March 26, 1959
Second bout of flu in three months! Complete exhaustion, oppression, near total impossibility of breathing. Have I already passed to the other side? For so many years my body has weighed me down. If I have ever understood anything in my life, I owe it to my illnesses. I have always been half sick, even when I am well.
Crisis of tears. I happened to read a bad book on Mlle de Lavallière. The scene of the dinner with the king and Mme de Montespan, before the departure for the convent devastated me… Everything devastates me, it is true. Extreme frailty turns us away from everything, and, paradoxically, confers at the same time an extraordinary sense for trifles, or for past events which have no direct significance for our lives. I feel sorry for just about anything, I shake like a little girl. Perhaps it is from the impossibility of crying for myself.
Broken nerves for seventeen years already! It is unbelievable that I have held on until now.