Chapter XV: Letter IV: PARIS, Tuesday, March 3, 1671

If you were here, my dear child, you would certainly laugh at me. I am set down to write beforehand, but from a very different reason to that which I once gave you for writing to a person two days before I could send my letter: it was a matter of indifference to me, when I wrote, as I knew I should have no more to say to him at the two days’ end than I had then. But here the case is otherwise. I do it now from the regard I have for you, and to satisfy the pleasure I take in writing to you every moment, which is the sole comfort I have now left. To-day I am shut up by myself in my room, through excess of ill-humor. I am weary of every thing. I took a pleasure in dining here, and still a greater one in writing to you out of season. Alas! you have none of these leisure moments! I write quite at my ease, but can hardly suppose you will be able to read what I write in the same manner. I do not see how it is possible for you to be a minute by yourself. On one side I behold a husband who adores you, who is never tired of being with you, and who scarcely knows the end of his happiness; on the other side, harangues, compliments, visits, and honors paid you without end; all this must be answered. Indeed, you have enough upon your hands. I could not bear it myself in my little circle. But what became of your favorite Indolence amid all this noise and bustle? It suffers now; it retires into a corner, just dead with apprehension of losing its place in your heart forever; it seeks some vacant moment to put you in remembrance, and just drop a word to you by the by. “Alas!” it says, “and have you then forgotten me? Remember, I am your oldest acquaintance; the friend that has never abandoned you; the faithful companion of your happy hours, who made you amends for the want of every pleasure, and for whose sake you have sometimes hated them. It was I that prevented your dying of the vapors while you were in Brittany. Sometimes, indeed, your mother would break in upon our joys, but then I knew where to have you again. Now I know not what will become of me. These shows, all this pageantry, will be my death, unless you take some care of me.” Methinks I hear you speak a kind word to it as you go by; you give it some hopes of possessing you when at Grignan; but you are gone in an instant, and can not find time to say more. Duty and reason are with you, and allow you not a moment’s repose; I, who have always so highly honored these personages, am now quite out with them, and they with me. How then will they permit you to waste your time in reading such trifles as these? I assure you, my dear child, I am continually thinking of you; and I experience every day the truth of what you once told me, that there are certain thoughts which are not to be dwelt upon, but passed over as lightly as possible, unless we would be forever in tears. This is my case: for there is not a place in the house which does not give a stab to my heart when I see it; but your room especially deals a deadly blow from every part of it. I have placed a screen in the middle of it, that I may at least take something from the prospect. As for the window from which I saw you get into D’Hacqueville’s coach, and then called you back again, I shudder every time I think how near I was throwing myself out of it after you. I was likely enough to have done it, for at times I am not in my senses. The closet where I held you last in my arms, without knowing what I did; the Capuchins, where I used to go to mass; the tears that fell so fast from my eyes that they wetted the ground, as if water had been thrown on it; Saint Mary’s, Madame de la Fayette, my return to the house, your room, that night, the next morning, your first letter, and every one since, and still every day, and every conversation of those who feel with me, are so many remembrancers of my loss. Poor D’Hacqueville holds the first rank; I shall never forget the compassion he showed me. These are the thoughts incessantly uppermost; yet these are to be passed over, it seems; we are not to abandon our selves to our thoughts, and the emotions of our heart. I had rather, however, continue my reveries on the kind of life you are leading. It occasions a sort of diversion, without making me abandon my principal, my beloved object. I do then think of you. I am always wishing for letters from you. One wish of this nature, when gratified, is followed by another continually. I am in this state of expectation now, and shall go on with my letter when I have received one from you.