I did not abandon her, she abandoned me.

I have taken scarcely any interest in painting for many years.

Will you believe it?
When last in Paris, in 1845, I did not go into the Louvre, nor did I visit a single picture gallery.
"I sometimes indulge a vague dream that I may paint again.

It is rather the memory of past pleasures, when hope was enticing me onward only to deceive me at last.

Except some family portraits, valuable to me from their likenesses only, I could wish that every picture I ever painted was destroyed.