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Part Four LETTER I From Madame de Wolmar to Madame d’Orbe How long it is taking you to return here! I am not happy with all these comings and goings. How many hours are wasted getting you to where you ought always to be, and still worse taking you away! The thought of seeing each other for such a short time spoils the whole pleasure of being together. Do you not sense that being thus by turns at your place or mine is to be at home at neither, and can you not imagine some means by which you might be at once at your place and mine? What are we doing, my dear Cousin? How many precious instants are we letting slip past, when we have none left to give away! The years are adding up; youth is beginning to recede; life is Xowing past; the Xeeting happiness it oVers us is in our hands, and we neglect to enjoy it! Do you recall the time when we were still girls, those early times, so charming and sweet, that are not again to be found at a later age, and that the heart forgets with such regret? How many times, when obliged to separate for only a few days and even a few hours, we would say as we sadly embraced: Ah! if ever we are our own mistresses, we will never again be separated? But here we are mistresses of ourselves, and we spend half the year far from each other. Well, then! is it because we love each other less? we both are feeling, dear and tender friend, to what extent time, habit, and your kindnesses have made our attachment stronger and more indissoluble. To me, your absence seems each day more unbearable, and I cannot live a moment longer without you. This progress in our friendship is more natural than it appears: its reason is to be found in our situation as well as our characters. As one advances in age all the sentiments become more concentrated . Every day one loses something that was once held dear, and it cannot be replaced. And so we die a little at a time, until ultimately loving only oneself, one has ceased to feel and live before one has ceased to exist. But a sensible heart resists this premature death with all its strength; when the limbs begin to grow cold, it collects all its natural warmth around itself ; the more it loses, the more attached it becomes to what remains; and it holds to the last object, so to speak, by its ties to all the others. 327 Pt4a 362.qxd 04 Oct 2007 10:38 AM Page 327 That is what I think I am experiencing already, though still young. Ah! my dear, my poor heart did love so! It exhausted itself so early that it is aging before its time, and so many diverse aVections have so absorbed it that it has no room left for new attachments. You have seen me successively daughter, friend, lover, wife, and mother. You know whether all these names have been dear to me! Some of these ties are destroyed, others are distended. My mother, my tender mother is no more; I now have nothing but tears to give her memory, and I can partake only by half of nature’s sweetest sentiment. Love is dead, it is dead forever, and that again is a spot that will not be Wlled. We have lost your worthy and good husband whom I loved as the dear half of yourself, and who so well deserved your tenderness and my friendship. If my sons were older, a mother’s love would Wll all these voids. But that love, as well as all the others, requires communication , and what reciprocity can a mother expect from a child of four or Wve? We cherish our children long before they can sense it and love us in return; and yet, one has so great a need to tell how much one loves them to someone who can understand us! My husband understands me; but he does not respond enough to me for my fancy; his mind is not all a-dither with them like mine: his tenderness for them is too reasonable; I want a more active one and one more like mine. I need a friend, a mother who is as dotty as me about my children and her own. In a word, to...

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