Marie La Morvonnais

Use in the book

Marie first appears within the reciprocal harmony of Le Val: the wife’s soul seems a second expression of her husband’s, while the daughter begins to show her own intelligence and affection. At departure, the mother’s unexpected second farewell from the balustrade breaks Guérin’s remaining self-command. The death notice later gives January 22 at nine in the evening. Crucially, Guérin says he was not present: his account of her last moments is an inward representation of events occurring far away. The following entries examine the painful revision required when a living friend becomes accessible only through memory and imagination. Familiar routes and books keep calling up the old conditions of presence. Opening Collin d’Harleville, once read during shared evenings, releases tears precisely because the writer had been so cheerful and charming. No title for that volume is supplied. Finally Marie becomes an ethical example: her inward riches had revealed themselves quietly through speech and the atmosphere around her. The loss changes perception, but her remembered manner also suggests a discipline of reserve.

Places to read

1. 7 December 1833 · ¶4Mother and daughter are explicitly distinguished despite their common name.
2. 2 February 1835 · ¶3The writer states that he did not witness the death and describes the imagination’s reconstruction.
3. 12 February 1835 · ¶1The unnamed Collin d’Harleville volume revives shared evenings; cheerful reading becomes a source of mourning.
4. 27 March 1835 · ¶4Marie’s quiet self-possession offers an example of inward wealth expressed without display.

Translation in this edition

Translator note 18 identifies the deceased as Hippolyte’s wife and cites Guérin’s February 1, 1835 letter as confirmation of the date and hour. The note is modern apparatus, not notebook prose.