If you have done any wrong, however, it is most certainly that you let your pride take the precedence over your affections. The first sentiment is to the second as a colossus to a pygmy. Your pride is, in reality, only a variety of selfishness. Will you some day abandon this grievous fault, and be as lovable to me as you know how to be? Willingly would I accept this condition, if you would promise to be entirely frank, and if you had the courage to keep your promise. It would be for me, perhaps, a sad experience; nevertheless, I should accept it joyfully, since in any case you would be happy, you say. Good-bye, and may it not be for long. Wear your seven-league boots, and we shall have a lovely walk; if the weather were no worse than it has been for several days, you would run no risk of catching cold. I am suffering severely from headache and dizziness, but I hope you will cure me. LXXXVIII PARIS, _March 12, 1844_. That is all right. As if I had not vexations enough of every kind! A hundred calls to make! A library which orders me to write and discuss forty pages of prose matter! Proofs to correct! It seems to me that, knowing all this, you might at least send me a few lines of encouragement. I have almost reached the end of my courage, and of my patience. Fortunately, it will all end next Thursday.[9] Thursday, at one o’clock, I shall become once more an ordinary biped. In the meantime, is it too much to ask you to send me a few words of affection, such as you found to say the last time I saw you? It is three o’clock, and I must leave you for my proofs of _Mademoiselle Arsène Guillot_. Monday, or, rather, Tuesday. LXXXIX _Thursday night, March 15, 1844._ It[10] has pleased me the more keenly because I expected to be defeated. The returns were reported to me as they were counted. It seemed impossible for me to win. My mother, who had been suffering for several days from an acute attack of rheumatism, was cured on the spot. Now I have all the greater desire to see you. Come and find out if I love you more or less, and that as soon as possible. I am now suffering for all the visits I have made, for I must thank everybody, friends and enemies alike, to show that I am magnanimous. I had the good fortune to be black-balled by some men I detest, for it is a cause for thankfulness not to be obliged to carry a burden of gratitude to people whom you dislike. Write to me, I pray you, and tell me when you will allow me to see you. I have a great desire to take a long walk with you. You are a witch, indeed, to have foreseen the result as you did. My Homer deceived me, or, it may be, it was to M. Vatout that his threatening prediction was directed. Good-bye, dearest friend! Between my proof-reading, my reports to make out, and, in a measure also, the worry that I have endured for three days, I have scarcely found time to sleep. I am going to try now. I have some amusing incidents to tell you of men and things. XC _March 17, 1844._