Be satisfied, be calm. Here are your letters. I love you.

MY FRIEND:

No, you have not understood me, you have not guessed. I do not
regret, and I never shall, that I told you of my affection.

I will always write to you, but you must return my letters to me as
soon as you have read them.

I shall shock you, my friend, when I tell you the reason for this
demand. It is not poetic, as you imagined, but practical. I am
afraid, not of you, but of some mischance. I am guilty. I do not
wish my fault to affect others than myself.

Understand me well. You and I may both die. You might fall off
your horse, since you ride every day; you might die from a sudden
attack, from a duel, from heart disease, from a carriage accident,
in a thousand ways. For, if there is only one death, there are more
ways of its reaching us than there are days or us to live.

Then your sisters, your brother, or your sister-in-law might find my
letters! Do you think that they love me? I doubt it. And then,
even if they adored me, is it possible for two women and one man to
know a secret--such a secret!--and not to tell of it?

I seem to be saying very disagreeable things, speaking first of your
death, and then suspecting the discreetness of your relatives.

But don't all of us die sooner or later? And it is almost certain
that one of us will precede the other under the ground. We must
therefore foresee all dangers, even that one.

As for me, I will keep your letters beside mine, in the secret of my
little desk. I will show them to you there, sleeping side by side
in their silken hiding place, full of our love, like lovers in a
tomb.

You will say to me: "But if you should die first, my dear, your
husband will find these letters."

Oh! I fear nothing. First of all, he does not know the secret of my
desk, and then he will not look for it. And even if he finds it
after my death, I fear nothing.

Did you ever stop to think of all the love letters that have been
found after death? I have been thinking of this for a long time,
and that is the reason I decided to ask you for my letters.

Think that never, do you understand, never, does a woman burn, tear
or destroy the letters in which it is told her that she is loved.
That is our whole life, our whole hope, expectation and dream.
These little papers which bear our name in car