* * * * *

Today in a French book about two lovers I came across the expression:  “They were the universe to each other.”  It struck me as at once pathetic and comical, how that thoughtless phrase, put there merely as a hyperbolical figure of speech, in our case was so literally true.  Still it is also literally true for a French passion of that kind.  They are the universe to each other, because they lose sense for everything else.  Not so with us.  Everything we once loved we still love all the more ardently.  The world’s meaning has now dawned upon us.  Through me you have learned to know the infinitude of the human mind, and through you I have come to understand marriage and life, and the gloriousness of all things.

Everything is animate for me, speaks to me, and everything is holy.  When people love each other as we do, human nature reverts to its original godliness.  The pleasure of the lover’s embrace becomes again—­what it is in general—­the holiest marvel of Nature.  And that which for others is only something to be rightly ashamed of, becomes for us, what in and of itself it is, the pure fire of the noblest potency of life.

* * * * *

There are three things which our child shall certainly have—­a great deal of wanton spirit, a serious face, and a certain amount of predisposition for art.  Everything else I await with quiet resignation.  Son or daughter, as for that I have no special preference.  But about the child’s bringing-up I have thought a great, great deal.  We must carefully avoid, I think, what is called “education;” try harder to avoid it than, say, three sensible fathers try, by anxious thought, to lace up their progeny from the very cradle in the bands of narrow morality.

I have made some plans which I think will please you.  In doing so I have carefully considered your ideas.  But you must not neglect the Art!  For your daughter, if it should be a daughter, would you prefer portrait-or landscape-painting?

* * * * *

You foolish girl, with your external things!  You want to know what is going on around me, and where and when and how I live and amuse myself?  Just look around you, on the chair beside you, in your arms, close to your heart—­that is where I am.  Does not a ray of longing strike you, creep up with sweet warmth to your heart, until it reaches your mouth, where it would fain overflow in kisses?

And now you actually boast because you write me such warm letters, while I only write to you often, you pedantic creature.  At first I always think of you as you describe it—­that I am walking with you, looking at you, listening to you, talking with you.  Then again it is sometimes quite different, especially when I wake up at night.

How can you have any doubt about the worthiness and divineness of your letters?  The last one sparkles and beams as if it had bright eyes.  It is not mere writing—­it is music.  I believe that if I were to stay away from you a few more months, your style would become absolutely perfect.  Meanwhile I think it advisable for us to forget about writing and style, and no longer to postpone the highest and loveliest of studies.  I have practically decided to set out in eight days.