Had I been a few years younger, I would have enjoyed keenly this poetic installation; but I am turning gray, friend Paul, or at least I fear so, though I try still to attribute to a mere effect of light the doubtful shades that dot my beard under the rays of the noon-day sun.  Nevertheless, if my reverie has changed its object, it still lasts, and still has its charms for me.  My poetic feeling has become modified and, I think, more elevated.  The image of a woman is no longer the indispensable element of my dreams; my heart, peaceful now, and striving to become still more so, is gradually withdrawing from the field of my mind’s labors.  I cannot, I confess, find enough pleasure in the pure and dry meditations of the intellect; my imagination must speak first and set my brain in motion, for I was born romantic, and romantic I shall die; and all that can be asked of me, all I can obtain of myself, at an age when propriety already commands gravity, is to build romances without love.

Up to this time, ennui has spared me in my solitude.  Shall I confess to you that I even experience in it a singular feeling of contentment?  It seems as though I were a thousand leagues away from the things of the world, and that there is a sort of truce and respite in the miserable routine of my existence, at once so agitated and so commonplace.  I relish my complete independence with the naive joy of a twelve-year-old Robinson Crusoe.  I sketch when I feel like it; the rest of the time, I walk here and there at random, being careful only never to go beyond the bounds of the sacred valley.  I sit down upon the parapet of the bridge, and I watch the running water; I go on voyages of discovery among the ruins; I dive into the underground vaults; I scale the shattered steps of the belfry, and being unable to come down again the same way, I remain astride a gargoyle, cutting a rather sorry figure, until the miller brings me a ladder.  I wander at night through the forest, and I see deer running by in the moonlight.  All these things have a soothing effect on my mind, and produce the effect of child’s dream in middle age.

Your letter dated from Cologne, and which was forwarded to me here according to my instructions, has alone disturbed my beatitude.  I console myself with some difficulty for having left Paris almost on the eve of your return.  May Heaven confound your whims and your want of decision!  All I can do now, is to hurry my work; but where shall I find the historical documents I still need?  I am seriously anxious to save these ruins.  There is here a rare landscape, a valuable picture, which it would be sheer vandalism to allow to perish.