I love you as the lioness loves her mate. I love you as a passionate woman, ready to yield up her life at your slightest gesture. I love you with the soul and intelligence God has lent His creatures to enable them to appreciate exceptional men like yourself. That is why, my glorious Victor, at one and the same moment, I can rage, weep, crawl, or stand erect; I bow my head and venerate you!
There are days when one can fix one's gaze upon the sun itself without being blinded: thus it is with me now. I see you, I am dazzled, entranced, and I grasp your beauty in all its splendour.
Since you leave me here all by myself, my beloved, I shall think only of you, and in proof of this, I will scribble all over this virgin sheet of white paper. It is barbarous of you to let me grow fatter than I already am, by leaving me to dawdle at my fireside, instead of taking me out to walk and get thin.
I am in love with you, but you do not care a bit. I am very sad not to have you with me, doubly so, when I think that it is on account of a play in which I am to have no part, after all the time I have waited and endured. When I reflect seriously upon this, my despair makes me long to fly to the uttermost ends of the world. It is so necessary that I should think of my future. I have wasted so much time waiting, that it almost spells ruin to me that you should produce a piece in which I may not play. You see, my dearest, I am not as generous as you thought. I am afraid I can no longer disguise from you the injury it does me to be three years out of the theatrical world, while you are bringing out plays. Forgive me, but I have a horror of poverty, and would do anything in reason to evade it. I love you.
You are quite happy, I hope, now that you possess the keys of Paradise. I had a few more difficulties to encounter after you went away, but they were of no consequence. Now that our little palace is nearly finished, my soul, I hope we shall celebrate the event in the usual way; but I must first rest a little, and nurse myself up, for I am really quite worn out with the dirt and litter. I am afraid to look at you or touch you in your beauty and purity and charm, while I am so ugly and untidy and exhausted that I hardly know myself as your Juju. But it will not last. My foulness will fall from me, and reveal me dressed, as in the fairy-tale, in garments of blue, bordered with golden stars, and a prince will marry me after tasting of my cooking. Splendid! But meanwhile you must graciously permit me to go on loving you, stains and all! Shut your eyes to the common lamp that guards the flame. If you will wait, you shall see that when we reach the heaven above us, I shall be as resplendent as yourself. Meanwhile, I drop a kiss upon your shoes, even if it entails your having them blacked again.