haps I should never answer your letter of the 10th, which
M. d'Aguesseau brought me to-day. In the first place (for
there may still, perhaps, be a future for me), I must ask you
to address your letters direct to me ; to send them through
M. d'Aguesseau is to put one risk the more against me ; he
may go into the country, or travel, etc. ; in short, it is enough
that we are three thousand miles apart ; add nothing to them.
Oh ! I shall surely seem mad to you : I am going to speak to
you with the frankness, the self-abandonment one wordd
have if death were certain on the morrow; listen to me,
therefore, with the indulgence and the interest that we have
for the dying.
Your letter has done me good ; I expected it still, but I had ceased to desire it, because my soul could no longer have an emotion that resembled pleasure. Well, — shall I say it ? — you have given diversion for a few moments to the horror which absorbs my whole existence. Ah ! my God ! I fear for his life ; mine is fastened to his, yet I have need to talk with you.
Can you conceive what it is that impels me, that drags me towards you? Nevertheless, I am not content with your friendship ; I find a coldness, a carelessness in not telling me why you did not write to me from Dresden as you promised ; and besides, you make me feel in too marked a manner that your regret at not finding in Berlin what you hoped for has destroyed the pleasure you would otherwise have felt at the expression and proof of my friendship ; and then too, — shall I say it ? — I am wounded that you have not thanked me for the interest that I take in you. Do you think it any answer to this that I am very unjust, very difficult to please ? No, I am nothing of all that ; I am very true, very ill, and very unhappy — oh, yes, very unhappy.
If I did not tell you what I feel, what I think, I could not
