SOISSONS, _October 10, 1846_.
It appears that you were very cross last Saturday; but, save a few
little clouds still floating in your letter, you had recovered your
serenity by Sunday. To continue the metaphor, I should like to see you
some day under settled conditions of weather, without previous storms.
Unfortunately, it is a habit that you have formed. We part almost always
better friends than when we met. Let us try to have, one of these days,
the unbroken amiability of which I have sometimes dreamed. I think we
should both find it to our advantage.
You make me threats for the sole pleasure of depriving me of the
consolations of expectation, and you are so conscious of this fault that
you say you are excusable concerning a certain promise you have already
made me once, and which you are now unwilling to keep. Is it not the
result of mere chance that you are enabled to say you had kept your
word? You were unwilling to see me longer than a quarter of an hour,
which shows intentional treason on your part. I know your opinion of
these subterfuges, and am willing to abide by your own judgment. You
have it in your power to make me very happy or very unhappy; it is for
you to decide which.
The frightful weather which has continued since Saturday is the same,
doubtless, that you have in Paris. It causes me no vexation, except in
thinking of our woods, with the leaves scattered by the wind, and the
ground soaked by the rain, and of the remoteness of our next walk. While
tramping over the fields yesterday, in a veritable deluge of rain, I
could think of nothing else. And do you regret the rain for the same
reason, or only because it prevents you from going shopping?
What day were you at the Italian Opera? Was it by any chance Thursday,
and might we have been near each other without suspecting it? I should
like to have caught a glimpse of you surrounded by your court, in order
to see if you act when in society as I should wish.
I hope to be in Paris Thursday evening, or Friday at the latest. If it
is fine weather Saturday, will you go for a long walk? In the opposite
case, we might take a short one, or else go to the Museum. The memory of
these walks is both a delight and an affliction. It is an impression
that needs constant renewal, else it would become a torment.
Dear friend, good-bye; I am very grateful for all the tenderness shown
in your letter; what there is of unkindness and coldness I shall
endeavour to forget. I believe you indulge this proclivity as a sort of
ornament of fancy, behind which you screen your true self. I love to
know that beneath it you are all heart and all soul: this is evident,
notwithstanding all your efforts to conceal it.