre et votre
lettre en temoignent assez,--pour mes compatriotes et mon pays me
touche; et je suis fiere de pouvoir le dire que les heroines de nos
grandes epopees sont dignes de tout honneur et de tout amour. Y
a-ti-il d'heroine plus touchante, plus aimable que Sita? Je ne le
crois pas. _Quand j'entends ma mere chanter, le soir, les vieux
chants de notre pays, je pleure presque toujours._ La plainte de
Sita, quand, bannie pour la seconde fois, elle erre dans la vaste
foret, seule, le desespoir et l'effroi dans l'ame, est si pathetique
qu'il n'y a personne, je crois, qui puisse l'entendre sans verser
des larmes. Je vous envois sous ce pli deux petites traductions du
Sanscrit, cette belle langue antique. Malheureusement j'ai ete
obligee de faire cesser mes traductions de Sanscrit, il y a six
mois. Ma sante ne me permet pas de les continuer.

These simple and pathetic words, in which the dying poetess pours out
her heart to the one friend she had, and that one gained too late, seem
as touching and as beautiful as any strain of Marceline Valmore's
immortal verse. In English poetry I do not remember anything that
exactly parallels their resigned melancholy. Before the month of March
was over, Toru had taken to her bed. Unable to write, she continued to
read, strewing her sick-room with the latest European books, and
entering with interest into the questions raised by the Societe
Asiatique of Paris in its printed Transactions. On the 30th of July she
wrote her last letter to Mlle. Clarisse Bader, and a month later, on the
30th of August, 1877, at the age of twenty-one years, six months, and
twenty-six days, she breathed her last in her father's house in
Maniktollah Street, Calcutta.

In the first distraction of grief it seemed as though her unequalled
promise had been entirely blighted, and as though she would be
remembered only by her single book.