"Since the earthquake I have been somewhat ill. I have, perhaps, not been accustomed to love, and so to die. I take a philosophical book,--for poets just now take too violent a hold of me,--and fancy I am still following it, when I have been long since flown away over the sea. I am reading at this moment the life of the glorious Guyon. She knows what love is,--that godlike affection for the godlike, that losing of self in God, that eternal living and abiding steadfast in one great idea,--that growing sanctification through love, and that growing love through sanctification! The book falls out of my hands, I close my eyes, I dream and weep and love thee. O Albano, come earlier. What wilt thou now seek on mountains and ruins? Shall we not come hither again? But you roving men! Only women love, whether it be God, or yourselves, alas! Guyon, the holy Thérèse, the somewhat prosaic Bourignon, loved God as no man ever did (except the holy Fénelon); man deals with the highest being not much better than with the fairest. Albano, if thou hast any other longing than I, if thou desirest more on earth than me, more in Paradise than me, then say so, that I may leave off and die. Truly, when thou embracest thy sister, then I am jealous and long to be thy sister, and thy friend Schoppe, and thy father, and everything that thou lovest, and thy very self, if thou lovest it, and thy whole heaven and thy whole thou in me, thy I in thee. "I will tell you something of my history. I went for a long time in silence over the earth; I saw courts, nations, and lands, and found that most _men_ are only _people_. What did it concern me? One must never say of anything, that is bad, but only, that is stupid, and think no more of it. What I do not love has for me no existence, and instead of hating or despising it long, I have forgotten it. I was scolded at as proud and fantastic, and could not satisfy any one. But I kept and cherished my inner being, for no ideal must be given up, else the holy fire of life goes out, and God dies without resurrection. I saw men, and found always the simple distinction among them, that some were fine, intelligent, and delicate, without spirit or enthusiasm, and the rest very hearty and enthusiastic with shallow rudeness, but all selfish; although when their heart is full, and not on the wane, they, even like the full moon, show the fewest spots. Beside the teachings of my great mother, beside your great father, no one of them could hold up his head. Your Roquairol one could neither love nor hate, nor respect nor fear, although one could come very near to all these at once.