My Victor, do not leave me! I beg you on my knees, not to be daunted before a public responsibility. Who has the right to demand from you an account of the measure of the sacrifices you have made for me? What does it matter if you are denied the justice you deserve? What matter that you should be held responsible in part for my troubles? The point to be considered before all others, is your private relations with me. The responsibility you must accept is towards me only; it concerns only our two selves. If you repudiate it, it will kill me, for my whole life is wrapped up in you and your presence. I breathe only through your lips, see only with your eyes, live only in your heart. If you withdraw yourself from me, I must die.
Reflect! This is not a threat, to keep you near me. I am not exaggerating the extent to which you are necessary to my very existence--I am only telling you what I feel. It is the truth, but the truth under restriction, for I hardly dare acknowledge it in its entirety, even to myself. _I need you! Only you! I cannot exist without you._ Think of it. Try to love me enough to accept the charge of my life, with all its attendant bad luck.
I dare not say anything. Guess what I am feeling and do with me what you will!
I love you ... the memory of what has gone before, and my fears for the future, prevent me from describing my emotions as freely as formerly. Forget the past, take the future into your own hands, and I shall regain the faculty of saying "I love you," as earnestly as I mean it.
[Illustration: JULIETTE DROUET ABOUT 1830.
From Champmartin's picture (Victor Hugo Museum).]
It is a quarter to one. I have been to your printing-works, numbers 16 and 19; you had not been seen. I went on to your house; you had not come in. I wrote you a line; I waited for you.... At last I came home hoping to find you; but you had not been here. My thanks to you for treating me like a vagrant dog. You had informed me that you were going to the printing-works, that you might go back to your house, that you would certainly go to mine.
You forgot your promises at once, and you apparently hold my love very cheap.
If you, indifferent though you may be, could see me in imagination, as I sit writing to you, you would be horrified at the condition your injustice and disdain have reduced me to.