Pris d’un vieux rhumatisme incurable à l’échine,
Des astres pêle-mêle au fond des horizons,
La vie et l’engrenage énorme des saisons,
La fleur, l’oiseau, la femme, et l’abîme, et la terre,
Dieu s’est laissé tomber dans son fauteuil-Voltaire!
Is it any wonder that a few simple souls, who still cherish a certain reverence for the obsolete orthodox terminology should go over in despair to Rome?
One of the great questions of the day, discussed in a spirit of the most brutal secularity, is Divorce. I know your exalted views on this subject, your love of the beautiful old fashion which made marriage eternal, a sacrament of souls, not to be abolished even by death itself. Well, our French neighbours wish to render it a simple contract, to be dissolved at the whim of the contracting-parties. Their own social life, they think, is a living satire on the old dispensation.
But I sat down to write you a letter about myself, and here I am prosing about the idle topics of the day, from religion to the matrimonial musical glasses. I am wonderfully well in body; in fact, never better. But oh, my Alma, I am still miserably sick of soul! More than ever do I perceive that the world wants a creed. When the idea of God is effaced from society, it becomes--this Paris--a death’s head with a mask of pleasure:--
The time is out of joint--ah cursed spite,
All my foolish plans have fallen like a house of cards. I myself seem strangling in the evils of the modern snake of Pessimism. If it were not for you, my guardian angel, my star of comfort, I think I should try euthanasia. Write to me! Tell me of yourself, of Fensea; no news that comes from my heaven on earth will fail to interest and soothe me. What do you think of my successor? and what does the local Inquisition think of him? Next to the music of your voice will be the melody of your written words. And forgive this long rambling letter. I write of trifles light as air, because I _cannot_ write of what is deepest in my heart.--Yours always,
Thanks, dearest Ambrose, for your long and loving letter. It came to me in good season, when I was weary and anxious on your account, and I am grateful for its good tidings and its tone of growing cheerfulness. You see my prescription is already working wonders, for you wrote like your old self--almost! I am so glad that you are well in health, so thankful you are beginning to forget your trouble. If such a cure is possible in a few short weeks, what will time not do in a year?