I beg you, from my heart, Jeanne, that you will always consider me as a friend to whom you can comfortably tell everything, and come to for sympathy and advice, whether in sorrow or happiness. You will, Jeanne, won’t you? and don’t neglect your appearance. Work may absorb you for a time, but that kind of thing is a transitory craze in a woman of your disposition. Your heritage is your appearance, remember.
Good-bye for the present, and “good luck,” little travelling companion.
Elsie Lindtner.
Dearest Jeanne,
Your last letter—to put it mildly—is very exaggerated. Frankly, it is positively hysterical. Why should you harp to me on your “guilt,” or your everlasting gratitude, on your privilege of making some sacrifice for me. I don’t understand a word of the whole rigmarole, not a single word. I don’t see the point of it in the least. Here I am perfectly content in my own solitary way, which is not a bit misanthropic, and my own desire is that you should feel content, too. Don’t you like Paris? You really needn’t be afraid to say so—or is it the work that you are sick of? If so, it is only what I have long expected.
According to my opinion, you belong to those human luxuries whose presence in the world are quite superfluous, but who have a certain genius through their mere existence alone of making life more tolerable for others. Your place is either this, or in the midst of a grande passion (heaven forbid) in which you would screw yourself into a bread pellet, to be held in some one else’s mouth. I can see you like The Princess on the Pea, scorning everything, or I can see you on your knees scouring steps for the man you love.
But I should like to see the man you were able to love.
Perhaps you are in love? That idea has suddenly occurred to me, though it seems highly improbable. Now, however, that I have read through your last nonsensical letter again, I believe that I have really hit on the right solution.
You are in love, and out of feelings of mistaken gratitude, you do not like to tell me. Jeanne, Jeanne! Will you for my sake be an old maid? It is very sweet of you, but a little too much to expect. Besides, it is quite unnecessary. I am not going to lie, and pretend that it will not cost me something to give up my little fairy-tale princess with the beautiful hands. Not only my hair, but my shamefully overcultivated taste is missing you, with whom I was able to exchange ideas. An empty place on my balcony that will never be filled again till the aforesaid maiden sits in it with the sunlight shining on her and on the river, and on the town which is the town of all others.