A few minutes before midnight she had finished
the following letter:--
My Friend,--Oh! yes, my friend; for there is no one but you,
Jacques, and my grandmother to love me. God forgive me, but you
are the only two persons whom I love, both alike, neither more nor
less. I was too little to know my dear mamma; but you, Jacques,
and my grandmother, and my grandfather,--God grant him heaven, for
he suffered much from his ruin, which was mine,--but you two who
are left, I love you both, unhappy as I am. Indeed, to know how
much I love you, you will have to know how much I suffer; but I
don't wish that, it would grieve you too much. _They_ speak to me
as we would not speak to a dog; _they_ treat me like the worst of
girls; and yet I do examine myself before God, and I cannot find
that I do wrong by them. Before you sang to me the marriage song I
saw the mercy of God in my sufferings; for I had prayed to him to
take me from the world, and I felt so ill I said to myself, "God
hears me!" But, Jacques, now you are here, I want to live and go
back to Brittany, to my grandmamma who loves me, though _they_ say
she stole eight thousand francs of mine. Jacques, is that so? If
they are mine could you get them! But it is not true, for if my
grandmother had eight thousand francs she would not live at
Saint-Jacques.
I don't want to trouble her last days, my kind, good grandmamma,
with the knowledge of my troubles; she might die of it.
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