THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF Kate Gordon Moore ERNEST RENAN i From a painting by Henri Schaffer, r86o). MY Sister Henrietta BY Ernest Renan ?rn:i5ln!fi from ff\» French by Leonora Teller CHICAGO E. A. WEEKS & COMPANY 521-631 WABASH AVE. Copyright by E. A. WEEKS & COMPANY 1895 CT 1013 EDITOR'S PREFACE. This little book is the textual re- print of a small work of which Ernest Renan had one hundred copies printed and issued in September. 1862, under the following title, " Henrietta Renan, a souvenir for those who have known her." We find also the words, These pages are not for the public eye, and shall not be for sale." In 1883, in his " Recollections of Childhood and Youth," Ernest Renan expresses himself thus in the preface: " The person who has had the great- est influence over my life, my sister Henrietta, has no place in this work. In September, 1862, the year after the death of this precious friend, I 871214 PREFACE. wrote for the few who had known her the little work consecrated to her memory. There have been but a hundred copies issued. My sister was so modest, she had so much aver- sion to the noisy world that I should have expected her to arise from her tomb to reproach me if I had given these pages to the public. At times I thought of appending them to this volume, then again it seemed to me that it would be a kind of profanation. The souvenir of my sister has been read sympathetically by those who felt kindly toward her and toward me. I ought not to expose the mem- ory which is holy to me to the super- cilious comments of those who think when they buy a book that they have the right to criticise it. I thought PREFACE. that by inserting these pages about my sister, in a volume to be put upon the market, I should be as culpable as if I exposed her portrait in a common shop. This work, therefore, shall not be re-issued until after my death. Perhaps then may be added some letters of my dear one, which I myself will select." Finally, in a codicil to his will, dated November 4th, 1888, Ernest Renan authorized the present edition, saying, "My wife will regulate the manner in winch my little volume of souvenirs of my sister Henrietta shall be given to the public." The present edition, therefore, is prepared by Madame Cornelia Renan. A selec- tion of Henrietta Renan's letters was not made by her brother. These letters PREFACE. cannot, owing to their number, find a place in this publication, and will be given in a special edition of their own. HENRIETTA RENAN (From a photograph l. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. By Eniest Renan. MY SISTER HENRIETTA. The memory of man leaves but a trace — a mark on the bosom of the Infinite. Still it is not altogether a vain thing. The conscience of hu- manity is the only thing we have by which to judge of the universal con- science. The right estimate of man's character is a part of Absolute Jus- tice. So, although noble lives need no other remembrance than God's, still one wishes to recollect them. I should be the more guilty if I neg- lected this last duty to my sister Hen- rietta, because I alone knew the worth of that vanished soul. Her timidity, her reserve, her aversion to PREFACE. all publicity, prevented the veil spread over her rare nature from be- ing lifted. Her life was but a succes- sion of acts of devotion destined to remain hidden. I will not betray her secrets; these pages are not for the public and shall not be given to it by me; but the privileged few to whom she revealed herself would have a right to reproach me if I neglected to set in order those few things that could complete their memories of her. My Sister Henrietta. i. My sister Henrietta was born at Treguier, on the twenty-second of July, 1811. Her life was early sad- dened and filled with austere duties. She never knew any joys other than those bestowed by virtue and affection. She inherited from her father a melancholy disposition which gave her a distaste for all vulgar dis- tractions, and even inspired in her a certain inclination to fly from the world and its pleasures. She had nothing of the genial, gay, spirituelle nature that my mother preserved, even to her hale old age. Her religious sentiments, at first narrowed down into the formula of Catholicism, were 9 IO MY SISTER HENRIETTA. always very deep. Treguier, the lit- tle town where we were born, was an old Episcopal city, rich in poeti- cal impressions; it was one of those grand monastic cities founded by the Breton immigrants in the sixth cen- tury, after the Gallic and Irish fash- ion. A certain Abbe" Tual, or Tug- dual, was its father. When Trom£no£ in the ninth century, wishing to found a Breton nation, transformed into bishoprics ail those grand monaster- ies on the north side, Rabutual or the monastery of Saint Tual, was of the number. In the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, Treguier became quite an ecclesiastical center and the rendezvous of a small local nobility. During the Revolution, the bishopric was suppressed, but after the re-estab- kJj I— ,-_rdJ- ™ - . v i ■ • 1 9W ,i irP ««*.<*' HOUSE IN TREGUIER, WHERE ERNEST RENAN WAS BORN. MY SISTER HENRIETTA. II lishment of the Catholic faith the vast buildings which the town possessed made it again a religious center, a town of convents and religious estab- lishments. Bourgeois* life was there very little developed. All the streets, save one or two, are long, deserted alleys, lined by high convent walls or old prebendal houses surrounded by gardens. A general air of distinction permeated everything, and gave this poor, dead city a charm which the common towns that had sprung up throughout the country, though richer and more stirring, did not possess. The Cathedral itself, a beautiful building of the fourteenth century, with its lofty naves, its astonishing architectural flights, its prodigiously tall steeple and its old Roman tower, 12 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. the remains of an edifice still older, seemed made expressly to awaken the noblest thoughts. In the even- ing, when it was left open very late for the prayers of the pious, lighted with a single lamp, and with the musty odor peculiar to old churches, the immense, empty structure was full of the awe of the Infinite. A quarter of a league distant was the chapel, raised nearly on the birth- place of the good advocate St. Ives, a Breton saint of old times, who had become in the popular belief the defender of the feeble and the great righter of wrongs. Near there, on a high point, stood the ruins of the old church of St. Michael, de- stroyed by lightning. We were taken there each Thursday before Easter. MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 1 3 The legend runs that on that day all the bells, during the great silence im- posed upon them, go to Rome for the blessing of the Pope. To see them pass, one must climb up the hill cov- ered with ruins. Closing the eyes, you could see them sweeping through the air, softly bending, their lace robes which they wore on the day of baptism floating behind them. A little farther away rose the little chapel of Cinq-Plais, in a charming valley; on the other side of the river, near an old sacred fountain, stood our Notre-Dame-du-Tromeur, a vener- ated resort of pilgrims. A strong inclination toward the life of a recluse was the result, with my sister, of a childhood passed in these poetic and melancholy surroundings. 14 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. Some old nuns, turned out of their convent by the Revolution, had opened a school, and they taught her to read and recite Latin psalms. She learned by heart all those they sang in church, and she learned later the old texts, which she translated into French and Italian, and thus acquired some knowledge of Latin, although she never regularly studied it. Nev- ertheless, her education would have necessarily remained very incomplete had it not been happily fated that she should have a teacher superior to any that had been in the place up to that time. Some of the noble families of Tr^guier had returned completely ruined after the emigration. A daugh- ter of one of these families who had been educated in England began to MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 15 teach. She was a person of distin- guished taste and manners, and she made a profound impression on my sister, that never was effaced. The misfortunes that early sur- rounded her increased her natural tendency to concentration. Our grandfather on the paternal side be- longed to a race of sea-faring peas- ants, who inhabit the county of Goelo. He had accumulated a small fortune by means of his boat, and come to live at Tr^guier. Our father had been in the service of the Republic. After the maritime disasters of the times, he commanded ships on his own account, and allowed himself to be drawn little by little into a large trade. This was a great mistake. Completely unused to business, sim- 1 6 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. pie-hearted, incapable of all calcula- tion, incessantly hindered by that shyness which makes a sailor a real child in all the practical affairs of life, he saw the small fortune he had ac- cumulated drawn slowly into a bot- tomless gulf. The events of 1815 brought on a series of calamities that proved fatal to him. His sentimental, rather weak nature was not proof against these continued shocks. He withdrew, little by little, from the enterprises of life. My sister endeavored, hour by hour, to alleviate the distress brought on by anxiety in this good, generous nature forced in- to an employment foreign to it. She acquired an early maturity in these hard experiences; from the age of twelve she was a serious little body, SPIRE OF THE TREC.riER CATHEDRAI.. MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 17 worn out with care and weighed down with grave thoughts and somber pre- sentiments. On his return from one of his long voyages over our cold, sad seas my father felt his last thrill of joy: I was born in February, 1823. The arrival of a little brother was a great comfort to my sister. She de- voted herself to me with all the force of a timid, tender heart that needs something to love. I remember still, the petty tyrannies I exercised over her, and against which she never re- belled. When she started out, ready to go and join her young companions, I would hang to her gown and beg her to return. Then she would come back, take off her holiday attire and l8 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. remain with me. One day she threat- ened jokingly if I was not good she would die. She pretended she was dead in her chair. The horror that this feigned insensibility of my dear one caused me is perhaps the strongest impression I ever experienced, fate having decreed that I should not be conscious when she breathed her last. Carried away by excitement, I threw myself upon her and bit her arm terribly; I can still hear her cry of anguish. For the reproaches she made to me I made but one answer, "Why were you dead? Will you die again? " In July, 1828, the misfortunes of our father led to a frightful castas- trophe. One day, his ship that sailed from St. Malo entered the port of my sister Henrietta. 19 Treguier without him. The crew de- clared that for several days they had seen nothing of him. For a whole month my mother sought for him, with inexpressible anguish. At last she learned that a body had been found on the coast of Erqui, a village situated between St. Brieuc and Cape FreTiel. It was decided that the body was our father's. What was the cause of his death? Was he surprised by one of those ac- cidents so common in the life of sea- faring men? Had he abandoned him- self to one of those long dreams of the Infinite which to the Breton means endless sleep? Did he think he had earned repose? Finding the struggle so hard, did he seat himself on the rock saying, "This shall be the stone 20 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. of my eternal rest. Here I will repose because I have chosen it?" We never knew. They buried him on the beach where twice a day the waves came to visit him. I have not yet been able to raise a stone to his memory. My mother's sorrow was deep. She be- lieved in our father and loved him tenderly. She could not speak of him without tears and she was per- suaded that his tired and tortured soul was alwa3's pure and true in the eyes of God. II. From this moment our condition was that of poverty. My brother, who was nineteen years old, went to Paris, and there commenced that life of hard work and constant application which MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 21 was not sufficiently rewarded. We left Treguier, which was full of un- happy memories, and went to live at Lannion, where my mother's family resided. My sister was seventeen. Her faith was always earnest, and the thought of embracing a religious life had taken strong hold of her mind. On winter evenings she carried me to church under her cloak, and I was delighted to tramp through the snow, thus completely sheltered. If it had not been for me she would undoubt- edly have chosen this life which, seen in the light of her instruction and with her pious disposition, her lack of fortune and the customs of the coun- try, seemed marked out for her. The convent of St. Anne, at Lannion, which combined the care of the sick 22 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. with the education of women, particu- larly attracted her. Alas! perhaps if she had carried out this idea it would have been better for her, i_Mt ohe was too good a girl, too tender a sis- ter, to prefer her happiness to her duty, even though the religious be- liefs which she still held, urged her to it. From that time she considered herself charged with my future. One day she noticed my embarrassed movements and saw that I sought timidly to hide a rent in a well-worn garment of mine. She wept; the sight of this poor child, of refined instincts, destined to misery, broke her heart. She resolved to accept the battle of life, and imposed upon herself the task of bridging the chasm of distress which our father's misfor- tunes had opened before us. MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 23 The manual labor of a young girl was entirely insufficient for that. The career she embraced proved the bit- terest of all. It was decided that we should return to Treguier and that there she should become a teacher. Of all the positions that a well-raised young person without fortune could choose, the instruction of women in a little provincial town is, without ex- ception, that which demands the greatest courage. These were the days immediately following the Revo- lution of 1830, which were, for the remote provinces, times of trying changes. The nobility under the Restoration, seeing their privileges unquestioned, took a leading part in the management of affairs. To re- venge themselves for fancied humili- 24 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. ations in the past, they withdrew into a narrow circle and gave no aid to the general development of society. All the Legitimist families affected to be- lieve that their children could only be educated in the religious communi- ties. The bourgeois families, to be in the fashion and to imitate the nobility, followed their example in this regard. Incapable of descending to any of those vulgar schemings, without which, in a private school, it is almost impossible to succeed, my sister, with her rare distinction, her deep mind and solid education, saw her poor little school abandoned. Her modesty and reserve, the exquisite care that she bestowed upon the least detail, were here the reasons of her failure. Obliged to cope with the meanest MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 25 motives and the most foolish preten- sions, this noble and great spirit spent itself in a fruitless struggle against a low state of society from which the Revolution had carried off the better elements it had once pos- sessed, and left nothing in their place. Some superior people among the mean little souls of the country knew how to appreciate her. A very intel- ligent, unprejudiced man, an excep- tion in this provincial village, where aristocracy had either disappeared or become lowered or vulgarized, con- ceived a sincere affection for her. My sister, in spite of a birthmark, to which it took some time to become accustomed, was at this age extremely charming. Those who never knew her till after years, when she was 26 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. worn out by a rigorous climate, could not imagine how delicate and refined her features were. Her eyes were of a rare sweetness; her hand was as beautiful and delicate as I have ever seen. A proposal was made, with certain conditions delicately attached. These conditions were such as to separate her in a measure from those for whom it was thought she had worked enough. She refused, al- though the clearness and justice of her mind inspired in her a sympathy with those qualities in another. She preferred poverty to riches, if the lat- ter were not to be shared with her family. Her situation, nevertheless, be- came more and more painful. The tuitions which were due were so irreg- MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 27 ularly paid that sometimes we seri- ously regretted having left Lannion, where we had always found devotion and sympathy. She then resolved to drain the cup to its bitter dregs (1835). A friend of our family, who had about this time gone on a visit to Paris, told her of a situation as under-teacher in a small school for girls. The poor child ac- cepted it. She started at the age of twenty-four, without protection or advice, for a world of which she was ignorant and which reserved for her a cruel apprenticeship. Her first days in Paris were horri- ble. That cold, cruel world, full of charlatanism, that desert where she had not a single real friend, filled her with despair. The deep affection that 28 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. we Bretons have for home, native soil and family life, awoke keenly in her, adrift on an ocean where her tim- idity kept her from being appreciated. Her reserve hindered her from form- ing new connections that would in some measure have consoled her; she fell a prey to a home-sickness that seriously affected her health. The most cruel thing for a Breton in the first moments of his transplanting is that he feels deserted by God as well as man. Heaven is veiled from him. His faith in general morality, his tranquil optimism are shattered. He feels that he is cast down from Para- dise into a hell of icy indifference. The voice of the good man sounds far off and hollow to him, and he cries bitterly, " How can we sing the MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 29 Lord's song in a strange land?" To add to her distress, the first houses into which her fate led her were not worthy of her. Imagine a tender young girl who had never before left her home, her mother, her friends, thrown suddenly into one of those frivolous boarding-schools where her tenderest feelings were wounded every moment, and the teachers showed nothing but carelessness, frivolity and sordidness. This first experi- ence prejudiced her very deeply against the boarding-schools in Paris. Twenty times she was on the point of leaving; it needed invincible courage to remain. Nevertheless, little by little, she was appreciated. The supervision of the studies in one of these schools, 30 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. fortunately, this time a very reputable one, was confided to her; but the ob- stacles which hindered her from carrying out her views, the little meannesses inseparable from these private establishments, almost al- ways kept up by the proprietors with a view to gain, prevented her from ever taking pleasure in this employ- ment. She worKed sixteen hours a day. She submitted to all the public tests imposed by the rules. The work had not the effect upon her it would have had upon a mediocre nature. Instead of crushing her it strengthened her and greatly developed her ideas. Her education, already quite extensive, became more liberal. She studied the works of the modern historical MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 3 1 school, and later it needed but a few suggestions from me to make her one of the finest of critics. At the same time, her religious ideas were modi- fied. History showed her the insuf- ficiency of all religious dogma; but her genuinely pious nature, the result of birth and early education, was too solid to be shattered. This development of the intellect, which might have been dangerous in an- other woman, was harmless here; but she kept these ideas to herself. Cul- ture had in her eyes an intrinsic and absolute value; she never thought of parading it vainly. In 1838 she sent for me to come to Paris. Educated at Treguier by the excellent priests who conducted the little seminary there, I announced at 32 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. an early period my intention to adopt an ecclesiastical life. My success at college delighted my sister, and she had imparted it to a good and dis- tinguished man, -who was also a zeal- ous Catholic, Dr. Descuret, a physi- cian in her school, the author of the Medecitis des passions. M. Descuret spoke to M. Dupau- loup, who was then conducting in the most brilliant fashion the little sem- inary Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, of the possible acquisition of such a good scholar, and returned to tell my sister that a scholarship was offered to me at the little seminary. I was then fifteen and a half. My sister, whose faith in Catholicism had already begun to be shaken, saw, with some regret, the wholly clerical direction MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 33 my education had taken, but she knew the respect that the faith of a child deserves. She never said one word to turn me from the path I had voluntarily chosen. She came to see me every week; she still wore the simple green woolen shawl that had in Brittany covered her proud form. She was the same loving, sweet young girl, but with an added firmness and power which the trials of her life and her deep studies had produced. The career of a teacher is so un- profitable for women that at the end of five years passed in Paris, after several illnesses the result of over- work, my sister was still far from carrying out the plans which she had made; but it is true that these plans were so extensive as to have discour- 34 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. aged any other heart than hers. Our father had left debts which exceeded much the value of our paternal home, the only property remaining to us. But our mother was so beloved, and all business matters are treated in such a patriarchal manner in that country, that not a single creditor thought of forcing a settlement. It was agreed that my mother should keep the house, paying what she could, and when she could. My sister did not wish to hear of rest till all this heavy indebtedness should be liquidated. For this reason she was led to listen to propositions made to her in 1840, to go as a private teacher into Poland. It would be necessary to expatriate herself for years and ac- cept the most binding contracts; but MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 35 she had made the greatest effort of her life when she left Brittany to enter into the great world. She started in January, 1841, traveled through the Black Forest and the south of Ger- many, then covered with snow, joined at Vienna the family to which she had attached herself; then, climbing the Carpathians, arrived at the Chateau of Clemensow, upon the banks of the Bug, a gloomy dwelling, where dur- ing ten years she was to learn how bitter is exile even when sustained by the highest motives. This time, at least, Fate afforded her one compensation for many in- justices, in placing her in a family that 1 can properly enough mention, since to its historical fame was added a con- temporarv glory which put the name 36 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. in every mouth. This was the family of Count Andre Zamoyski. The ardor with which she entered upon her duties, the affection she conceived for her three pupils, the happiness of seeing the fruition of her efforts, par- ticularly in her who from her early age received the greater part of her instruc- tion, the Princess Cecile Lubomirska, the rare esteem in which she was held by this whole noble family, who after her return to France continued to come to her for counsel and guid- ance, the affinity between her up- right and serious nature and the minds of the family in which she lived, caused her to forget the sadness in- separable from such a position and the rigors of a climate very unsuited to her temperament. She became at- MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 37 tached to Poland, and particularly to the Polish peasant, in whom she saw a good creature, full of high religious instincts, recalling strongly the Breton peasant, but less energetic. The excursions which she made to Germany and Italy completed her ed- ucation. She lived at various times at Varsovie, Vienna and Dresden. Ven- ice and Florence delighted her; but it was to Rome that she was attached most strongly. This city, so deeply inspiring, led her to regard with seren- ity the distinction which all philoso- phical minds must make between true religion and its particular forms. She loved to call it with Lord Byron, " dear city of the soul; " and, like all strangers who lived there, she had be- come indulgent even of the foolish 38 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. and puerile formalities of modern papacy. III. In 1845 I left St. Sulpice Seminary. Thanks to the liberal and thoughtful mind which presides over this school, I had carried my philological studies a great length; my religious belief was greatly shaken. Henrietta was again my support. She had advanced into the breach before me; her faith in Catholicism had completely dis- appeared, but she had always care- fully refrained from exercising the slightest influence over me on this subject. When I confided to her the doubts which tormented me, which made it my duty to abandon a career in which absolute faith is required, she was delighted, and offered to help MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 39 me through the difficult passage. I entered upon practical life at the age of twenty-three, old in thought, but yet a novice, as ignorant of the world as it is possible to be. Literally I knew no one; the simple advantages which even a youth of fifteen might possess were lacking. I was not even a Bachelor of Letters. We agreed that I should seek in the pensions of Paris an occupation which should mit au pair, as they say, that is, should give me board and lodging, leaving me ample time for work. Twelve hundred francs which she sent me would have enabled me to supply all that such a position required. These twelve hundred francs have been the corner-stone of my life. I have never exhausted them; but the}- have given 4-0 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. me the tranquility of mind necessary to think at my ease, and prevented me from experiencing the necessity which would have stifled me. Her exquisite letters were at this decisive moment of my life my consolation and support. While I struggled with difficulties, aggravated by my total inexperience of the world, her health suffered from the rigors of the Polish winters. A chronic affection of the larynx devel- oped, and became so serious in 1850 that her return was judged necessary. Besides, her task was accomplished; our father's debts were entirely paid; the little property he had left us was in my mother's hands free from en- cumbrances; my brother had gained a position through hard work, which MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 41 promised to bring him wealth. We decided to live together. In Septem- ber, 1850, I joined her at Berlin. These ten years of exile had entirely transformed her. The wrinkles of premature old age were traced on her face; of the charm which she still had when she bade me adieu in the parlor of the St. Nicholas Seminary, nothing remained but the tender ex- pression of her ineffable goodness. Then began for us those dear years, the memory of which melts me to tears. We took a little suite of rooms at the end of a garden near Val-de-grace. Our isolation was com- plete. She had no acquaintances, nor did she seek to make any. Our win- dows looked out on the Carmelite gar- dens in the rue d'Enfer. The life of 42 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. these recluses during the long hours which I passed in the library regula- ted in some degree her own life, and was her only distraction. She had the greatest respect for my work. I have seen her in the evening, while sitting beside me, hardly daring to breathe for fear of interrupting me. Still she wished to see me, and the door between our two rooms was al- ways open. Her love had come to such perfection that the unspoken communion of our thoughts satisfied her. She, so exacting, so jealous in her affection, contented herself with a few moments' intercourse each day, providing she but knew she was loved. Thanks to her rigorous economy, with extremely limited resources, she made a home for me, where nothing was MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 43 ever lacking, which even had an aus- tere grace of its own. Our thoughts were so perfectly in unison that we hardly needed to put them into words. Our general opinions about God and the world were identical. There was hardly a shade in the theories that I advanced at this time which she did not appreciate. She was in advance of me on many topics of modern his- tory, which she had studied at their sources. The general plan of my career, the course of inflexible sin- cerity which I laid down for myself, was entirely the combined product of both our consciences, but I should have been tempted many times to give up if I had not found her always near me, like a second self, to recall me to my duty. 44 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. Her part in the direction of my ideas was thus very extensive. She was an incomparable secretary; she copied all my papers and understood them so thoroughly that I relied on her as a living index of my thoughts. She read proofs of all I wrote and her precious criticism sought out with in- finite nicety all the little negligences which I had not yet noticed. I owe what excellences of style I have en- tirely to her. She had acquired great elegance in writing, the result of her study of ancient literature, and her style was so pure and so exact that I do not believe there could have been a more ideally perfect diction since Port-Royale. That rendered her very severe. She was not willing to admit any excellence in modern writing, MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 45 and when she saw the essays which I had composed before our reunion, and which she had not read while in Poland, they did but half please her. She shared the beliefs and she thought that everyone should express himself frankly and freely, but the manner of doing so appeared careless and abrupt, and she found the attacks unreasonable, the tone harsh, and the method of treating the subject disre- spectful. She convinced me that one can say anything in the simple and correct style of good authors and that new expressions and overdrawn figures come either from misplaced conceit or from ignorance of the real riches of our language. Thus, from my reunion with her dated a profound change in my manner of writing. I 46 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. accustomed myself to compose with a view to her criticism, trying experi- ments sometimes merely to see the effect upon her, intending to sacrifice them if she asked it. This operation of the mind has become for me, since she is no more, like the continual pain in a limb which one knows has been amputated. She was an organ of my intellectual life, and it is truly a part of my own being which is in- terred with her in the tomb. We had come to see with the same eyes and to feel with the same heart all moral things. She was so thor- oughly in sympathy with my mode of thought that she nearly always di- vined what I was about to say, and the same idea would occur to us sim- ultaneously. But in one sense she MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 47 surpassed me very much. In spirit- ual things I still sought material for interesting attacks or artistic studies; nothing tarnished the purity of her inner communion with the good. Her truly religious nature would not suffer the least discordant note. One feature which wounded her in my writings was an ironical tendency that took possession of me and which I mingled with better things. I had never suffered, and I thought it a sign of philosophy to smile discreetly at the weakness or vanity of man. This habit wounded her, and, little by little, I sacrificed it to her. Now do I recognize her wisdom. The good should be simply good, all kinds of ridicule imply the remains of vanity or personal scorn, and are a sign of bad taste. 48 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. Her faith was of the purest. She rejected absolutely the supernatural, but she retained the warmest attach- ment for Christianity. It was not ex- actly Protestantism which pleased her, but a larger faith. She pre- served most tender memories of Catholicism, of her chants and psalms, and the pious observances in which her childhood had been cradled. She was a saint without the precise and narrow ceremonies and symbols. About a month before her death we had a conversation upon religious matters with good Doctor Gaillardot, upon the terrace in front of our house at Ghazir. She opposed my inclination to a belief in a deity without con- sciousness and a purely ideal immor- tality. Without being a deist in the MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 49 common acceptation of the word, she did not wish religion to be reduced to pure abstraction. In practice, at least, everything was clear to her. "Yes," said she to us, "in my last hour I shall have the consolation of saying to myself that I have done the best possible, and if there is anything which should not be vanity, it is that." The exquisite sentiment of her na- ture was the source of her most re- fined joy. A beautiful day, a ray of sunshine, even a flower delighted her. She appreciated the delicate art of the great idealistic school, but she could not endure that brutal or vio- lent art which had for its object any- thing but beauty. One circumstance in particular gave her rare acquaint- 50 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. ance with the art of the middle ages. She collected for me all the facts on the condition of the fine arts of the Fourteenth century which form a part of Volume XXIV of " The Literary History of France." For these facts she searched with patience and ad- mirable accuracy through all the great archeological collections that had been published in the last half century, selecting all that belonged to the subject. The notes that she made at this same time were so full of dis- cernment that I nearly always adopted them. To complete our researches we made a journey to- gether into the country where Gothic art was formed, in Vexin, Valois, Beauvoises, into the region of Noyon of Layon, and Rheims. She dis- MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 51 played in those occupations which interested her, surprising activity. Her ideal was a laborious, obscure life surrounded by affection. She often repeated the words of Thomas a Kempis: "In angelo cum libello." She passed many happy hours in these tranquil occupations. Her mind was full of serenity then, and her heart, ordinarily anxious, was full of peace. Her capacity for work was prodigious. I have seen her bend incessantly over the same task for days together. She assisted in edit- ing a journal of education conducted by her friend Mdlle. Ulliac-Treana- deure. She never signed her own name, and it was impossible, with such great modesty, for her to be known and appreciated, save by a 52 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. very few. The detestable taste that prevails in France in text-books in- tended for the education of woman did not lead her to hope for either great satisfaction or great success. She undertook this work solely to oblige her old and infirm friend. Her letters showed her true character more than anything else; she wrote them to perfection. Her notes on her travels also were excellent. I left it to her to relate the non-scientific part of our journey in the Orient. Alas! all the account of our expedition which I confided to her perished with her. What I found on the subject among her papers is very good. We hope to be able to publish them with her letters. We shall publish, too, an account which she wrote of the MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 53 great maritime expeditions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She had made very extended researches for this work, and had brought to it skill very rare in books intended for children. She did nothing half-way. The uprightness of her judgment showed itself by her exquisite taste for the true and the good. She had not what we call wit, if we mean by that something light and mocking, after the manner of the French. She never sneered at any- one. Malice was odious to her, she saw something painful in it. I re- member that at a pardon of lower Brit- tany, where we went in a boat, our bark was preceded by another filled with poor women, who, wishing to make themselves fine for the/^/r.had 54 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. made cheap toilettes in very bad taste. Those who were with us laughed at them, and the poor wom- en saw it. I saw my sister bathed in tears. To overwhelm with jests good people who thus tried to forget for the moment their misfortunes, and who perhaps put themselves to inconven- ience out of deference to the public, seemed barbarous to her. In her eyes, to be ridiculous was to be pitied; from that time she loved such a one and defended him against all raillery. This accounted for her indifference to the world and her inability to carry on ordinary conversation, nearly al- ways a tissue of malice and frivolity. She was prematurely old, and she ex- aggerated her age by her costume and manners. She possessed a kind MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 55 of religion of misfortune; she received and cultivated nearly every oppor- tunity for weeping; sadness was a second nature to her. Generally common people could not understand her and found her stiff and embar- rassing. Nothing but what was en- tirely good pleased her. Everything must be genuinely good with her. She did not know how to dissemble. The country people, the peasants, on the contrary, discovered her exquisite kindness, and people who knew how to approach her saw very quickly the depth of her nature and her great distinction. Sometimes she was charmingly fem- inine; she became a young girl again; she looked on life smilingly, and her inadaptability to the world seemed 56 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. to trouble her. The flying moments of delightful helplessness, fleeting gleams of a vanished morning, were full of melancholy sweetness for her. In that regard she was superior to people who profess a gloomy abhor- ence of the world. She loved life; she enjoyed it; she could smile at a jewel or some feminine trifle, as one smiles at a flower. She had not said to nature that abrenuntio of the as- cetic Christian. Virtue for her was not a strong tension, a forced effort; it was the natural instinct of a beau- tiful soul reaching out after the good spontaneously, serving God without fear or trembling. Thus we lived for six years a very pure, elevated life. My position was always extremely modest, but she MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 57 wished it so. She would not allow it even when I desired to sacrifice the least portion of my independence for my promotion. The misfortune which overwhelmed our brother and carried with it the results of all our little economics, did not shake her. She would have taken up life again among strangers, had it been necessary for my complete development. My God! did I do everything I could to make her happy? With what bitterness I reproach myself now for not having been more expansive, for not having told her how much I loved her, for having yielded too much to my taste for quiet concentration, and for not putting to better use each hour in which she was left to me. Oh! if I could live over one of those moments 58 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. in which I failed to make her happy; but I call her vanished soul to witness, she was always at the depths of my heart, that she reigned over my whole life as no one else ever did, that she was always the center of my sorrow and my joys. If I sinned toward her, it was owing to a certain coldness of manner which people who know me do not regard, and through a deep sentiment of respect for her in which any demonstration of affection would seem out of place. She always held this place in my esteem. My long clerical education, four years of abso- lutely solitary life, had given me this cast of character, and her delicate re- serve hindered her from combatting it as much as some might have done. MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 59 IV. My inexperience of life, my pro- found ignorance of the difference be- tween a man's heart and a woman's, led me at this time to demand a sac- rifice which would have been too great for any other than she. The strong feeling of duty I had toward such a friend was too deep for it to occur to me to change my condition without her consent. But she herself took the initiative, with her accustomed nobility of heart. From the first days of our reunion she had urged me to marry. She often returned to the subject, she had even spoken, with- out my knowledge, to one of our friends, of a union she had planned for me. The course she took in this matter led me into serious error. I 60 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. really thought that she would not be wounded when I told her that I had chosen a person worthy of being asso- ciated with her. In allowing me to speak of marriage, I never understood that she would leave me. I had thought that she would remain, my accomplished and beloved sister, in- capable of giving or taking offense, so completely assured of the love which I felt for her that she would not be hurt by that given to another. I see now the error of such belief. Woman does not love like a man; her affection is exclusive and jealous; she does not admit that there may be di- versity in the nature of love. But I was excusable; I was deceived by my extreme simplicity of heart, and also a little by her. Is it not possible that MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 6l she was deceived as to her own strength? I believe so. When the marriage which she sought to arrange for me was set aside, she felt a certain regret, although the project had in some respect ceased to please her. But, oh, mysterious heart of woman! The sacrifice she had prepared to make became too severe when it was offered to her. She had not objected to the chalice of absinthe which her own hands had prepared; she hesi- tated now before that which was offered her, though I had used all my skill to render it sweet. Terrible consequence of exaggerated delicacy! This brother and sister, so dear to each other, because they had not spoken frankly had one day fallen unwittingly into difficulties and mu- 62 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. tual misunderstandings. Those were bitter days for us. We experienced all the storms possible to such love as ours. When she said to me that in proposing marriage for me she had but wished to ascertain whether or not she was sufficient for my happi- ness, when she announced that the moment of my union with another would be the moment of her depart- ure, death entered into my soul. Are we to understand that the feeling she experienced was simple opposition, that she really wished to put an ob- stacle in the way of my happiness? Certainly not. It was the tempest of a passionate soul, the revolt of too loving a heart. When she and Mdlle. Cornelia Scheffer saw each other, they conceived an affection which later MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 63 became very strong in both. The grand and courtly manners of Mon- sieur Ary Scheffer inspired and ele- vated her. She realized that there was no place here for little trivialities and petty meanness. She wished it, but at the decisive moment the woman in her rebelled; she had not the strength to proceed. At last one day I was forced to end this cruel anguish. Compelled to choose between two affections, I sac- rificed everything to the older, to that which seemed most my duty. I an- nounced to Mdlle. Scheffer that I could never see her again, as the affection of my dear sister was too severely tried. That was in the even- ing. I returned and told my sister what I had done. She experienced a 64 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. sudden revulsion of feeling; cruel re- morse seized her for having hindered an alliance desired by me and highly appreciated by herself. She hastened early the next morning to M. Schef- fer's; she passed long hours with my fiancee. They wept together, and parted the warmest of friends. In short, after my marriage, as before, we enjoyed everything in common. It was her economics which rendered our young menage possible. With- out her I should not have been able to face my new duties. My naive confidence in her goodness was such that the simplicity of such conduct did not appear to me till much later. We had periods of happiness; but often, still, the cruel and charming demon of loving anxiety, of jealousy, MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 65 of sudden revolts and speedy repent- ances, all the passions of a woman's heart, awoke to torture her. Often the idea of separating herself from the life where she assumed, in her hour of bitterness, that she had be- come useless, was spoken of sadly; but these were only the remains of bad dreams which faded away, little by little. The delicate tact, the tender heart of her whom I had given her for a sister, finally triumphed. In these moments of melancholy, the charming intervention of Cornelia, her natural and graceful gayety, changed our tears into smiles; it ended in mutual embraces. The upright- ness of heart and conscience devel- oped before me by those two women, in dealing with the most delicate 66 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. problem of love, compelled my ad- miration. The naive hope that I had of seeing another than myself com- plete her happiness by introducing into her life the gayety and activity that I had not known how to put there, found itself momentarily real- ized. More fortunate than prudent, I saw my rashness turned into wisdom and I tasted the fruit of my temerity. The birth of my little Ary finished her cure. Her affection for the child amounted to genuine worship. The maternal instinct which had lain dor- mant within found here its natural outlet. Her sweetness, her inex- haustible patience, her taste for all that was good and simple inspired her with unspeakable tenderness for childhood. It was a sort of religious MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 67 worship in which her melancholy na- ture found infinite charm. When my second child was born, a little girl who lived only a few months, she said several times that this little one had come to replace her with me. She loved the thought of death, and had a thousand fancies about it. "You will see, dear friends," she said to us, "that the little flower we have lost will leave its fragrance with us." The image of this little dead child was a sacred thing to her for a long time. Thus, mingling in our joys and sor- rows with all the strength of her ex- quisite sensibility, she made the new life into which I had led her, com- pletely her own. I count as one of my greatest blessings, to have been able to realize, by means of the two 68 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. women that Fate had connected with my life, an ideal of abnegation and pure devotion. They loved each other warmly, and to-day I am con- soled by sympathy and grief beside me, almost equal to my own. Each one of them had her own particular place near me, which she held un- shared and exclusive. Each one of them was in her own way everything to me. Some days before her death, when she felt a presentiment of her approaching end, my sister spoke to me in a way that showed that all wounds were healed, and that noth- ing remained of past bitterness. V. When the Emperor, in May, i860, offered me a scientific mission in an- cient Phoenicia, she was one of the MY .-ISTER HENRIETTA. 69 first to advise me to accept it. Her political opinions were those of the extreme liberals, but she thought that all party feeling should be put aside where there was some important plan to be carried out, or where there was any danger expected. It was decided immediately that she should accom- pany me. Accustomed to her and to her excellent collaboration, I needed her, besides, to keep the accounts and watch over expenses. She gave the most painstaking attention to this, and, thanks to her, I was able for an entire year to give my whole atten- tion to a very complicated enterprise without being hindered a moment by material cares. Her activity aston- ished everyone. Undoubtedly, with- out her I should have been unable to 70 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. carry out the, perhaps, too extensive program which I had marked out for myself. She did not leave me for a moment. Upon the steepest heights of Lebanon and in the valley of the Jordan she followed me, step by step, saw all that I saw. If I had died she would have been able to give as good an account as I. She was never hindered by the frightful mountain paths nor the pri- vations inseparable from this kind of an exploration. A thousand times, seeing her on the edge of a fearful precipice, my heart failed me. She rode horseback with remarkable en- durance, traveling eight and ten hours a day. Her health, usually very del- icate, sustained by the energy of her will, endured much, but her whole MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 71 nervous system received a shock which betrayed itself by violent at- tacks of neuralgia. Two or three times, in the midst of the desert, she fell into a condition which alarmed us greatly. Her courage did not de- ceive us. She had embraced my plan of work so heartily that nothing could separate her from me until it was finished. This journey was for her the source of very keen enjoyment. It was, to tell the truth, almost the only year she had ever spent without tears, and the sole recompense of her life. She was delighted with everything she saw. She abandoned herself to the sensations of this new world with the simple joy of a child. Nothing can equal the charm of Syria in spring- 72 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. time and autumn. The balmy air penetrates everything and seems to communicate some of its freshness to life itself. Lovely flowers, principally beautiful cyclamens, grow on each rocky hillside; in the plains, on the coast of Amrit and Tortosa, the horses' feet trampled upon a thick carpet of the rarest flowers of our gardens. The waters which flow down the rug- ged side of the mountains form a most intoxicating contrast. Our first stop was at the village of Amschit, three quarters of a mile from Gebeil (Byblos), founded twenty- five or thirty years ago by the rich Maronite Michael Tobia. Zakhia, Michael's successor, made this visit extremely agreeable. He gave us a pretty house that looked out over MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 73 Byblos and the sea. The gentle man- ners of the inhabitants, their daily at- tentions, the affection they conceived for us, and particularly for my sister, touched her profoundly. She loved to revisit this village, and we made it a sort of center of action while we were in that region. The village of Sarba, near Djouni, where the good honest Khadra family lived, well known to all the Frenchmen who have traveled in the Orient, became also a favorite spot with her. The delicious baths of Kesrouan, with its surrounding villages, its convents hanging from each summit, its moun- tains plunging into the sea, its pure waves dashing against the rocks, de- lighted her. Every time that we is- sued out from the rocks on the north, 74 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. as we came from Gebeil, a hymn of joy burst from her heart. She be- came greatly attached to the Mar- onites. Her visit to the convent of Bkerke, where lived the patriarch in the midst of his diocese of rural sim- plicity, she always remembered agree- ably. On the contrary, she took a great dislike to the petty European gossip of Bayreuth and the worthless- ness of the towns where Mussulmans of the type of Saida governed. The grand spectacles which she saw at Tyre enchanted her. She oc- cupied a high pavilion where she was literally swayed by the tempests. The nomadic life, in the long run so attractive, became very dear to her. My wife invented new pretexts every evening to dissuade her from remain- MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 75 ing alone in her tent. She yielded, though resisting a little. She was very happy in this narrow, homelike atmosphere, near those who loved her, although in the midst of savage immensity. But it was above all her trip to Palestine which filled her with enthusiasm. Jerusalem with its won- derful memories; the beautiful valley of Naplouse, Carmel covered with the blossoms of springtime, and more than all Galilee, though devastated, still an earthly paradise, where the Divine breath is still felt, kept her for six weeks under a charm. We had already made several excursions of six and eight days to Tyre and Oum-el- awamid, those ancient grounds of Aser and Nephtali, which have wit- nessed such wonderful deeds. When 76 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. I showed her Kasyoum for the first time, above Lake Huleh, the whole region of the upper Jordan, and, in the distance, Lake Gennesaret, the cradle of Christianity, she thanked me and told me I had given her the greatest treat of her life in showing her these places. Superior to that narrow sen- timent which attaches historical leg- ends to material objects, nearly al- ways apocryphal, or to particular localities which often have not a single claim to veneration, she sought the soul, the idea, the general impression. Our long journeys in this beautiful country, always in view of Hermon, whose ravines were marked in sunny lines against the azure sky, have remained in our mem- ory as a vision of another world. < X O to o > < CO W X H M\ SISTER HENRIETTA. 77 In the mouth of July, my wife, who had been with us since January, was obliged to leave us for other duties. The excavations were finished and the fleet had left Syria. We remained alone together to watch the removal of the excavated objects, to finish the exploration of the heights of Lebanon and prepare for a last campaign into Cyprus, the following autumn. I re- gret now, with the most bitter tears, the part that I took in thus prolong- ing our stay during the months which are the most dangerous to the Euro- pean in Syria. Our last trip to Leb- anon fatigued her greatly. We stayed three days at Maschuaka, near the Adonis river, lodged in a mudhouse. The constant change from cold val- leys to hot mountains, the poor food, 78 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. the necessity of spending the nights in low huts where, not to stifle, every- thing must be left open, gave her the germ of a nervous disease which soon developed. Coming out of the deep valley of Tannourin, after having slept in the convent of Mar-akout, upon one of the highest points of this locality, we entered into the burning region of Toula. This sudden change prostrated us. About eleven o'clock, in the village of Helta, she began to suffer keenly. I made her lie down in the humble house of the cure; then, while I went to gather up the inscrip- tions, she tried to sleep in the oratory. But the women of the country would not let her rest; they came in to look at her and to touch her. At last we reached Toula. There she passed MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 79 two days of horrible suffering. We were without any assistance. The extreme simplicity of the inhabitants added to her sufferings. Never hav- ing seen a European, they invaded the house, and while I was out in my explorations, they tormented her un- endurably. As soon as she could ride on horseback we went to Amschit, where she obtained some relief. But her left eye was affected; the sight of this eye was weakened, and at times she suffered from diplopia. The horrible heat of that coast and our state of great fatigue decided me to fix our residence at Ghazir, a point situated at a great elevation above the sea, near the bath of Kesrouan. We took leave of the good people of Amschit and G6beil. The sun was 80 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. setting when we arrived at the mouth of the Adonis river; we rested there. Although she was far from well, the entrancing calm of this beautiful spot took possession of her; she had a moment of mild gayety. We climbed the Ghazir mountain by the light of the moon; she was very happy, and we thought, as we left the burning river behind us, that we were leaving also the suffering we had found there. Ghazir is without exception one of the most beautiful spots in the world. The surrounding valleys are covered with the loveliest verdure, and the hill of Oramoun that towers above it is the most charming place in all Lebanon; but the population, spoiled by intercourse with the pretended aristocracy of the country, does not X w c X MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 8 1 possess the good qualities of the ordin- ary Maronite people. We found a lit- tle house with a pretty arbor, and there we spent several days quietly resting. We had the cool snow water that flowed down the crevasses on the mountain side. Our poor traveling companions, her noble Arabian mare, and my old mule, Saida, pastured under our eyes. For the first fifteen days she suffered a great deal; then her pain abated and God allowed her to pass a few happy hours before she left this earth. The memory of these days is inex- pressibly dear to me. The tedious difficulties inseparable from our work were over, and we had much leisure. I resolved to write out all the thoughts 82 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. upon the Life of Jesus that had been slowly gathering in my mind during our stay in the countries of Tyre and Palestine. When I read the gospels in Galilee, the personality of this great Founder came clearly before me. In the heart of the profoundest repose possible to be imagined, I wrote, with the help of the Gospels and Josephus, a life of Jesus which at Ghazir I carried to the time of his trip to Jerusalem; delight- ful, too soon vanished hours. Oh! may eternity be like you! From morning till night I was fairly intox- icated with the thoughts that rose within me. They were with me in my sleeping hours, and when the first rays of the sun appeared over the tops of the mountains they became clearer, MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 83 more distinct than ever. Henrietta was more confident each day of the success of my work. As soon as I wrote a page she copied it. "This book," she said " I shall love: at first be- cause we have written it together and then because it pleases me." Her mind had never been clearer. In the evening we walked together on the terrace, in the starlight, while she talked with much feeling and depth, conversations that were like revela- tions to me. Her joy seemed full, and these were no doubt the happiest moments of her life. Our intellectual and moral communion was now more complete than ever before. She told me several times that these days were her paradise. There was a feeling of sadness mingled with it all. Her 84 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. malady was only dormant and awoke occasionally to remind her of its fatal existence. She pitied herself then because fate was relentless to her and grudged her even a few hours of hap- iness, the first she had ever known. In the first part of September, my stay at Ghazir was very incon- venient, because my presence was de- manded at Bayreuth. We bade fare- well, not without tears, to our little house at Ghazir and traversed for the last time that charming route along the banks of the Chien river, that for the last year had been so familiar to us. Although the heat was great, we passed some pleasant hours at Bay- reuth. The days were oppressive but the nights were delightful, and every evening the view of Sannin, gilded by MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 85 the rays of the setting sun in the Olympian air, was a feast to the eye. The arrangements for transportation were nearly completed, only the trip to Cyprus remained. We began to speak of returning. We dreamed al- ready of the pale sunlight, the damp, fresh autumn breeze on the banks of the Oise, where we had been two years ago at this time. She longed once more to embrace little Ary and our old mother. She had moments of melancholy retrospection when recollections of our father came to her. She spoke of his noble, good heart, so full of tenderness. I never saw her more exalted, more attractive. Sunday, September 15, Admiral Le Barbierde Tirian sent me word that the Caton would devote eight days to 86 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. new efforts for the excavation of two great sarcophagi, at Gebeil, whose disenterment had at first been deemed impossible. My presence at Gebeil was not necessary; it would have been sufficient for me to go on board the Caton, give the necessary direc- tions and return to Bayreuth by land. But I knew these separations were painful to her. So, as she liked to visit Amschit so well, I formed another plan for both of us to go to Amschit on the Caton, spend the eight days there, and return in the same way. We started on Monday. She had not been well since the day before, but the trip seemed to benefit her. She enjoyed the view of Leb- anon in the splendor of its summer dress; and when I went with the com- MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 87 manderto give directions concerning the sarcophagus, she rested quietly on board. In the evening, after sunset, we went to Amschit. Our good friends there, who never expected to see us again, welcomed us with open arms. She was very happy. After dinner we passed a part of the night on the terrace in front of Zakhia's house. The heavens were beautiful. I recalled that passage in the book of Job where the old patriarch boasts as of some rare merit, that he had never put his hand over his mouth in sign of worship, when ho beheld the stars in their splendor and the moon as she moved majestically through the heav- ens. All the ancient faiths of Syria seemed to rise up before us. Byblos was at our feet; to the south in sacred 88 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. Lebanon, the strange, sharp peaks of the rocks and forests of Dj6bel- Mousa, where legend places the death of Adonis, stood out before us. At the north, toward Byblos, the sea seemed to curve around and lie on two sides of us. That was the last really happy day of my life. Hence- forth all joy carried me into the past and recalled that which no longer ex- isted for me. Tuesday she was not so well. Still I felt no anxiety; this in- disposition did not seem nearly as serious as others she had endured. I went to work again, enthusiastically, upon my Life of Jesus. We worked together all day and the evening was spent gaily on the terrace. On Wednesday she grew worse. I begged the surgeon on the Caton to come MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 89 and see her. Thursday she was in the same condition. But, sad to re- late, I was stricken in my turn. I had reached the end of my work without any serious illness. By a fatality, whose remembrance pursues me like some frightful nightmare, the only moment in which I lost conscious- ness was that in which I should have watched over her death bed. I was obliged on Thursday morn- ing to go down the road to G6beil to confer with the commander. When I started up the hill to Amschit I felt overcome by the sun, whose fiery rays were reflected from the rocks on the hillside. That afternoon I had a vio- lent attack of fever, accompanied with severe neuralgic pains. It was, in fact, a mild type of the same disease go MY SISTER HENRIETTA. that killed my poor sister. The physi- cian on the Caion, skillful as he was, did not recognize it. These deadly fevers have in Syria certain symp- toms that only native doctors are able to recognize. Large doses of sulphate of quinine might, perhaps, have saved us both. That evening I felt my mind wandering. I told the doctor of this symptom, but he, completely blinded as to the nature of our malady, left us. I had then a frightful feel- ing of apprehension, that three days afterward became a terrible realit}'. I foresaw with a chill of horror the dangers that we ran if we fell ill there alone, lost consciousness in the hands of people, good but ignorant of all medical knowledge, and full of the wildest ideas on the subject. I said MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 91 good-bye to life with the greatest grief. The loss of my papers, par- ticularly my Life of Jesus, seemed certain to me. We passed a dread- ful night; it seemed at that time, though, that my sister's condition was not as bad as my own, for I remem- ber she said the next morning, "You groaned all night long." Friday, Saturday and Sunday pass before me like the portions of a pain- ful dream. The sudden attack that just failed to prove fatal to me on Thursday, had a kind of retro-active effect, and entirely effaced all memory of the three preceding days. A sad fatality ordained that the physician should see us in these moments of comparative ease, and so not be at all prepared for the approaching crisis. 92 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. I was still at work, but I felt as if I were working badly. I was then in the midst of the Lord's Passion, the story of the Last Supper. Later, as I re-read the words I had written, I found them strangely troubled. My thoughts seemed to flow in an endless circle, to revolve aimlessly, like the broken wheels of some in- strument. Other little circumstances remain in my memory. I wrote to the Sisters of Charity at Bayreuth to ask for some wine of quinquina, that they alone know how to make in all Syria; but I felt the incoherence of my letter, myself. It seemed that neither of us appreciated the severity of our illness. I decided to go to France on the following Thursday. " Yes, yes, we will go," she said, confidently. MY SISTER HENRIETTA. 93 "Oh! unfortunate that I am," she said, at another time. " I see I am destined to surfer a great deal." On one of these two days she was able to go from one room to the other, about sunset. She lay down on the sofa in the salon where I slept and worked as usual. The blinds were open, our eyes looked out toward Djebel-Mousa. She had a presentiment then of her approaching end, but did not think it so near. Her eyes were dissolved in tears; her face drawn with suffering, regained a little color, and she glanced back sadly, sweetly, over her past life. " I will make my will," she said. '■ You shall be my heir; I shall leave very little, but still it is something. I want you to build a burial vault with my savings; it will seem to bring 94 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. us together, to be near each other. Little Ernestine must be with us." Then she calculated mentally, laid out with her finger the inner arrange- ment of this tomb, and seemed to want places for a dozen people. She spoke to me with sobs of my little Ary, of our old mother. She told me what I should give her niece. She tried to find something that would please Cornelia, and she thought of a little Italian book (the Frosetti of St. Francis) that M. Berthelol had given her. "I have loved you very much," she said, finally. "Some- times my affection has caused you pain. I have been unjust, jealous; but it has been because I have loved you as one seldom is, perhaps as one should not be, loved." MY SIS I IK HENRIETTA. 95 I burst into tears. I spoke of little Ary, knowing that it would touch her. She was interested and touched by these words. She recalled again the memory of our father. These were our last lucid moments. We were in the interval between two attacks of the deadly fever. The final attack was only a few hours away. Except for the moments the doctor was there, we were alone with only our Arabian servants and the natives from the vil- lage; everyone else at the mission was absent or occupied. I remember but little distinctly of that fatal Sunday, or, rather, others have recalled almost forgotten incidents to me. I contin- to work all day, but like an autom- aton, which acts mechanically. I re- member exactly how 1 felt when I 96 MY SISTER HENRIETTA. saw the peasants going to mass. Generally, when they knew we were there, they came to us at that hour for a little _/>/