r distance of the risk I am taking, nor of the necessity
of taking it; and I am convinced that were you in my place
you would do more than I shall do, for your kind, intrepid
spirit has more courage than mine, and always had.

"Another consideration: Many of these persons have wives at
home as well as I, from whom they have been much longer
separated, under more affecting circumstances, having been
held in a merciless and desponding slavery: if their wives
love them as mine does me (a thing I cannot believe, but
have no right to deny), ask these lately disconsolate and
now joyous families whether I have done too much.

"Since I write this as if it were my last poor demonstration
of affection to my lovely friend, I have much to say; and it
is with difficulty that I can steal an hour from the fatigue
of business to devote to the grateful, painful task. But
tell me (you cannot tell me) where shall I begin? where
shall I end? how shall I put an eternal period to a
correspondence which has given me so much comfort? With what
expression of regret shall I take leave of my happiness?
with what words of tenderness, of gratitude, of counsel, of
consolation, shall I pay you for what I am robbing you
of--the husband whom you cherish, the friend who is all your
own?

"But I am giving vent to more weakness than I intended:
this, my dear, is a letter of _business_, not of love, and I
wonder I cannot enter upon it and keep to my subject.
Enclosed is my last will, made in conformity to the one I
left in the hands of Doctor Hopkins of Hartford, as you may
remember. The greater part of our property now lying in
Paris, I thought proper to renew this instrument, that you
might enter immediately upon the settlement of your affairs,
without waiting to send to America for the other paper.

"You will likewise find enclosed a schedule of our property
debts and demands, with explanations, as nearly just as I
can make it from memory in the absence of my papers. If the
French Republic is consolidated, and her funds rise to par,
or near it, as I believe they will do soon after the war,
the effects noted in this schedule may amount to a capital
of about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, besides
paying my debts; which sum, vested in the American f