Never give yourself such anxieties again; yesterday, Saturday, without _la dilecta_, I should have killed myself. Oh! I entreat you, if you wish that I should esteem you and adore you to the end of our days, do not change; be solely mine. I, do you see? have none but you. The superhuman efforts that I make are the greatest proofs of love a man can give. Oh, dear, adored one, my Eve, my Eva, to give his life, what is that? Nothing. Each time that I saw you I gave it without regret. I sacrificed all to you. But to rise every day at midnight to plunge into a crater of work, and to do it with one name upon my lips, one image in my heart, one woman before me!--_strength and constancy_; I live only by the sentiment of grandeur which a mysterious love conveys to me. This is loving. Oh! be my true Beatrice, a Beatrice who gives herself, but remains an angel, a light! All that your jealousy can demand, all that your caprice can exact shall be done with joy. Except the _dilecta_, who corrects my proofs and who, I swear to you, is a mother, no woman shall hear me, shall see me.
My mother and sister have decided. They will live together, and not come to me. I am still free.
Oh, my love, my love, dear and adored, forgive me my answer to your letter; but to sacrifice a love like mine to a child, to a husband, to reject it for any interest whatever; that kills me. Oh, my angel, to think that you are a fancy, after all that you said to me, after all that you exacted, all that I accomplished,--it is enough to die of it! I am proudly a poet; I live by the heart, by sentiments only, and I have but one sentiment. My _dilecta_, at sixty years of age, is no longer anything but a mother; she is all my family, as you are all my heart, all my future! I have to work hard; the "Duchesse" will appear on the 15th; she excites all Paris already. _Mon Dieu!_ a thousand kisses; may each be worth a thousand. Oh, my angel, I hope I may not again have to tell you that to betray me in the name of any one whatever is to put me to death. I kiss you with transport. The Bengali is virtuous. He is dead under his toil.
Put _Ave_ on the inkstand. The "Contes Drolatiques" will tell you why.
I have said nothing. I had a thousand effusions of the soul; I am forced to keep them back. This letter must go to the post at one o'clock. I received yours at midday.