"Even if I had the strength myself to end my sorrows in the only possible way, I should not exert it: it would be defeating my own intention, showing the measure of my suffering, and leaving too grievous a wound in the heart which I have deemed worthy to sustain me in my trials. "I 'beseech myself in tears' to take a step which is as rigorous as it is inevitable. Charlotte Corday says that 'every act of self-sacrifice bestows more pleasure in the execution than it has cost pain in the conception;' but her death was near at hand, and I may still live long. What will become of me? Where can I hide? What tomb shall I choose? How can I shut out hope? What power can block up the door? "To go away in silence, to court oblivion, to bury myself for ever, that is the duty laid upon me which I hope to have the courage to fulfill. If the cup is too bitter, once I am forgotten, nothing can compel me to empty it to the dregs, and who knows but my life may, after all, not be so long as I fear. "If I had decided upon the place of my retirement, I believe I should be more calm; but the difficulty of the moment adds to the difficulties that arise from my weakness, and it requires something supernatural to act against one's self with vigour, to treat one's self as harshly as a violent and cruel enemy could do." "ROME, 28 _October._ "During the past ten months I have never ceased to suffer. During the last six, all the symptoms of consumption, and some in the last degree: I lack only the illusions, and maybe I have some!" M. Joubert, alarmed at this desire for death which was torturing Madame de Beaumont, addressed these words to her in his _Pensées_: "Love life and respect it, if not for its own sake, at least for that of your friends. In whatever state your own may be, I shall always prefer to know that you are occupied in spinning it out rather than in tearing it to pieces." At the same time my sister was writing to Madame de Beaumont. I have the correspondence, which death placed in my hands. The poetry of the ancients pictures one of the Nereids as a flower floating on the deep; Lucile was that flower. In comparing her letters with the fragments just quoted, one is struck by the similarity of heart-heaviness expressed in the different language of those unhappy angels. When I think that I have lived in the company of such minds as those, I am surprised at my own insignificance. My eyes never light without bitter grief upon those pages written by two superlative women, who vanished from this earth at a short distance one from the other. "LASCARDAIS, 30 _July._