ch 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'oeuvre 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-t-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
August 30, 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. But as her father examined her
pap