is beautiful and good cannot be suppressed by the bad
masses and their show of omnipotence.

Do you know what period of our love seems to me particularly
beautiful? To be sure, it is all beautiful and pure in my memory, and
I even think of the first days with a sort of melancholy delight. But
to me the most cherished period of all is the last few days, when we
were living together on the estate. Another reason for living again in
the country.

One thing more. Do not have the grapevines trimmed too close. I say
this only because you thought they were growing too fast and
luxuriantly, and because it might occur to you to want a perfectly
clear view of the house on all sides. Also the green grass-plot must
stay as it is; that is where the baby is to crawl and play and roll
about.

Is it not true that the pain my sad letter caused you is now entirely
compensated? In the midst of all these giddy joys and hopes I can no
longer torment myself with care. You yourself suffered no greater pain
from it than I. But what does that matter, if you love me, really love
me in your very heart, without any reservation of alien thought? What
pain were worth mentioning when we gain by it a deeper and more fervid
consciousness of our love? And so, I am sure, you feel about it too.
Everything I am telling you, you knew long ago. There is absolutely no
delight, no love in me, the cause of which does not lie concealed
somewhere in the depths of your being, you everlastingly blessed
creature!

Misunderstandings are sometimes good, in that they lead us to talk of
what is holiest. The differences that now and then seem to arise are
not in us, not in either of us; they are merely between us and on the
surface, and I hope you will take this occasion to drive them off and
away from you.

And what is the cause of such little repulsions except our mutual and
insatiable desire to love and be loved? And without this
insatiableness there is no love. We live and love to annihilation. And
if it is love that first develops us into true and perfect beings,
that is the very life of life, then it need not fear opposition any
more than it fears life itself or humanity; peace will come to it only
after the conflict of forces.

I feel happy indeed that I love a woman who is capable of loving as
you do. "As you do" is a stronger expression than any superlative. How
can you praise my words, when I, without wishing to, hit upon some
that hurt you? I should l