Well, it is getting late. I must send this to the general post-office, that you may get it Wednesday.
My love, why make for yourself useless bitterness? What I said to you, I will repeat: "It would be too odd if that were she," was my thought when I saw you first on leaving the Hôtel du Faucon [at Neufchâtel].
Adieu; I have no flowers this time; but I send you an end of a cedar match I have been chewing while I write; I have given it a thousand kisses.
Mon Dieu! I don't know how I shall get over the time on the journey, in view of the palpitations of my heart in writing to you. You will receive only one more letter, that of Sunday next; after that I shall be on the way. O my darling, to be near you, without anxieties; to have my time to myself, to be free to work well and read to you by day what I do at night! My angel, to have my kiss,—the greatest reward for me under heaven! Your kiss!
No, you will only know how I love you ten years from now, when you fully know my heart, that heart so great, that you fill. I can only say now, à bientôt.
Well, adieu, dear. Thanks for the talisman. I like it. I like to have a seal you have used. My love, do not laugh at my fancies. Ah? if you could see Bra's "Two Angels," and "Mary with the child Jesus." I have in my heart for you all the adoration he found in his sublime genius to express angels. You are God to me, my dear idol. Adieu!
Paris, Sunday, December 8.
My dearest, no, not a line for you in eight days! But tears, effusions of the soul sent with fury across the hundred and fifty leagues that part us.
If I get off Thursday next, 12th, I shall regard myself as a giant. No, I will not soil this paper full of love which you will hold, by pouring money troubles on it, however nobly confided they be. The printers would not work; I am their slave. The calculations of the publisher, of the master-printers, and my own have been so cruelly frustrated by the workmen that my books announced as published yesterday will not appear till Thursday next. I am in a state of curious destitution, without friends from whom I can ask an obole, yet I must borrow the money for my journey on Tuesday or Wednesday, but I do not know where. I will tell you all about it.
I have no time to write. I have been forty-eight hours this week without sleeping. Old Dubois told me yesterday I was marching to old age and death. But how can I help it? I have considered nothing but my pleasure, our pleasure, and I have sacrificed all—even you and myself—to that object.