“Maria, write to me, swear to me that you love me no more. I can’t bear the thought that you may still be burning with love for me; I can’t bear the thought of grieving you with the dumbness of my mind. Maria, I owe to you three years of perfect happiness. You have beautified my existence with every grace and charm of yours. You have lavished all the treasures of your heart with a generosity and magnificence which has no equal. You have given me all yourself, and I have known what exaltation a man can enjoy without dying of too much joy. And for this, my lady, gentle and proud, for all this that I owe you I cannot give you a sorrow which has not its equal, that of loving still when one is not loved. Swear that your desolation is only for the dream which has vanished in you as in me; that your tears are of an infinite bitterness for love and not for me; that I am as a brother in sorrow and not a fickle and forgetful lover; that you can think of me without a shock, but with sadness for things which are extinct; that nothing glows in you; that your blood is without fever, and your phantasy is without visions--_that you are like me_.
“And now, Maria, you have my life and your own in your hands, and not only these two lives: because in the step which you boldly and nobly took in abandoning the conjugal roof and your husband, in renouncing your splendid social position, and above all your intact virtue, you lost much more, and to many you lost all; because although in this union of passion we have both been happier than any others in such a union have ever been, you appear as my victim, and such perhaps you will be according to the judgment of the world. You, Maria, brave and good, have to decide what is to become of me, of you, of the others.
“I am at your feet to obey you blindly, and do you take me by the hand and show me the road we ought to traverse, either separated or together. Whatever may be the moral sacrifice you ask of me to save you, I am ready to make it with enthusiasm. You have to order me to live or to perish, and I shall live as you wish; I shall perish by the death you choose.
“So much I ought to do for you, darling Maria, who threw away everything to love and follow me, who looked not behind and sacrificed yourself to passion. Show me the way, lead it wherever it may; it is your task, and always was your task.