I suffer, I despair at heart, but I love you so far, and I hope for both our sakes that I always shall. I cling to my love even more than to your esteem, for the latter is a poor blind thing that cannot distinguish night from day, candle-light from sunshine, or an honest woman from a harlot.
My love is more clear-sighted. It was attracted at once by your physical and spiritual perfection, and has never confused you with any other of the human species. I love you, Toto. Torment me, drive me to desperation if you will, but you shall never succeed in diminishing my affection. My head aches, little man, and the thoughts that fill it at this moment are not calculated to cure its pain. I press my hand upon my brow to crush thought, and I open my heart to all that is good and tender in my love for you. Good-bye, Toto. I adore you. Good-bye. We were very happy this morning; let us try to be so again very soon.
In the meantime I adore you.
Juliette.
Wednesday, 8.45, November 20th, 1839.
I am in despair. I wish I were dead and everything at an end! The more precautions I take, the more I purge my life, the less happiness I achieve. It is as if I were accursed, and I often feel a wild desire to behave as if I were, and crush my love underfoot. I am so unhappy that I lose all courage and hope for the future. You were very good to me when you were going away, but that does not prove that when you come back presently you may not be the most offensive and unjust of men. I sacrifice to you one by one all my actions, even the most insignificant; I am careful inwardly and outwardly to cause you no sort of offence, and yet I am unsuccessful! My struggles only fatigue and dishearten me. On the eve of taking the great step which would bind us to each other even closer than we already are, would it not be better for us to break off our relations, and put a stop to the whole thing instead? I can understand now the generosity of Didier, who elects to die upon the scaffold forgiving Marion with his last breath, rather than live persecuting and torturing her with the recollection of her past, and with suspicions a thousand times more painful than death and oblivion. Ah, yes, I can understand a Didier like that.... I suffer! Ah, God, people who do not love are very fortunate! I love you, and I know that failing some violent remedy I shall continue to suffer and care for you. I admit that all these things I write are absurd, and that it would be wiser to throw this letter into the fire, and keep to myself the thousand and one follies inspired by my despair.