The first three lines merely settled places of meeting, but here is the third: 

“My Friend; I am very unwell, ill in fact, and I cannot leave my bed.  The rain is beating against my windows, and I lie dreaming comfortably and warmly on my eider-down coverlet.  I have a book of which I am very fond, and which seems as if it really applied to me.  Shall I tell you what it is?  No, for you would only scold me.  Then, when I have read a little, I think, and will tell you what about.

“Having been in bed for three days, I think about my bed, and even in my sleep I meditate on it still, and I have come to the conclusion that the bed constitutes our whole life; for we were born in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it.  If, therefore, I had Monsieur de Crebillon’s pen, I should write the history of a bed, and what exciting and terrible, as well as delightful moving occurrences would not such a book contain!  What lessons and what subjects for moralizing could one not draw from it, for everyone?

“You know my bed, my friend, but you will never guess how many things I have discovered in it within the last three days, and how much more I love it, in consequence.  It seems to me to be inhabited, haunted, if I may say so, by a number of people I never thought of, who, nevertheless, have left something of themselves in that couch.

“Ah!  I cannot understand people who buy new beds, beds to which no memories or cares are attached.  Mine, ours, which is so shabby, and so spacious, must have held many existences in it, from birth to the grave.  Think of that, my friend; think of it all; review all those lives, a great part of which was spent between these four posts, surrounded by these hangings embroidered by human figures, which have seen so many things.  What have they seen during the three centuries since they were first put up?

“Here is a young woman lying on this bed.  From time to time she sighs, and then she groans and cries out; her mother is with her, and presently a little creature that makes a noise like a cat mewing, and which is all shriveled and wrinkled, comes from her.  It is a male child to which she has given birth, and the young mother feels happy in spite of her pain; she is nearly suffocated with joy at that first cry, and stretches out her arms, and those around her shed tears of pleasure; for that little morsel of humanity which has come from her means the continuation of the family, the perpetuation of the blood, of the heart, and of the soul of the old people, who are looking on, trembling with excitement.