e had no
secret from each other because we had no need to have one, and our
lips uttered the thoughts of our hearts without our thinking to keep
anything back.

"God has snatched away from us all these blessings, and nothing will
console me for having lost them; do you not lament with me the evils
of absence?

"How seldom we see those whom we love! Circumstances take us far from
them, and our soul tormented and attracted out of ourselves lives in
a perpetual anguish. I feel this sickness of absence. I imagine
myself wherever you are. I follow your work with my eyes, or I listen
to your words, seated beside you and seeking to divine the word which
you are about to utter; your sisters sew by our side. Empty
dreams--illusions of a moment--my hand seeks yours; where are you, my
beloved one?

"My life is an exile. Far from those whom I love and by whom I am
loved, my heart calls them and consumes away in its grief. No, I do
not love the great cities and their noise, towns peopled with
strangers where no one knows you and where you know no one, where
each one jostles and elbows the other without ever exchanging a
smile. But I love our quiet fields, the peace of home, and the voice
of friends who greet you. Up to the present I have always lived in
contradiction with my nature; my fiery blood, my nature so hostile to
injustice, the spectacle of unmerited miseries have thrown me into a
struggle of which I do not foresee the issue, a struggle in which
will remain to the end without fear and without reproach, that which
daily breaks me down and consumes my life.

"I tell you, my much-loved darling, the secret miseries of my heart;
no, I do not blush for what my hand has just written, but my heart is
sick and suffering, and I tell it to you. I suffer... I wish to blot
out these lines, but why? Could they offend you? What do they contain
that could wound my darling? Do I not know your affection, and do I
not know that you love me? Yes, you have not deceived me, I did not
kiss a lying mouth; when seated on my knees you lulled me with the
charm of your words, I believed you. I wished to bind myself to a
burning iron bar; weariness preys upon me and devours me. I feel a
maddening desire to recover life. Is it Paris that produces this
effect upon me? I always yearn to be in places where I am not. I live
here to a complete solitude. I believe you, Marie...."