“Can it be possible, my friend? Is the letter indeed yours which I have just received? Scarcely can I give it credence, on comparing the present with those now before me, and to which your love gave so many charms! My eyes cannot doubt that those pages which rend my heart are too surely yours; but my soul refuses to admit that yours could have dictated those lines, which to the ardent joy experienced on hearing from you have caused to succeed the mortal grief of reading the expressions of a displeasure, the more afflicting to me that it must have proved a source of fearful pain to you. “I am entirely ignorant in what I have offended, to create an enemy so determined to ruin my repose by interrupting yours; but surely it must be a great reason which can thus induce some one unceasingly to renew against me calumnies of such a specious nature as to be admitted, even for a moment, by one who hitherto has deemed me worthy of his entire affection and confidence. “Oh, my friend! in place of lending an ear to impostors, who, from motives which I cannot explain, seek to ruin our happiness, why do you not rather reduce them to silence by the recital of your benefits to a woman whose character has never incurred the suspicion of ingratitude? On hearing what you have done for me and for my children, my traducers would be silent. Your conduct, admired as it has been throughout the whole of Europe, has in my heart but awakened deeper adoration of the husband who made choice of me, poor as I was, and unhappy. Every step which you take adds to the splendor of the name I bear—and is such a moment seized to persuade you that I no longer love you? What absurdity, or rather what vileness, on the part of your companions, jealous as they are of your marked superiority! I tremble when I think of the dangers which surround you. God knows when or where this letter may reach you. May it restore to you a repose which you ought never to have foregone, and more than ever give you an assurance, that while I live you will be dear to me as on the day of our last separation. Farewell, my only friend! Confide in me, love me, and receive a thousand tender caresses.”