P.S.--_September 26._--I am even more low-spirited than I was yesterday. I suffer tortures, but if you have never had gastritis you can have no conception of what it means to suffer pain that is indefinite and at the same time intense. It has this peculiarity, that it affects the entire nervous system. I should like to be in the country with you. I am sure you would cure me. Good-bye. If I die this year, you will be sorry that you did not know me better. VI Do you know that you are sometimes very kind? I do not say this as a reproach veiled by a cold compliment, but I should be glad indeed to receive frequent letters like your last one. Unfortunately, you are not always so charitably inclined towards me. I have not replied earlier, because your letter was only delivered to me last night, on my return from a short trip. I spent four days in absolute solitude, without seeing a man, much less a woman, for I do not call men and women certain bipeds who are trained to fetch food and drink when they are ordered to do so. During my retreat I made the most dismal reflections about myself and my future, about my friends, and so on. If I had had the wit to wait for your letter it would have given quite another turn to my thoughts. “I should have carried away happiness enough to last me at least a week.” The way in which you came down on that worthy Mr. V. is delightful. Your courage pleases me immensely. I should never have supposed you capable of such _capricho_, and I admire you all the more for it. It is true that the remembrance of your splendid black eyes counts for something in my admiration. However, old as I am, I am almost insensible to beauty. I say to myself that “it amounts to nothing”; but I assure you that when I heard a man of very fastidious taste say you were very pretty, I could not repress a feeling of sadness. This is the reason (but first let me assure you that I am not the least bit in love with you): I am horribly jealous, jealous of my friends, and it grieves me to think that your beauty exposes you to the attentions of a lot of men incapable of appreciating you, and who admire in you only those things for which I care the least.