"You ask me, my Cornelia, whether our love is to remain a secret. Yes, I entreat you to keep it so. Let no one, no matter who it may be, touch the tender plant which is budding in our hearts. So young an affection needs concealment until it is strong enough to withstand all storms; and believe me, my angel, they will not be spared you. I am far too well known, have too often had occasion to thrust others aside, not to have obtained the ill-will of persons who will take pleasure in casting poison into your heart merely out of malice towards me. That I have given them sufficient cause, I will frankly confess; for until a character like mine is complete within itself, it must fall into a thousand errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies. No man of real ability escapes this crisis of development. The more variously and richly he is endowed by nature, the more severe a process of purification he must endure; and this cannot be accomplished without expelling, by a violent fermentation, the dross which indelibly sullies his outward life, if, like me, he has been exposed to the eyes of the public. The private citizen experiences such epochs in silence; he is not watched, and therefore his errors are not observed; the false step taken in a position as lofty as mine is visible to the whole world, it is imprinted not only upon the personal _chronique scandaleuse_ but upon the history of the times, and receives an official character. Therefore beware, Cornelia, of wishing to become acquainted with my nature through any other person than myself; beware of exposing the chaste secret of your heart to curiosity, malice, perhaps even envy. Do not think that foolish vanity makes me use this word, for the present inordinate thirst for marriage it is only natural that envy should be excited in all circles, when a young girl is loved by so prominent a man. Keep aloof from all these profaning influences. Believe me, I know woman's nature, with its thousand delicate threads of feeling and consequent excitability and sensitiveness, and I warn you to conceal my image in your inmost soul. We do not at first perceive the injury such a tie sustains by a rude touch; but as a fruit beaten by the hail continues to grow and shows the blemish and bitterness only when eaten, so the sore spot our hearts disturbs our happiness, and at last develops a bitterness all our love cannot soften. I make the greatest sacrifice because I can only see you clandestinely; but the time will come when our love will dare to show itself openly before the world, when we can no longer lose each other, and then you will perceive that I was right and thank me for my present self-sacrifice.