SAINT-LUPICIN, _August 15, 1843, at night_.
_Six hundred metres above the sea-level;
in the midst of an ocean of lively and
famished fleas._
Your letter is diplomatic. You practise the axiom that language has been
given to man that he may conceal his thoughts. Fortunately for you, your
postscript disarmed me. Why do you say in German what you think in
French? Is it because you think only in German, that is, that you do not
think at all? I am unwilling to credit it. At the same time, there are
things in you which irritate me to the last degree. Why are you still
shy with me? Why have you never wished before to tell me anything that
would have given me so much pleasure? Do you suppose that there are
synonyms in a foreign language?
You can not form any conception of this place. Saint Lupicin is in the
Jura mountains. It is extremely ugly, dirty, and inhabited by fleas. In
a little while I shall be obliged to go to bed, where I shall repeat my
experience of the nights spent at Ephesus. Unfortunately, however, when
I awake there will be neither laurels nor Grecian ruins to meet my eye.
What a hideous country! I think often that if the railroads were more
comfortable we might go together to some such place, and then it would
seem beautiful. There are flowers here in the greatest profusion; the
air is remarkably pure and vigorous, so that the human voice can be
heard at a distance of a league.
To prove that I am thinking of you, here is a little flower which I
plucked in my walk at sunset. It is the only kind that I can send. All
other varieties are colossal.
What are you doing? Of what are you thinking? You never tell me what you
really think, and it is folly for me to ask you. I have had but few
comfortable moments since I came away. Skies of leaden gray, all sorts
of accidents, and all sorts of discomforts; a broken wheel, a bruised
eye--but they are all patched up now in some sort of fashion. But what
I find most difficult to become accustomed to is solitude. I believe
this year it is more unendurable than ever before. I mean solitude in
the midst of life and animation. It seems to me that if I were in prison
I should be more comfortable than I am tramping over the country.
Nothing is more depressing. I long for our walks more than anything
else. It cheers me to have you say that you still love our woods.
Although my tiresome absence is to be prolonged indefinitely,
nevertheless I hope we shall visit them again.
The Department of the Jura, with its mountains and cross-cuts, delays me
more than ten days. I have one disappointment after another. It is as if
I were still crossing my first mountain. I have not the least desire to
go to Italy. It is pure imagination on your part. Your letter pleased me
at times, and at others enraged me. I read sometimes between the lines
the sweetest things in the world, and again you seem more chilly than
usual. It is only the postscript that satisfies me. I saw it only the
last thing. It is at such a great distance from the rest of the letter!
If you write immediately, send it to Besançon; if not, address it to me
in Paris. I do not know where I shall be a week from this time.