A thousand thanks for your good care, and forgive me that, yesterday, I was more surprised than grateful at your visit, which touched me deeply after you had left. I don't know if you know that there are things that get stronger as they get older.
A thousand thanks and grateful regards to M. Hanski. How stupid I am to have made you anxious for so slight a matter; but how happy I am to know that you have as much friendship for me as I for you.
My love, this morning I am perfectly well. I was embarrassed yesterday because there were for you, under the things you moved about, two letters I send with this.
_Mon Dieu!_ my love, I am afraid that step of yours (your visit to my room) may be ill taken, and that you exposed the two letters. For other reasons, _Mon Dieu!_ certainly, I wanted to see you here! I have such need to cure my cold that if I go out it cannot be till this evening.
I am up; I could not stay in bed longer, I am too uncomfortable. I must talk or have something to do. Inaction kills me. Yesterday, I spent a horrible evening thinking of what I had to do. I am this morning like a man who has had a fever.
A thousand tender caresses. _Mon Dieu!_ how I suffer when I don't see you. I have a thousand things to tell you.
What have I done that last evening should end thus, my dear, beloved Eve? Do you forget that you are my last hope in life? I don't speak of love, or human sentiments, you are more than all that to me. Why do you trample under your feet all the hopes of our life in a word? You doubt one who loves you freely with delights; to whom to feel you is delirious happiness, who loves you _in æternum_, and you do not doubt...!
O my love! you play very lightly with a life you chose to have, and which, moreover, has been given to you with an entire devotion which I should have given you if you had not demanded it. I like better that you did wish for it.
I love you with too much constancy that such disputes should not be mortal to me. _Mon Dieu!_ I have told you the secrets of my life, and you ought, in return for such unlimited confidence, to spare him who lives in you the torture of such doubts. You hold me by the hand, and the day you withdraw that adored hand you alone will know the reason of what becomes of me.