A WILLING ENVOY
“Paris, July 20, 11 P. M.
“MY FRIEND: My mother has just died at
Roncieres. We shall leave here at midnight.
Do not come, for we have told no one. But pity
me and think of me. YOUR ANY.”
“July 21, 12 M.
“MY POOR FRIEND: I should have gone, notwithstanding
what you wrote, if I had not become used to regarding
all your wishes as commands. I have thought of
you with poignant grief ever since last night.
I think of that silent journey you made, sitting opposite
your daughter and your husband, in that dimly-lighted
carriage, which bore you toward your dead. I
could see all three of you under the oil lamp, you
weeping and Annette sobbing. I saw your arrival
at the station, the entrance of the castle in the
midst of a group of servants, your rush up the stairs
toward that room, toward that bed where she lies, your
first look at her, and your kiss on her thin, motionless
face. And I thought of your heart, your poor
heart—that poor heart, of which half belongs
to me and which is breaking, which suffers so much,
which stifles you, making me suffer also at this moment.
“With profound pity, I kiss your eyes filled
with tears.
“OLIVIER.”
“Roncieres, July 24.
“Your letter would have done me good, my friend,
if anything could do me good in the horrible situation
into which I have fallen. We buried her yesterday,
and since her poor lifeless body has gone out of this
house it seems to me that I am alone in the world.
We love our mothers almost without knowing or feeling
it, for such love is as natural as it is to live,
and we do not realize how deep-rooted is that love
until the moment of final separation. No other
affection is comparable to that, for all others come
by chance, while this begins at birth; all the others
are brought to us later by the accidents of life, while
this has lived in our very blood since our first day
on earth. And then, and there, we have lost not
only a mother but our childhood itself, which half
disappears, for our little life of girlhood belonged
to her as much as to ourselves. She alone knew
it as we knew it; she knew about innumerable things,
remote, insignificant and dear, which are and which
were the first sweet emotions of our heart. To
her alone I could still say: ’Do you remember,
mother, the day when—? Do you remember,
mother, the china doll that grandmother gave me?’
Both of us murmured to each other a long, sweet chapter
of trifling childish memories, which no one on earth
now knows of but me. So it is a part of myself
that is dead—the older, the better.
I have lost the poor heart wherein the little girl
I was once still lived. Now no one knows her any
more; no one remembers the little Anne, her short
skirts, her laughter and her faces.
