The bad weather has returned. No one comes to see me. Julie watches by
me as much as she can. Prudence, to whom I can no longer give as much as
I used to, begins to make excuses for not coming.
Now that I am so near death, in spite of what the doctors tell me, for
I have several, which proves that I am getting worse, I am almost sorry
that I listened to your father; if I had known that I should only be
taking a year of your future, I could not have resisted the longing
to spend that year with you, and, at least, I should have died with a
friend to hold my hand. It is true that if we had lived together this
year, I should not have died so soon.
God's will be done!
February 5.
Oh, come, come, Armand! I suffer horribly; I am going to die, O God!
I was so miserable yesterday that I wanted to spend the evening, which
seemed as if it were going to be as long as the last, anywhere but at
home. The duke came in the morning. It seems to me as if the sight of
this old man, whom death has forgotten, makes me die faster.
Despite the burning fever which devoured me, I made them dress me and
take me to the Vaudeville. Julie put on some rouge for me, without which
I should have looked like a corpse. I had the box where I gave you our
first rendezvous. All the time I had my eyes fixed on the stall where
you sat that day, though a sort of country fellow sat there, laughing
loudly at all the foolish things that the actors said. I was half dead
when they brought me home. I coughed and spat blood all the night.
To-day I can not speak, I can scarcely move my arm. My God! My God! I
am going to die! I have been expecting it, but I can not get used to the
thought of suffering more than I suffer now, and if-After this the few characters traced by Marguerite were indecipherable,
and what followed was written by Julie Duprat.
February 18.
MONSIEUR ARMAND: Since the day that Marguerite insisted on going to the theatre she has
got worse and worse. She has completely lost her voice, and now the use
of her limbs.
What our poor friend suffers is impossible to say. I am not used to
emotions of this kind, and I am in a state of constant fright.
How I wish you were here! She is almost always delirious; but delirious
or lucid, it is always your name that she pronounces, when she can speak
a word.