Sunday, 23.
Adieu, soul of my soul; will this letter tell you how you are loved? Will it tell it to you really? No; never really. Il faut mes coups de bec là où est l'amour.
I hope to finish my volume this week. You will receive it in Geneva. I will attend to your orders, and do blindly what you tell me. But write names legibly in all business.
Would you believe that two young men dined with me yesterday and told me that several men, two of them friends of theirs, said they were I at the [masked] ball at the Opera, and obtained the favours of well-bred women while I was at Geneva, and that I have been thus calumniated. There are women who boast they have been mine, and that they come to me, to me, who see only la dilecta, who receive nobody, who want to live in your heart! I learned that last night.
Well, adieu my love; no, not adieu, but à bientôt, at Vienna, cara mia, my treasure. I have to work horribly, still; seven or eight proofs to a sheet. Ah! you will never know what the volume you will soon read has cost.
I hope to be in funds for my payments; I hope that on March 25th the third Part will appear. So, all goes well. I lose five hundred francs more by Gosselin, but pooh! The violet will tell you a thousand things of love. The Würtemberg Coquebin will bind "Séraphita" marvellously with the gray cloth; do you understand, treasure?
I go to-day at three o'clock to Madame Appony. Perhaps I shall wish to go to Madame Potoçka of Paris. I will speak to you of that.
Paris, March 2, 1834.
My salvation! For my salvation! No, let me believe that between the two persons of whom you are thinking and me, you have not hesitated, you have condemned me. At least, there is in that all the grandeur of true love.