“Poor Lucien!
Dear ambitious failure! I am thinking of your future life.
Well, well! you will more than once regret your poor faithful dog, the good girl who would fly to serve you, who would have been dragged into a police court to secure your happiness, whose only occupation was to think of your pleasures and invent new ones, who was so full of love for you — in her hair, her feet, her ears — your ballerina, in short, whose every look was a benediction; who for six years has thought of nothing but you, who was so entirely your chattel that I have never been anything but an effluence of your soul, as light is that of the sun.
However, for lack of money and of honor, I can never be your wife. I have at any rate provided for your future by giving you all I have. “Come as soon as you get this letter and take what you find under my pillow, for I do not trust the people about me.
Understand that I mean to look beautiful when I am dead.
I shall go to bed, and lay myself flat in an attitude — why not?
Then I shall break the little pill against the roof of my mouth, and shall not be disfigured by any convulsion or by a ridiculous position.
“Madame de Serizy has quarreled with you, I know, because of me; but when she hears that I am dead, you see, dear pet, she will forgive. Make it up with her, and she will find you a suitable wife if the Grandlieus persist in their refusal.
“My dear, I do not want you to grieve too much when you hear of my death.
To begin with, I must tell you that the hour of eleven on Monday morning, the thirteenth of May, is only the end of a long illness, which began on the day when, on the Terrace of Saint–Germain, you threw me back on my former line of life.
The soul may be sick, as the body is. But the soul cannot submit stupidly to suffering like the body; the body does not uphold the soul as the soul upholds the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the reflection which leads to the needlewoman’s resource — the bushel of charcoal.
You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday, when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would marry me.
It would have been a great misfortune for us both; I should have been still more dead, so to speak — for there are more and less bitter deaths.
The world would never have recognized us.
“For two months past I have been thinking of many things, I can tell you.
A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I went into the convent; men think her handsome, they make her serve their pleasure without thinking any consideration necessary; they pack her off on foot after fetching her in a carriage; if they do not spit in her face, it is only because her beauty preserves her from such indignity; but, morally speaking they do worse.
Well, and if this despised creature were to inherit five or six millions of francs, she would be courted by princes, bowed to with respect as she went past in her carriage, and might choose among the oldest names in France and Navarre.
That world which would have cried Raca to us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy, always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her ‘romances in real life,’ because she had two hundred thousand francs a year.
The world, which grovels before money or glory, will not bow down before happiness or virtue — for I could have done good. Oh! how many tears I would have dried — as many as I have shed — I believe!
Yes, I would have lived only for you and for charity.
“These are the thoughts that make death beautiful.
So do not lament, my dear.
Say often to yourself, ‘There were two good creatures, two beautiful creatures, who both died for me ungrudgingly, and who adored me.’
Keep a memory in your heart of Coralie and Esther, and go your way and prosper.
Do you recollect the day when you pointed out to me a shriveled old woman, in a melon-green bonnet and a puce wrapper, all over black grease-spots, the mistress of a poet before the Revolution, hardly thawed by the sun though she was sitting against the wall of the Tuileries and fussing over a pug — the vilest of pugs?
She had had footmen and carriages, you know, and a fine house!
And I said to you then,
‘How much better to be dead at thirty!’— Well, you thought I was melancholy, and you played all sorts of pranks to amuse me, and between two kisses I said,
‘Every day some pretty woman leaves the play before it is over!’— And I do not want to see the last piece; that is all.
“You must think me a great chatterbox; but this is my last effusion.
I write as if I were talking to you, and I like to talk cheerfully.
I have always had a horror of a dressmaker pitying herself. You know I knew how to die decently once before, on my return from that fatal opera-ball where the men said I had been a prostitute.
“No, no, my dear love, never give this portrait to any one!
If you could know with what a gush of love I have sat losing myself in your eyes, looking at them with rapture during a pause I allowed myself, you would feel as you gathered up the affection with which I have tried to overlay the ivory, that the soul of your little pet is indeed there.
“A dead woman craving alms! That is a funny idea.
— Come, I must learn to lie quiet in my grave.
“You have no idea how heroic my death would seem to some fools if they could know Nucingen last night offered me two millions of francs if I would love him as I love you.
He will be handsomely robbed when he hears that I have kept my word and died of him.
I tried all I could still to breathe the air you breathe.
I said to the fat scoundrel,
‘Do you want me to love you as you wish?
To promise even that I will never see Lucien again?’—‘What must I do?’ he asked. —‘Give me the two millions for him.’— You should have seen his face!
I could have laughed, if it had not been so tragical for me. “‘Spare yourself the trouble of refusing,’ said I; ‘I see you care more for your two millions than for me.
A woman is always glad to know at what she is valued!’ and I turned my back on him.
“In a few hours the old rascal will know that I was not in jest.
“Who will part your hair as nicely as I do?
Pooh!
— I will think no more of anything in life; I have but five minutes, I give them to God. Do not be jealous of Him, dear heart; I shall speak to Him of you, beseeching Him for your happiness as the price of my death, and my punishment in the next world.
I am vexed enough at having to go to hell. I should have liked to see the angels, to know if they are like you.
“Good-bye, my darling, good-bye!