I am nothing without you. I scarcely imagine how I existed without knowing you. Ah! Josephine, had you known my heart would you have waited from May 18th to June 4th before starting? Would you have given an ear to perfidious friends who are perhaps desirous of keeping you away from me? I openly avow it to every one, I hate everybody who is near you. I expected you to set out on May 24th, and arrive on June 3rd.
Josephine, if you love me, if you realise how everything depends on your health, take care of yourself. I dare not tell you not to undertake so long a journey, and that, too, in the hot weather. At least, if you are fit to make it, come by short stages; write me at every sleeping-place, and despatch your letters in advance.
All my thoughts are concentrated in thy boudoir, in thy bed, on thy heart. Thy illness!—that is what occupies me night and day. Without appetite, without sleep, without care for my friends, for glory, for fatherland, you, you alone—the rest of the world exists no more for me than if it were annihilated. I prize honour since you prize it, I prize victory since it pleases you; without that I should leave everything in order to fling myself at your feet.
Sometimes I tell myself that I alarm myself unnecessarily; that even now she is better, that she is starting, has started, is perhaps already at Lyons. Vain fancies! you are in bed suffering, more beautiful, more interesting, more lovable. You are pale and your eyes are more languishing, but when will you be cured? If one of us ought to be ill it is I—more robust, more courageous; I should support illness more easily. Destiny is cruel, it strikes at me through you.
What consoles me sometimes is to think that it is in the power of destiny to make you ill; but it is in the power of no one to make me survive you.
In your letter, dear, be sure to tell me that you are convinced that I love you more than it is possible to imagine; that you are persuaded that all my moments are consecrated to you; that to think of any other woman has never entered my head—they are all in my eyes without grace, wit, or beauty; that you, you alone, such as I see you, such as you are, can please me, and absorb all the faculties of my mind; that you have traversed its whole extent; that my heart has no recess into which you have not seen, no thoughts which are not subordinate to yours; that my strength, my prowess, my spirit are all yours; that my soul is in your body; and that the day on which you change or cease to live will be my death-day; that Nature, that Earth, is beautiful only because you dwell therein. If you do not believe all this, if your soul is not convinced, penetrated by it, you grieve me, you do not love me—there is a magnetic fluid between people who love one another—you know perfectly well that I could not brook a rival, much less offer you one.[15] To tear out his heart and to see him would be for me one and the same thing, and then if I were to carry my hands against your sacred person—no, I should never dare to do it; but I would quit a life in which the most virtuous of women had deceived me.
But I am sure and proud of your love; misfortunes are the trials which reveal to each mutually the whole force of our passion. A child as charming as its mamma will soon see the daylight, and will pass many years in your arms. Hapless me! I would be happy with one day. A thousand kisses on your eyes, your lips, your tongue, your heart. Most charming of thy sex, what is thy power over me? I am very sick of thy sickness; I have still a burning fever! Do not keep the courier more than six hours, and let him return at once to bring me the longed-for letter of my Beloved.
Do you remember my dream, in which I was your boots, your dress, and in which I made you come bodily into my heart? Why has not Nature arranged matters in this way; she has much to do yet.
N. B.
A la citoyenne Bonaparte, &c.