Is it not true that the pain my sad letter caused you is now entirely compensated? In the midst of all these giddy joys and hopes I can no longer torment myself with care. You yourself suffered no greater pain from it than I. But what does that matter, if you love me, really love me in your very heart, without any reservation of alien thought? What pain were worth mentioning when we gain by it a deeper and more fervid consciousness of our love? And so, I am sure, you feel about it too. Everything I am telling you, you knew long ago. There is absolutely no delight, no love in me, the cause of which does not lie concealed somewhere in the depths of your being, you everlastingly blessed creature! Misunderstandings are sometimes good, in that they lead us to talk of what is holiest. The differences that now and then seem to arise are not in us, not in either of us; they are merely between us and on the surface, and I hope you will take this occasion to drive them off and away from you. And what is the cause of such little repulsions except our mutual and insatiable desire to love and be loved? And without this insatiableness there is no love. We live and love to annihilation. And if it is love that first develops us into true and perfect beings, that is the very life of life, then it need not fear opposition any more than it fears life itself or humanity; peace will come to it only after the conflict of forces. I feel happy indeed that I love a woman who is capable of loving as you do. "As you do" is a stronger expression than any superlative. How can you praise my words, when I, without wishing to, hit upon some that hurt you? I should like to say, I write too well to be able to describe to you my inward state of mind. Oh, dearest! Believe me, there is no question in you that has not its answer in me. Your love cannot be any more everlasting than mine. Admirable, however, is your beautiful jealousy of my fancy and its wild flights. That indicates rightly the boundlessness of your constancy, and leads me to hope that your jealousy is on the point of destroying itself by its own excess. This sort of fancy--committed to writing--is no longer needed. I shall soon be with you. I am holier and more composed than I was. I can only see you in my mind and stand always before you. You yourself feel everything without my telling you, and beam with joy, thinking partly of the man you love and partly of your baby. * * * * * Do you know, while I have been writing to you, no memory could have profaned you; to me you are as everlastingly pure as the Holy Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, and you have wanted nothing to make you like the Madonna except the Child. Now you have that, now it is there and a reality. I shall soon be carrying him on my arm, telling him fairy-tales, giving him serious instruction and lessons as to how a young man has to conduct himself in the world.