cannot lose from sight that which distresses me, or that
which I desire. I do not know how persons manage to grow
used to privations ; those that touch the soul are so keen !
they have no compensations.
I cannot believe that it is only three months since you departed ; still less can I conceive how I can wait for you till the end of November. Your presence could not fail to comfort me; I regret it as my pleasure. Ah! friendship, that blessing of nature, is it to me a fresh sorrow ? Does all that affects my soul turn to poison ? You were to me a charm- ing acquaintance ; your tone, your manners, your mind, they all pleased me ; a higher degree of interest in you has spoiled all : I yielded myself up to the good you did me. Ah ! why have you penetrated within my soul ? Why did you show me yours ? Why establish so intimate an intercourse between two persons whom all things separate ? Is it you, or is it I, who are guilty of the species of pain from which I suffer ? Sometimes I am arrested in my desire for your return by the fear that you will wound my friendship ; and yet it is not exacting. You will be so occupied, so carried-away, so dissi- pated, that, perhaps, you may be as far from me in Paris as at Breslau. Well, so be it ; I shall see you seldom and await you oft§n ; that will be something.
But are you not thinking to shorten your journey rather than prolong it ? What can you see better or more inter- esting than what you are now seeing in Silesia ? And then if you go to Sweden and do not write from there you will receive no letters ; we may be three months without news of you, and that would no longer be absence, it would be death. In a word, be it justice or generosity, I must have news of you, and there is neither reason nor pretext which can justify you for being so long without writing to me as you were between Prague and Vienna. Reflect that you owe much to my con-
