confirm? She confirms. To write her autobiography. Does she confirm? She confirms. Good.
The king and queen of Belgium remained six weeks, says Missy. The queen of radium cannot make a less royal visit.
Health
She writes to Bronia: âMy eyes are very weakened and probably not much can be done for them. As for my ears, an almost continual buzzing, often very intense, persecutes me. I worry about it very much: my work may be hamperedâor even become impossible. Perhaps radium has something to do with my troubles, but one canât declare it with certainty.â Radium guilty? Itâs the first time that she mentions the idea. She will soon have confirmation that she is suffering from a double cataract.
The Trip to America
Mme Curie is to receive from the hands of the President of the United States the miraculous product of a national collection, one gram of radium.
She shakes hands with a great many people until someone breaks her wrist.
That evening, Missy knows definitively who Marie really is. And reciprocally.
Fabulous razzia: Marie has pocketed in addition fifty thousand dollars advance for her autobiography, though the book is to be insipid. Missy has at every point kept her promises, and well beyond.
Leavetaking
The crystalline lenses of the beautiful ash-gray eyes are becoming each day more opaque. She is convinced she will soon be blind. Marie and Missy embrace each other crying.
Let us say right away, however, that these two slender dying creatures will nevertheless meet again. It will be seven years later, again at the White Houseâ¦
Missy and Marie certainly belong to the same race. That of the irreducibles.
Time Passing
And now the red curls of Perrin, discoverer of Brownian motion, have become white.
Scientific Conferences
These conferences to which she travels often weigh on her. She finds only one pleasure in them: still a devotee of excursions, she vanishes and goes off to discover a few of the splendors of the Earth. For over fifty years a recluse, she saw almost nothing.
From everywhere, she writes and describes to her daughters. The Southern Cross is âa very beautiful constellation.â The Escurial is âvery impressiveââ¦The Arab palaces of Grenada are âvery lovelyââ¦The Danube is bordered with hills. But the Vistulaâ¦Ah! The Vistula! With its most adorable banks of sand, etc. etc.
The Illness of Marie
One afternoon in May 1934, at the laboratory where she has tried to come and work, Marie murmurs: âI have a fever, Iâm going homeâ¦â
She walks around the garden, examines a rosebush which she herself has planted and which does not look well, asks that it be taken care of immediatelyâ¦She will not return.
What is wrong with her? Apparently nothing. Yet she has no strength, she is feverish. She is transported to a clinic, then to a sanatorium in the mountains. The fever does not subside. Her lungs are intact. But her temperature rises. She has attained that moment of grace where even Marie Curie no longer wants to see the truth. And the truth is that she is dying.
The Death of Marie
She will have a last smile of joy when, consulting for the last time the thermometer she is holding in her little hand, she observes that her temperature has suddenly dropped. But she no longer has the strength to make a note of it, she from whom a number has never escaped being written down. This drop in temperature is the one that announces the end.
And when the doctor comes to give her a shot:
âI donât want it. I want to be left in peace.â
It will require another sixteen hours for the heart to cease beating, of this woman who does not want, no, does not want to die. She is sixty-six years old.
Marie Curie-Sklodowska has ended her course.
On her coffin when it has descended into the grave, Bronia and their brother Jozef throw a handful of earth. Earth of Poland.
Thus ends the story of an honorable woman.
Marie,
The king and queen of Belgium remained six weeks, says Missy. The queen of radium cannot make a less royal visit.
Health
She writes to Bronia: âMy eyes are very weakened and probably not much can be done for them. As for my ears, an almost continual buzzing, often very intense, persecutes me. I worry about it very much: my work may be hamperedâor even become impossible. Perhaps radium has something to do with my troubles, but one canât declare it with certainty.â Radium guilty? Itâs the first time that she mentions the idea. She will soon have confirmation that she is suffering from a double cataract.
The Trip to America
Mme Curie is to receive from the hands of the President of the United States the miraculous product of a national collection, one gram of radium.
She shakes hands with a great many people until someone breaks her wrist.
That evening, Missy knows definitively who Marie really is. And reciprocally.
Fabulous razzia: Marie has pocketed in addition fifty thousand dollars advance for her autobiography, though the book is to be insipid. Missy has at every point kept her promises, and well beyond.
Leavetaking
The crystalline lenses of the beautiful ash-gray eyes are becoming each day more opaque. She is convinced she will soon be blind. Marie and Missy embrace each other crying.
Let us say right away, however, that these two slender dying creatures will nevertheless meet again. It will be seven years later, again at the White Houseâ¦
Missy and Marie certainly belong to the same race. That of the irreducibles.
Time Passing
And now the red curls of Perrin, discoverer of Brownian motion, have become white.
Scientific Conferences
These conferences to which she travels often weigh on her. She finds only one pleasure in them: still a devotee of excursions, she vanishes and goes off to discover a few of the splendors of the Earth. For over fifty years a recluse, she saw almost nothing.
From everywhere, she writes and describes to her daughters. The Southern Cross is âa very beautiful constellation.â The Escurial is âvery impressiveââ¦The Arab palaces of Grenada are âvery lovelyââ¦The Danube is bordered with hills. But the Vistulaâ¦Ah! The Vistula! With its most adorable banks of sand, etc. etc.
The Illness of Marie
One afternoon in May 1934, at the laboratory where she has tried to come and work, Marie murmurs: âI have a fever, Iâm going homeâ¦â
She walks around the garden, examines a rosebush which she herself has planted and which does not look well, asks that it be taken care of immediatelyâ¦She will not return.
What is wrong with her? Apparently nothing. Yet she has no strength, she is feverish. She is transported to a clinic, then to a sanatorium in the mountains. The fever does not subside. Her lungs are intact. But her temperature rises. She has attained that moment of grace where even Marie Curie no longer wants to see the truth. And the truth is that she is dying.
The Death of Marie
She will have a last smile of joy when, consulting for the last time the thermometer she is holding in her little hand, she observes that her temperature has suddenly dropped. But she no longer has the strength to make a note of it, she from whom a number has never escaped being written down. This drop in temperature is the one that announces the end.
And when the doctor comes to give her a shot:
âI donât want it. I want to be left in peace.â
It will require another sixteen hours for the heart to cease beating, of this woman who does not want, no, does not want to die. She is sixty-six years old.
Marie Curie-Sklodowska has ended her course.
On her coffin when it has descended into the grave, Bronia and their brother Jozef throw a handful of earth. Earth of Poland.
Thus ends the story of an honorable woman.
Marie,
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