I was handed in December, the letter you wrote me October 14. It is rather old, but good things are always acceptable, however late they may be in reaching us. You are serious, therefore, you please. You add a charm to Seneca, who does not usually possess any. You call yourself old when you possess all the graces, inclinations, and spirit of youth. I am troubled with a curiosity which you can satisfy: When you remember your past, does not the memory of your youth suggest certain ideas as far removed from languor and sloth as from the excitement of passion? Do you not feel in your soul a secret opposition to the tranquillity which you fancy your spirit has acquired? Mais aimer et vous voir aimée Est une douce liaison, Que dans notre coeur s'est formée De concert avec la raison. D'une amoureuse sympathie, Il faut pour arrêter le cours Arrêter celui de nos jours; Sa fin est celle de la vie. Puissent les destins complaisants, Vous donner encore trente ans D'amour et de philosophie. (To love and be loved Is a concert sweet, Which in your heart is formed Cemented with reason meet. Of a loving concord, To stop the course, Our days must end perforce, And death be the last record. May the kind fates give You thirty years to live, With wisdom and love in accord.) I wish you a happy New Year, a day on which those who have nothing else to give, make up the deficiency in wishes. XVII Ninon de l'Enclos to Saint-Evremond "I Should Have Hanged Myself" Your letter filled with useless yearnings of which I thought myself incapable. "The days are passing," as said the good man of Yveteaux, "in ignorance and sloth; these days destroy us and take from us the things to which we are attached." You are cruelly made to prove this. You told me long ago that I should die of reflections. I try not to make any more, and to forget on the morrow the things I live through today. Everybody tells me that I have less to complain of at one time than at another. Be that as it may, had I been proposed such a life I should have hanged myself. We hold on to an ugly body, however, as something agreeable; we love to feel comfort and ease. Appetite is something I still enjoy. Would to Heaven I could try my stomach with yours, and talk of the old friends we have known, the memory of whom gives me more pleasure than the presence of many people I now meet. There is something good in all that, but to tell you the truth, there is no comparison. M. de Clerambault often asks me if he resembles his father in mental attainments. "No," I always answer him, but I hope from his presumption that he believes this "no" to be of advantage to him, and perhaps there are some who would have so considered it. What a comparison between the present epoch and that through which we have passed!