"27th.

"No, dearest, do not go to Milan; stay at Belgirate. Milan
terrifies me. I do not like that odious Milanese fashion of
chatting at the Scala every evening with a dozen persons, among
whom it is hard if no one says something sweet. To me solitude is
like the lump of amber in whose heart an insect lives for ever in
unchanging beauty. Thus the heart and soul of a woman remains pure
and unaltered in the form of their first youth. Is it the
_Tedeschi_ that you regret?

"28th.

"Is your statue never to be finished? I should wish to have you in
marble, in painting, in miniature, in every possible form, to
beguile my impatience. I still am waiting for the view of
Belgirate from the south, and that of the balcony; these are all
that I now lack. I am so extremely busy that to-day I can only
write you nothing--but that nothing is everything. Was it not of
nothing that God made the world? That nothing is a word, God's
word: I love you!

"30th.

"Ah! I have received your journal. Thanks for your punctuality.
--So you found great pleasure in seeing all the details of our first
acquaintance thus set down? Alas! even while disguising them I was
sorely afraid of offending you. We had no stories, and a _Review_
without stories is a beauty without hair. Not being inventive by
nature, and in sheer despair, I took the only poetry in my soul,
the only adventure in my memory, and pitched it in the key in
which it would bear telling; nor did I ever cease to think of you
while writing the only literary production that will ever come
from my heart, I cannot say from my pen. Did not the
transformation of your fierce Sormano into Gina make you laugh?

"You ask after my health. Well, it is better than in Paris. Though
I work enormously, the peacefulness of the surroundings has its
effect on the mind. What really tries and ages me, dear angel, is
the anguish of mortified vanity, the perpetual friction of Paris
life, the struggle of rival ambitions. This peace is a balm.

"If you could imagine the pleasure your letter gives me!--the
long, kind letter in which you tell me the most trivial incidents
of your life. No! you women can never know to what a degree a true
lover is interested in these trifles. It was an immense