So doing, I shall end by extinguishing this fire of debt and accomplishing my promised work. Without it, no salvation, no liberty. The deuce! you will get the proof of what I now have the pleasure of writing to you, and of my firmness, when you see my books; for a man can't coquet and amuse himself, and bring out such publications. Toil and the Muse; that means that the toiling Muse is virtuous,--she is a virgin. It is deplorable that in this nineteenth century we are obliged to go to the images of Greek mythology; but I have never been so struck as I am now by the powerful truth of those myths.
Do not think that what I have been writing is a round-about way of telling you that, whatever be your age and face, my affection for you would be the same. I should not take circuitous ways to tell you a thing it would give me pleasure to express if I did not think you had enough perspicacity to have felt it, divined it. No; I was examining myself in good faith without any intention of showing myself off. I wish to be so great by intellect and fame that you can feel proud of my true friendship. Each of my works, which I want to make more and more extended, better thought, better written, will be a flattery for you, a flower, a bouquet that I shall send you! Distance alone admits of flowers of rhetoric.
My brother-in-law has just discovered a process which, in his opinion, solves on railways the problem of inclined planes, and will save great costs in construction and traction. It is possible to sell this invention to the English; here he has taken out a patent, and the English purchaser can take out an export patent. My brother-in-law does not want to go to London, and I am going to attempt this affair in the interests of my sister. That is the history of my journey to London.
We are not satisfied with our brother in Normandy. His wife is pregnant. He has complicated, still further, the difficulties of his life, poor creature. My mother is not well; I wish I could see her in good health to enjoy what I am preparing for her. But, good God! she has had many trials. To-day she turns to me, and heartily; she seems to recognize, without admitting it, the great wrong of her slight affection for my sister and me; she is punished in the child of her choice in a dreadful way. Henry is nothing, and will be nothing. He has spoiled the future his brother-in-law or I might have made for him by his marriage. All this is horribly sad.