“Spring is coming in beautifully.  We keep the door on to the terrace always open now, while the path to the orangery is dry and the peach-trees are in full blossom.  Only here and there is there a little snow remaining, The swallows are arriving, and to-day Lubotshka brought me the first flowers.  The doctor says that in about three days’ time I shall be well again and able to take the open air and to enjoy the April sun.  Now, au revoir, my dearest one.  Do not be alarmed, I beg of you, either on account of my illness or on account of your losses at play.  End the crisis as soon as possible, and then return here with the children for the summer.  I am making wonderful plans for our passing of it, and I only need your presence to realise them.”

The rest of the letter was written in French, as well as in a strange, uncertain hand, on another piece of paper.  I transcribe it word for word: 

“Do not believe what I have just written to you about my illness.  It is more serious than any one knows.  I alone know that I shall never leave my bed again.  Do not, therefore, delay a minute in coming here with the children.  Perhaps it may yet be permitted me to embrace and bless them.  It is my last wish that it should be so.  I know what a terrible blow this will be to you, but you would have had to hear it sooner or later—­if not from me, at least from others.  Let us try to, bear the Calamity with fortitude, and place our trust in the mercy of God.  Let us submit ourselves to His will.  Do not think that what I am writing is some delusion of my sick imagination.  On the contrary, I am perfectly clear at this moment, and absolutely calm.  Nor must you comfort yourself with the false hope that these are the unreal, confused feelings of a despondent spirit, for I feel indeed, I know, since God has deigned to reveal it to me—­that I have now but a very short time to live.  Will my love for you and the children cease with my life?  I know that that can never be.  At this moment I am too full of that love to be capable of believing that such a feeling (which constitutes a part of my very existence) can ever, perish.  My soul can never lack its love for you; and I know that that love will exist for ever, since such a feeling could never have been awakened if it were not to be eternal.  I shall no longer be with you, yet I firmly believe that my love will cleave to you always, and from that thought I glean such comfort that I await the approach of death calmly and without fear.  Yes, I am calm, and God knows that I have ever looked, and do look now, upon death as no mere than the passage to a better life.  Yet why do tears blind my eyes?  Why should the children lose a mother’s love?  Why must you, my husband, experience such a heavy and unlooked-for blow?  Why must I die when your love was making life so inexpressibly happy for me?

“But His holy will be done!