You are at Lucca Baths, you tell me, to stay for the summer;
  Florence was quite too hot; you can’t move further at present. 
  Will you not come, do you think, before the summer is over? 
    Mr. C. got you out with very considerable trouble;
  And he was useful and kind, and seemed so happy to serve you;
  Didn’t stay with you long, but talked very openly to you;
  Made you almost his confessor, without appearing to know it,—­
  What about?—­and you say you didn’t need his confessions. 
  O my dear Miss Roper, I dare not trust what you tell me! 
    Will he come, do you think?  I am really so sorry for him! 
  They didn’t give him my letter at Milan, I feel pretty certain. 
  You had told him Bellaggio.  We didn’t go to Bellaggio;
  So he would miss our track, and perhaps never come to Lugano,
  Where we were written in full, To Lucerne, across the St.
       Gothard.
  But he could write to you;—­you would tell him where you were going.

  IV.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

  Let me, then, bear to forget her.  I will not cling to her falsely;
  Nothing factitious or forced shall impair the old happy relation. 
  I will let myself go, forget, not try to remember;
  I will walk on my way, accept the chances that meet me,
  Freely encounter the world, imbibe these alien airs, and
  Never ask if new feelings and thoughts are of her or of others. 
  Is she not changing, herself?—­the old image would only delude me. 
  I will be bold, too, and change,—­if it must be.  Yet if in all things,
  Yet if I do but aspire evermore to the Absolute only,
  I shall be doing, I think, somehow, what she will be doing;—­
  I shall be thine, O my child, some way, though I know not in what way. 
  Let me submit to forget her; I must; I already forget her.

  V.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

  Utterly vain is, alas, this attempt at the Absolute,—­wholly! 
  I, who believed not in her, because I would fain believe nothing,
  Have to believe as I may, with a wilful, unmeaning acceptance. 
  I, who refused to enfasten the roots of my floating existence
  In the rich earth, cling now to the hard, naked rock that is left me.—­
  Ah! she was worthy, Eustace,—­and that, indeed, is my comfort,—­
  Worthy a nobler heart than a fool such as I could have given.

  VI.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

  Yes, it relieves me to write, though I do not send; and the chance
       that
  Takes may destroy my fragments.  But as men pray, without asking
  Whether One really exist to hear or do anything for them,—­
  Simply impelled by the need of the moment to turn to a Being
  In a conception of whom there is freedom from all limitation,—­
  So in your image I turn to an ens rationis of friendship. 
  Even to write in your name I know not to whom nor in what wise.

  VII.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.