Dearest, do you think all this earnestness foolish and uncalled for?—that I might know you spoke yesterday in mere jest,—as yourself said, ‘only to hear what I would say’? Ah but consider, my own Ba, the way of our life, as it is, and is to be—a word, a simple word from you, is not as a word is counted in the world—the word between us is different—I am guided by your will, which a word shall signify to me. Consider that just such a word, so spoken, even with that lightness, would make me lay my life at your feet at any minute. Should we gain anything by my trying, if I could, to deaden the sense of hearing, dull the medium of communication between us; and procuring that, instead of this prompt rising of my will at the first intimation from yours, the same effect should only follow after fifty speeches, and as many protestations of complete serious desire for their success on your part, accompanied by all kinds of acts and deeds and other evidences of the same?
At all events, God knows I have said this in the deepest, truest love of you. I will say no more, praying you to forgive whatever you shall judge to need forgiveness here,—dearest Ba! I will also say, if that may help me,—and what otherwise I might not have said,—that I am not too well this morning, and write with an aching head. My mother’s suffering continues too.
My friend Pritchard tells me that Brighton is not to be thought of under ordinary circumstances as a point of departure for Havre. Its one packet a week from Shoreham cannot get in if the wind and tide are unfavourable. There is the greatest uncertainty in consequence ... as I have heard before—while, of course, from Southampton, the departures are calculated punctually. He considers that the least troublesome plan, and the cheapest, is to go from London to Havre ... the voyage being so arranged that the river passage takes up the day and the sea-crossing the night—you reach Havre early in the morning and get to Paris by four o’clock, perhaps, in the afternoon ... in time to leave for Orleans and spend the night there, I suppose.
Do I make myself particularly remarkable for silliness when confronted by our friend as yesterday? And the shortest visit,—and comments of everybody. Oh, Mr. Hunter, methinks you should be of some use to me with those amiable peculiarities of yours, if you would just dye your hair black, take a stick in your hand, sink the clerical character you do such credit to, and have the goodness just to deliver yourself of one such epithet as that pleasant one, the next time you find me on the steps of No. 50, with Mr. Kenyon somewhere higher up in the building. It is delectable work, this having to do with relatives and ‘freemen who have a right to beat their own negroes,’ and father Zeus with his paternal epistles, and peggings to the rock, and immense indignation at ‘this marriage you talk of’ which is to release his victim. Is Mr. Kenyon Hermes?
Εἰσελθέτω σε μήποθ’ ὡς ἐγὼ Διὸς
γνώμην φοβηθεὶς θηλύνους γενήσομαι,
καὶ λιπαρήσω τὸν μέγα στυγούμενον
γυναικομίμοις ὑπτιάσμασιν χερῶν,
λῦσαί με δεσμῶν τῶνδε· τοῦ παντὸς δέω.
Chorus of Aunts: ἡμῖν μὲν Ἑρμῆς οὐκ ἄκαιρα φαίνεται