I resume my scribble where I left it when you came back this afternoon, my darling beloved--not to add anything of value, but to continue for my own pleasure the sweet dialogue between my heart and my love. I thank you for our dear twenty-seventh anniversary, which you made memorable by words so luminous and a tenderness so penetrating and sacred. I thank you for myself, whose pride and joy and veneration you are; I thank you on behalf of my nephew and his family, for the immense honour you have conferred upon them by writing to their son. Lastly, my beloved, I kiss your feet, your hands, your lips, your eyes, your brow, and I only cease through fear of wearying you by this over-flow of caresses.
MONT ST. JEAN, _Monday, 8 p.m., June 17th, 1861_.
Dearly beloved. Whilst you are expanding among the tender delights of family life, I am invoking all my physical and moral strength to prevent myself giving way under the sadness of your absence. As long as my eyes could distinguish the omnibus, that is to say, as far as the _Betterave Renaissante_, I watched your progress along the Gronendael road. Beyond that point, I was forced to relinquish the sweet illusion that I could still see the dear little black speck on the horizon, and to acknowledge that nothing lay before me but the endless void of your twenty-four hours' absence. So, as I did not know what to do with myself or how to kill time, I walked by a fairly easy field-path as far as the church at Waterloo, and came back by way of the village, without however visiting the church, notwithstanding the pressing invitation of an old woman who called me her dear friend. I got back to the hotel at six o'clock precisely, and spent the half hour before dinner freshening myself up by washing from head to foot; then I put on a dressing-gown and went down to our little dining-room, where I ate without hunger and drank without thirst, so dismal and forlorn am I when you are no longer present. I must have been pretty fully convinced of the impossibility of accompanying you to Brussels without exposing your movements to undesirable criticism, to accept the sad alternative of remaining here alone. But that certainty is no comfort whatever, and I am just as miserable as if it had been in my power to make the expedition with you. Certainly, human respect is a horrid beast, more malevolent and worrying than even midges and their poisonous sting, and all the ammonia in the world is powerless against it.