Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/27

12 — that is her lot. Phaedra, Sappho, and Dido had none more complete, more fatal. She deceives herself when she says : " I have a strength, or a faculty, which makes me equal to everything : it is that of knowing how to suffer, and to suffer much without complaint." She knows how to suffer, but she does complain, she cries aloud, she passes in the twinkling of an eye from exaltation to dejection : " What shall I say to you ? the excess of my inconsistency bewilders my mind, and the weight of life is crushing my soul. What must I do ? What shall I become ? Will it be Charenton or the grave that shall deliver me from myself ? "

She counts the letters she receives ; her life depends on the postman : " There is a certain carrier who for the last year gives fever to my soul." To calm herself while waiting and expecting, to obtain the sleep that flees her, she finds nothing better than recourse to opium, of which we find her doubling the doses with the progress of her woe. What matters to her the destiny of other women, those women of society, who " for the most part feel no need of being loved ; all they want is to be ][>ref erred " ? As for her, what she wants is to be loved, or rather, to love, even without return : " You do not know all that I am worth ; reflect that I can suffer and die ; judge from that if I resemble those other women, who know how to please and amuse." In vain does she cry out now and then : " Oh ! I hate you for giving me the knowledge of hope, fear, pain, pleasure ; I did not need those emotions ; why did you not leave me in peace ? My soul had no need to love ; it was filled by a tender sentiment, deep, and shared, responded to, though sorrowful in parting. It was the impul- sion of that sorrow that took me to you ; I meant that you should please me only, but you did more ; in consoling me you bound me to you," In vain does she curse the violent feeling which has taken the place of an equable and gentler