A thousand tendernesses. There has not been, from Paris here, a moment of time which has not been full of you, and I have looked at the Val de Travers with you in my mind. It is delightful, that valley.
My dearest love, here I am, very much fatigued, in Paris. It is the 6th of October, but it has been impossible to write to you sooner. A wild crowd of people were all the way along the road, and in the towns through which we passed the diligence refused from ten to fifteen travellers. The mail-cart was engaged for six days, so that my friend in Besançon could not get me a place. I therefore did the journey on the imperial of a diligence, in company with six Swiss of the canton de Vaud, who treated me corporeally like cattle they were taking to market, which singularly aided the packages in bruising me.
I put myself into a bath on arriving and found your dear letter. O my soul! do you know the pleasure it gave me? will you ever know it? No, for I should have to tell you how much I love you, and one does not paint that which is immense. Do you know, my dearest Eva, that I rose at five in the morning on the day of my departure and stood on the "Crêt" for half an hour hoping--what? I do not know. You did not come; I saw no movement in your house, no carriage at the door. I suspected then, what you now tell me, that you stayed a day longer, and a thousand pangs of regret glided into my soul.
My angel, a thousand times thanked, as you will be when I can thank you as I would for what you send me.
Bad one! how ill you judge me! If I asked you for nothing it was that I am too ambitious. I wanted enough to make a chain to keep your portrait always upon me, but I would not despoil that noble, idolized head. I was like Buridan's ass between his two treasures, equally avaricious and greedy. I have just sent for my jeweller; he will tell me how much more is needed, and since the sacrifice is begun, you shall complete it, my angel. So, if you do have your portrait taken, have it done in miniature; there is, I think, a very good painter in Geneva; and have it mounted in a very flat medallion. I shall write you openly by the parcel I am going to send.
My dear wife of love, let Anna [her daughter] wear the little cross I shall have made of her pebbles; I shall engrave on the back, _Adoremus in eternum_. That is a delicious woman's motto, and you will never see the cross without thinking of him who says to you ceaselessly those divine words from the young girl's little talisman.