“I watch you sleep. I’m with you, by your bedside. You’re wearing a long black tunic and red embroidery on the bodice. These are flowers, I think, but I do not look at them. I will say goodbye, the longest farewell, my Puppelé. That’s how I called you. It meant “little doll” in German. I do not watch the flowers, but your face and I think you’re beautiful, and never, perhaps you have been so beautiful. I also think this is the first time in my life - and yours - I see you calm and soothed. You’re so quiet, you are so fine , how beautiful you are. Looks like a hand, gently wiped your face all the tensions, all anxieties of misfortune. I watch you sleep. They tell me that you’re dead. I think of you, to me, to us. What am I guilty? We ask ourselves this question before a being that is loved and still love that one. This feeling fills you, and then flows back and then we say that one is not guilty, no, but responsible … I am. Because of me, what is your heart in Paris the other night, stopped beating. Because of me because it was there twenty-five years and I had been chosen to be your partner in “Christine”.
You came to Vienna and I waited, in Paris, with a bouquet of flowers in his arms I did not know how to hold. But the film’s producers told me: “When it come down from the bridge, you will advance to her and offer these flowers.” I waited with my flowers, like a fool, mixed with a horde of photographers. You’re down. I stepped forward. You said to your mother, “Who is this boy?”. She answered you: “It must be Alain Delon, your partner … “. And then nothing, no thunderbolt, no. And then I went to Vienna where we were shooting the film. And then I fell madly in love with you. And you fell in love with me. Often, we asked ourselves one to another issue of love, “Who fell in love the first, you or me?”. We counted ‘One, two, three! “And we answered:” Neither you nor I! Together “. My God, we were young, and as we were happy. At the end of the film, I said, “Come live with me in France” and already you told me: “I want to live near you, in France.” Do you remember when? Your family, your parents, furious. And throughout Austria, Germany, who all treated me … usurper, the kidnapper, who accused me of removing the “Empress”! Me, a French, who did not speak a word of German. And you, Puppelé, who did not speak a word of French. We loved without words, in the beginning. We looked and we had some laughs. Puppelé … And I was “Grandpa”. After a few months, I did not speak German yet but you spoke French so well and we played at the theater in France. Visconti was the staging. He told us that we resembled and we had, between the eyebrows, the same V that wrinkled, anger, fear of life and anxiety. He called it the “V of Rembrandt” because, he said, that this painter had “V” on his self portraits. I watch you sleep. “The V of Rembrandt” is deleted … You have no fear. You are no longer frightened. You’re more alert.
You are no longer hunted. The hunt is over and you rest. I look at you again and again. I know you so well and so strong. I know who you are and why you died. Your character, as they say. I reply, ‘other’, the character of Romy was her character. That’s it. Leave me alone. You were violent because you were right. A child who soon became a star, too soon. So, on one side, whims, tantrums and moods of a child, always justified, of course, but with unpredictable reactions, on the other hand, the professional authority. Yes, but there are children who do not really know how it plays with. With that. And why. In this contradiction, through this breach, rush anxiety and unhappiness. When one is Romy Schneider, and we have the sensitivity and temperament in flower of life, on edge, which was yours. How to explain who you were and who we are, “actors”. How to tell them to keep playing, “Interpreter” to be what we are not really crazy and we become lost. To stand, roughly, how they say it is so difficult, that there should such a strong character, such a balance …
―Farewell My Puppelé letter from Alain Delon to Romy Schneider, June 11, 1982.
