[Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

Love, if you knew but how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my
note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into
which some of the phrases might be construed--you would forgive me,
indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact
remains--that it would be the one trial I _know_ I should not be able
to bear; the repetition of these 'scenes'--intolerable--not to be
written of, even my mind _refuses_ to form a clear conception of them.

My own loved letter is come--and the news; of which the reassuring
postscript lets the interrupted joy flow on again. Well, and I am not
to be grateful for that; nor that you _do_ 'eat your dinner'? Indeed
you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on
'the stairs'--stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou
indeed!) all, with their picturesque _accidents_, of landing-places,
and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half
open doors into what Quarles calls 'mollitious chambers'--and above
all, _landing-places_--they are my heart's delight--I would come upon
you unaware in a landing-place in my next dream! One day we may walk
on the galleries round and over the inner court of the Doges' Palace
at Venice; and read, on tablets against the wall, how such an one was
banished for an 'enormous dig (intacco) into the public
treasure'--another for ... what you are not to know because his
friends have got chisels and chipped away the record of it--underneath
the 'giants' on their stands, and in the midst of the _cortile_ the
bronze fountains whence the girls draw water.

So _you_ too wrote French verses?--Mine were of less lofty
argument--one couplet makes me laugh now for the reason of its false
quantity--I translated the Ode of Alcaeus; and the last couplet ran
thus....

Harmodius, et toi, cher Aristogiton!

* * * * *

* * * * *

Comme l'astre du jour, brillera votre nom!

The fact was, I could not bear to hurt my French Master's
feelings--who inveterately maltreated 'ai's and oi's' and in this
instance, an 'ei.' But 'Pauline' is altogether of a different sort of
precocity--you shall see it when I can master resolution to transcribe
the explanation which I know is on the fly-leaf of a copy here. Of
that work, the _Athenaeum_ said [several words erased] now, what
outrageous folly! I care, and you care, precise