Madame Grangié, nee Boisson
Care of Monsieur Boisson Senior, Cahors
Saverdun, 8 July 1803
I am quite well now, my dear friend, but how cruelly ill I have been since I received your letter! About four months ago, while in Montreal, I was joined by Papa and Mama, but they had to leave to deal with important business, and I could not return to Toulouse with them, being a little inconvenienced by my five-and-a-half months’ pregnancy.
![Vue générale de Montréal d’Aude, By Profburp (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMontreal_d-aude_vue_generale.jpg "Vue générale de Montréal d’Aude, By Profburp (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")
I
wanted to accompany them as far as the Canal where they were to embark,
we were all in the trousqui2,
unluckily driven by a clumsy coachman along a way that was pretty rough
and narrow, and our pilot, lacking any skill in that role, tipped us
very skilfully into a wide, deep ditch. Nobody, I hasten to say, came
to any harm, except for a few minor bumps to the head. Myself, at the
time, I thought to have escaped unscathed, but how mistaken I was! From
that moment I suffered much back pain. I said nothing to anyone, as
there were no indications of a miscarriage, but two months later, I
delivered a stillborn child.
So that, my dear friend, is what has prevented me from writing to you sooner. Now I am making up for lost time. I have taken the liberty of going into detail, knowing how concerned you will be. Goodbye, my dear friend, stay as fond of me as I am of you.
Eleonore
My regards to your husband! Mine sends his respects to you. Kiss your pretty little one for me. Tell me if your address is still the same. Mine is now Saverdun, Ariege.
