I cannot speak to you any more of myself; not of my past life, nor of my character, nor of an affection almost maternal on one side, filial on mine, which you have already seriously changed--an effect upon my life which must explain my use of the word “sacrifice.” You have already rendered me forgetful, if not ungrateful; does that satisfy you? Oh, speak! Say to me one word, and I will love you till my eyes close in death, as the Marquis de Pescaire loved his wife, as Romeo loved Juliet, and faithfully. Our life will be, for me at least, that “felicity untroubled” which Dante made the very element of his Paradiso,--a poem far superior to his Inferno. Strange, it is not myself that I doubt in the long reverie through which, like you, I follow the windings of a dreamed existence; it is you. Yes, dear, I feel within me the power to love, and to love endlessly,--to march to the grave with gentle slowness and a smiling eye, with my beloved on my arm, and with never a cloud upon the sunshine of our souls. Yes, I dare to face our mutual old age, to see ourselves with whitening heads, like the venerable historian of Italy, inspired always with the same affection but transformed in soul by our life’s seasons. Hear me, I can no longer be your friend only. Though Chrysale, Geronte, and Argante re-live, you say, in me, I am not yet old enough to drink from the cup held to my lips by the sweet hands of a veiled woman without a passionate desire to tear off the domino and the mask and see the face. Either write me no more, or give me hope. Let me see you, or let me go. Must I bid you adieu? Will you permit me to sign myself, Your Friend? To Monsieur de Canalis,--What flattery! with what rapidity is the grave Anselme transformed into a handsome Leander! To what must I attribute such a change? to this black which I put upon this white? to these ideas which are to the flowers of my soul what a rose drawn in charcoal is to the roses in the garden? Or is it to a recollection of the young girl whom you took for me, and who is personally as like me as a waiting-woman is like her mistress? Have we changed roles? Have I the sense? have you the fancy? But a truce with jesting.