In the evening, when I went into her room, I found her seated in tears
before her little table, where several open letters were lying
scattered among the tea things. "We had better have died at once, for
here is the lingering death of separation, which begins for me," she
said, pointing to some letters which bore the postmark of Paris and
Geneva.
Her husband wrote that he began to be very anxious at her long absence
at a season of the year when the weather might become inclement from
day to day; that he felt himself gradually declining and that he wished
to embrace and bless her before he died. His mournful entreaties were
intermingled with many expressions of paternal fondness, and some
sportive allusions to the fair young brother, who made her forget her
other friends. The other letter was from the Genevese doctor, who was
to have come to take her back to Paris. He wrote to say that he was
obliged unexpectedly to leave home to attend a German prince who
required his care, and that he sent in his stead a respectable,
trustworthy man, who would accompany her to Paris and act as her
courier on the road. This man had arrived, and her departure was fixed
for the day after the morrow.
Although this news had been long foreseen, it affected us as though it
had been quite unexpected. We passed a long evening and nearly half the
night in silence, leaning opposite to one another on the little table,
and neither daring to look at each other, or to speak, for fear of
bursting into tears. We strove to interrupt the speechless agony of our
hearts by a few unconnected words, but these were said in a deep and
hollow voice, which resounded in the room like tear-drops on a coffin.
I had instantly determined to go also.