Distracted by this new passion on one side, and by remorse for her disloyalty to the old one, on the other, the health of Mlle. de Lespinasse, naturally delicate and already undermined, began to succumb to the hidden struggle. The death of M. de Mora solved one problem; the other remained. Mr. Guibert wished to advance his fortune by a brilliant marriage without losing the friend who might still be of service to him. She sat in judgment upon her own fate, counseled him, aided him in his choice, even praised the woman who became his wife, hoping still, perhaps, for some repose in that exaltation of friendship which is often the last consolation of passionate souls. But she was on a path that led to no haven of peace. There was only a blank wall before her, and the lightning impulses of her own heart were forced back to shatter her frail life. The world was ignorant of this fresh experience; and, believing her crushed by the death of M. de Mora, sympathized with her sorrow and praised her fidelity. She tried to sustain a double role--smiles and gaiety for her friends, tears and agony for the long hours of solitude. The tension was too much for her. She died shortly afterwards at the age of forty-three. "If to think, to love, and to suffer is that which constitutes life, she lived in these few years many ages," said one who knew her well.
It was not until many years later, when those most interested were gone, that the letters to Guibert, which form her chief title to fame, were collected, and, curiously enough, by his widow. Then for the first time the true drama of her life was unveiled. It is impossible in a few extracts to convey an adequate idea of the passion and devotion that runs through these letters. They touch the entire gamut of emotion, from the tender melancholy of a lonely soul, the inexpressible sweetness of self- forgetful love, to the tragic notes or agony and despair. There are many brilliant passages in them, many flashes of profound thought, many vivid traits of the people about her; but they are, before all, the record of a soul that is rapidly burning out its casket.
"I prefer my misery to all that the world calls happiness or pleasure," she writes. "I shall die of it, perhaps, but that is better than never to have lived."
"I have no more the strength to love," she says again; "my soul fatigues me, torments me; I am no more sustained by anything. I have every day a fever; and my physician, who is not the most skillful of men, repeats to me without ceasing that I am consumed by chagrin, that my pulse, my respiration, announce an active grief, and he always goes out saying, 'We have no cure for the soul.'"
"Adieu, my friend," were her last words to him. "If I ever return to life I shall still love to employ it in loving you; but there is no more time."
One could almost wish that these letters had never come to light.
A single grand passion has always a strong hold upon the imagination and the sympathies, but two passions contending for the mastery verge upon something quite the reverse of heroic.
The note of heart-breaking despair is tragic enough, but there is a touch of comedy behind it. Though her words have the fire, the devotion, the abandon of Heloise, they leave a certain sense of disproportion. One is inclined to wonder if they do not overtop the feeling.
D'Alembert was her truest mourner, and fell into a profound melancholy after her death. "Yes," he said to Marmontel, "she was changed, but I was not; she no longer lived for me, but I ever lived for her. Since she is no more, I know not why I exist. Ah! Why have I not still to suffer those moments of bitterness that she knew so well how to sweeten and make me forget? Do you remember the happy evenings we passed together?
Now what have I left? I return home, and instead of herself I find only her shade. This lodging at the Louvre is itself a tomb, which I never enter but with horror." To this "shade" he wrote two expressive and well-considered eulogies, which paint in pathetic words the perfections of his friend and his own desolation. "Adieu, adieu, my dear Julie," says the heartbroken philosopher; "for these eyes which I should like to close forever fill with tears in tracing these last lines, and I see no more the paper on which I write." His grief called out a sympathetic letter from Frederick the Great which shows the philosophic warrior and king in a new light. There is a touch of bitter irony in the inflated eulogy of Guibert, who gave the too-loving woman a death blow in furthering his ambition, then exhausted his vocabulary in laments and praises. Perhaps he hoped to borrow from this friendship a fresh ray of immortality.
Whatever we may think of the strange inconsistencies of Mlle. de Lespinasse, she is doubly interesting to us as a type that contrasts strongly with that of her age. Her exquisite tact, her brilliant intellect, her conversational gifts, her personal charm made her the idol of the world in which she lived. Her influence was courted, her salon was the resort of the most distinguished men of the century, and while she loved to discuss the great social problems which her friends were trying to solve, she forgot none of the graces. With the intellectual strength and grasp of a man, she preserved always the taste, the delicacy, the tenderness of a woman. Her faults were those of a strong nature.
Her thoughts were clear and penetrating, her expression was lively and impassioned. But in her emotional power she reached the proportion of genius. With "the most ardent soul, the liveliest fancy, the most inflammable imagination that has existed since Sappho," she represents the embodied spirit of tragedy outlined against the cold, hard background of a skeptical, mocking, realistic age. "I love in order to live," she said, "and I live to love." This is the key-note of her life.
