CHAPTER XXVII
THE SWORD FALLS
1890
Life is a sheet of paper white,
Whereon each one of us may write
His word or two, and then comes night.
Lowell.
LET me recall the last happy day of my life. It was Sunday, October 19, 1890. I went out to Communion and Mass at eight o'clock, came back, and kissed my husband at his writing. He was engaged on the last page of The Scented Garden, which had occupied him seriously only six actual months, not thirty years, as the press said. He said to me, 'Tomorrow I shall have finished this, and I promise you that I will never write another book on this subject. I will take to our biography.' And I said, 'What a happiness that will be!' He took his usual walk of nearly two hours in the morning, breakfasting well.
"That afternoon we sat together writing an immense number of letters, which, when we had finished, I put on the hall table to be posted on Monday morning. Each letter breathed of life and hope and happiness; for we were making our preparations for a delightful
