A big tear falls upon the holy sheet which I found here instead of you.  How faithfully and how simply you have sketched it, the old and daring idea of my dearest and most intimate purpose!  In you it has grown up, and in this mirror I do not shrink from loving and admiring myself.  Only here I see myself in harmonious completeness.  For your spirit, too, stands distinct and perfect before me, not as an apparition which appears and fades away again, but as one of the forms that endure forever.  It looks at me joyously out of its deep eyes and opens its arms to embrace my spirit.  The holiest and most evanescent of those delicate traits and utterances of the soul, which to one who does not know the highest seem like bliss itself, are merely the common atmosphere of our spiritual breath and life.

The words are weak and vague.  Furthermore, in this throng of impressions I could only repeat anew the one inexhaustible feeling of our original harmony.  A great future beckons me on into the immeasurable; each idea develops a countless progeny.  The extremes of unbridled gayety and of quiet presentiment live together within me.  I remember everything, even the griefs, and all my thoughts that have been and are to be bestir themselves and arise before me.  The blood rushes wildly through my swollen veins, my mouth thirsts for the contact of your lips, and my fancy seeks vainly among the many forms of joy for one which might at last gratify my desire and give it rest.  And then again I suddenly and sadly bethink me of the gloomy time when I was always waiting without hope, and madly loving without knowing it; when my innermost being overflowed with a vague longing, which it breathed forth but rarely in half-suppressed sighs.

Oh, I should have thought it all a fairy-tale that there could be such joy, such love as I now feel, and such a woman, who could be my most tender Beloved, my best companion, and at the same time a perfect friend.  For it was in friendship especially that I sought for what I wanted, and for what I never hoped to find in any woman.  In you I found it all, and more than I could wish for; but you are so unlike the rest.  Of what custom or caprice calls womanly, you know nothing.  The womanliness of your soul, aside from minor peculiarities, consists in its regarding life and love as the same thing.  For you all feeling is infinite and eternal; you recognize no separations, your being is an indivisible unity.  That is why you are so serious and so joyous, why you regard everything in such a large and indifferent way; that is why you love me, all of me, and will surrender no part of me to the state, to posterity, or to manly pleasures.  I am all yours; we are closest to each other and we understand each other.  You accompany me through all the stages of manhood, from the utmost wantonness to the most refined spirituality.  In you alone I first saw true pride and true feminine humility.