_Monday evening, June 1, 1852._
... I spend all my time reading the letters of Beyle. This makes me feel
at least twenty years younger. It is as if I were making an autopsy of
the thoughts of a man whom I knew intimately, and whose ideas of things
and of men have had a singular influence on mine. This makes me
alternately sad and cheerful twenty times an hour, and I regret having
destroyed the letters that Beyle wrote to me....