homever you should
find, ... and also that what I had said about exaggerating the amount
of what I could be to you, had just operated in making you more
determined to justify your own presentiment in the face of mine.
Well--and if that last clause was true a little, too ... why should I
be sorry now ... and why should you have fancied for a moment, that
the first could make me sorry. At first and when I did not believe
that you really loved me, when I thought you deceived yourself,
_then_, it was different. But now ... now ... when I see and believe
your attachment for me, do you think that any cause in the world
(except what diminished it) could render it less a source of joy to
me? I mean as far as I myself am considered. Now if you ever fancy
that I am _vain_ of your love for me, you will be unjust, remember. If
it were less dear, and less above me, I might be vain perhaps. But I
may say _before_ God and you, that of all the events of my life,
inclusive of its afflictions, nothing has humbled me so much as your
love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it _is_, and I tell you. Your
love has been to me like God's own love, which makes the receivers of
it kneelers.

Why all this should be written, I do not know--but you set me thinking
yesterday in that backward line, which I lean back to very often, and
for once, as you made me write directly, why I wrote, as my thoughts
went, that way.

Say how you are, beloved--and do not brood over that 'Soul's Tragedy,'
which I wish I had here with 'Luria,' because, so, you should not see
it for a month at least. And take exercise and keep well--and remember
how many letters I must have before Saturday. May God bless you. Do
you want to hear me say

I cannot love you less...?

_That_ is a doubtful phrase. And

I cannot love you more

is doubtful too, for reasons I could give. More or less, I really love
you, but it does not sound right, even _so_, does it? I know what it
ought to be, and will put it into the 'seal' and the 'paper' with the
ineffable other things.

Dearest, do not go to St. Petersburg. Do not think of going, for fear
it should come true and you should go, and while you were helping the
Jews and teaching Nicholas, what (in that case) would become of your

BA?

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, February 24, 1846.]

Ah, s