"I am easier in my mind now about Emma. I am convinced that when a man and a woman of an age to be mutually attractive to one another are fast friends and frequently in each other's company, as those French would say, _tête-à-tête_, that it is opposed to the laws of human nature--I would almost go further, and say that it is opposed to the laws of gravitation--that they should not drift into close proximity with each other. And being in close proximity, it is as much a law of nature that they should from time to time lay sympathetic hands the one upon the other. Whether they also kiss is upon a different footing; for kissing has so long been employed as the formula to express a certain state of things, though I believe its particularisation to this to be purely arbitrary. But the formula having been accepted will deter many, especially women, from what would naturally seem a harmless and proper mode of expressing the completeness of their companionship and understanding of each other, though now it seems a dreadful fault and sort of crime. I am thankful that Lady Hamilton and I are not hidebound by any such superstitions. This is not to say that I have not had grave misgivings with my conscience, for it does not seem right that any man should enjoy such perfect happiness as I feel in the companionship of dear Lady H. It is the happiness that I mistrust, not the holding of friendly hands and meeting of friendly lips. And yet why should one mistrust happiness? The patriarch Jacob, at the end of his long life and reign as chief of his household, exclaimed, 'Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage,' and he had lived then a hundred and forty years. I have lived but forty, crowned at the end by the goodness of God with a victory than which no mortal man could pray for greater. But if the patriarch could describe his hundred and forty years in which he had founded a prosperous family and, as God promised him, a great nation, may I not rather apply these words to my forty years, spent, three parts of them, on the sea, which I cannot, in spite of so long a time, face without constant sickness? I have fought in a hundred pitched battles, been wounded--I know not how often--and lost an eye and an arm in the service of my country. I have spent months together out at sea, in a battered ship, badly provisioned. Have I not earned whatever happiness Providence suffers to be put in my way? "But there is Lady Nelson. She is a good wife: would she not be glad that I should have the kindness--I put the plain truth to myself--the caressingness of a good woman, to coax back for me that coy and uncertain goddess of health? Of course she would. Why do I not write to her, then? Because, not being in the full possession of the facts, she might misunderstand, and I might raise the very suspicions which I should be writing to allay.