147.--Paul Claudel to André Gide

Frankfurt, 22nd March 1913.

Dear Friend,

Thank you for your sympathy. No, my poor father did not confess before he died. It makes me full of remorse. Had I come earlier, perhaps I could have persuaded him to do his duty, as he manifestly intended to have done. I hope that God will have given him credit for this good impulse, but I remain in the most terrible uncertainty about his final destiny. It is difficult to endure the thought of Hell, when one is face to face with it, and one's own father's fate is in question. Yet these mysteries are very near to us; how little separates us from death, and from that moment of terrible hesitation when the heart stops and the soul takes its departure! My mother has returned to her traditional faith. As for my sister Camille, I have just taken her into a nursing home. So you see that I have been having a bad time.

Yes, the manuscript arrived safely.

Thank you again. I grasp your hand,
P. CLAUDEL.