Alas! Yes, poor Sharpe[7] has just been stricken down most suddenly and painfully. I have had no news from him since the 5th, and if you know some one in London who can tell you anything authentic, I beg you to write and learn his condition, and whether there is the least hope for his recovery. You may, perhaps, be acquainted with his sister. It was at her house, I suppose, that you met him.
No matter what you say, second thoughts are only too evident in your letter. A few amiable words, however, slipped from you unconsciously. You go to a great deal of trouble to be disagreeable, and it is only by strenuous efforts that you succeed in being so.
Have you ever reflected that it is an admirable plan to place in a beautiful palace pictures and statuary, and to allow people to go there to enjoy them? Unfortunately, this superb place is to be closed, in order to hang there some hideous modern daubs. Does not this grieve you? Agree with me, and let us go and say good-bye to all those venerable statues. Saturday is an excellent day, for only Englishmen come then, and they do not get in the way of those who like to examine the pictures closely. What do you think of Saturday—that is to say, day after to-morrow? That will be the last Saturday. This word “last” grieves me. So, then, Saturday.
You speak of your remorse on account of my eye. What is the character of your remorse? The accident might have been avoided in two ways: I need not have exposed the eye to danger, and you might have taken care of it for me. It is this last fact that causes you remorse—that ought to do so, at any rate, before your second impulses come to you. If I do not hear to the contrary, I shall await you Saturday, at two o’clock, in front of the Joconde, unless the weather is bad. But it will be fine weather, I hope, and if any disappointment comes it will be most assuredly your fault.
Why do you use such small paper, and why do you write only three lines, two of which are to quarrel with me? What matters it if one’s life is short, provided it has been full of happiness! Is it not better to have rich memories, rather than many years of emptiness which have nothing to recall?
LV
Paris, February, 1843.
Our letters crossed each other, and my suspense has been relieved sooner than I had hoped. I am very grateful. Notwithstanding the ambiguity of its style, I am deeply gratified by what your letter tells me. That verb of which you have such dread has to me a sweet sound, even when it is accompanied by all those adverbs which you understand so well how to weave around it.
Ridicule, if you like, my melancholy mood, aroused by the ruins of Carthage. Marius, sitting beside them as we were, dreamed, it may be, that he would enter Rome once more, while in my future I see little to hope for. You frighten me, dear friend, when you say that you dare no longer trust yourself to write to me, and that you have more courage to speak to me. You say the reverse of this when we are together. Will not the result be that you will neither speak to me nor write to me? You were vexed with me, you say. Was this just, and had I deserved it? Had I not your promise, and, in some measure, your example also? Have you remained blind to this? Have you retained an unpleasant memory? Are you still angry? All this is what I am anxious to know, and what, I am sure, you do not intend to tell me.
I am beginning to know you by heart, and this, I believe, is the cause of my frequent low spirits. There is in you such a strange combination of contrasts and contradictions that it is enough to provoke a saint....