I take up my pen ten days after my last letter.… Oh my dear fellow, I can’t hide my feelings any longer!… How wretched I am! How I love her! You can imagine with what a thrill of bitterness I write that fatal word. I am not a boy, not a young man even; I am no longer at that stage when to deceive another is almost impossible, but to deceive oneself costs no effort. I know all, and see clearly. I know that I am just on forty, that she’s another man’s wife, that she loves her husband; I know very well that the unhappy feeling which has gained possession of me can lead to nothing but secret torture and an utter waste of vital energy--I know all that, I expect nothing, and I wish for nothing; but I am not the better off for that. As long as a month ago I began to notice that the attraction she has for me was growing stronger and stronger. This partly troubled me, and partly even delighted me.… But how could I dream that everything would be repeated with me, which you would have thought could no more come again than youth can? What am I saying! I never loved like this, no, never! Manon Lescauts, Fritilions, these were my idols--such idols can easily be broken; but now … only now, I have found out what it is to love a woman. I feel ashamed even to speak of it; but it’s so. I’m ashamed.… Love is egoism any way; and at my years it’s not permissible to be an egoist; at thirty-seven one cannot live for oneself; one must live to some purpose, with the aim of doing one’s duty, one’s work on earth. And I had begun to set to work.… And here everything is scattered to the winds again, as by a hurricane! Now I understand what I wrote to you in my first letter; I understand now what was the experience I had missed. How suddenly this blow has fallen upon me! I stand and look senselessly forward; a black veil hangs before my eyes; my heart is full of heaviness and dread! I can control myself, I am outwardly calm not only before others, but even in solitude. I can’t really rave like a boy! But the worm has crept into my heart, and gnaws it night and day. How will it end? Hitherto I have fretted and suffered when away from her, and in her presence was at peace again at once--now I have no rest even when I am with her, that is what alarms me. Oh my friend, how hard it is to be ashamed of one’s tears, to hide them! Only youth may weep; tears are only fitting for the young.… I cannot read over this letter; it has been wrung from me involuntarily, like a groan. I can add nothing, tell you nothing.… Give me time; I will come to myself, and possess my soul again; I will talk to you like a man, but now I am longing to lay my head on your breast and----