“No, dearest, do not go to Milan; stay at Belgirate.  Milan terrifies me.  I do not like that odious Milanese fashion of chatting at the Scala every evening with a dozen persons, among whom it is hard if no one says something sweet.  To me solitude is like the lump of amber in whose heart an insect lives for ever in unchanging beauty.  Thus the heart and soul of a woman remains pure and unaltered in the form of their first youth.  Is it the Tedeschi that you regret?

“28th.

“Is your statue never to be finished?  I should wish to have you in marble, in painting, in miniature, in every possible form, to beguile my impatience.  I still am waiting for the view of Belgirate from the south, and that of the balcony; these are all that I now lack.  I am so extremely busy that to-day I can only write you nothing—­but that nothing is everything.  Was it not of nothing that God made the world?  That nothing is a word, God’s word:  I love you!

“30th.

“Ah!  I have received your journal.  Thanks for your punctuality.  —­So you found great pleasure in seeing all the details of our first acquaintance thus set down?  Alas! even while disguising them I was sorely afraid of offending you.  We had no stories, and a Review without stories is a beauty without hair.  Not being inventive by nature, and in sheer despair, I took the only poetry in my soul, the only adventure in my memory, and pitched it in the key in which it would bear telling; nor did I ever cease to think of you while writing the only literary production that will ever come from my heart, I cannot say from my pen.  Did not the transformation of your fierce Sormano into Gina make you laugh?

“You ask after my health.  Well, it is better than in Paris.  Though I work enormously, the peacefulness of the surroundings has its effect on the mind.  What really tries and ages me, dear angel, is the anguish of mortified vanity, the perpetual friction of Paris life, the struggle of rival ambitions.  This peace is a balm.

“If you could imagine the pleasure your letter gives me!—­the long, kind letter in which you tell me the most trivial incidents of your life.  No! you women can never know to what a degree a true lover is interested in these trifles.  It was an immense pleasure to see the pattern of your new dress.  Can it be a matter of indifference to me to know what you wear?  If your lofty brow is knit?  If our writers amuse you?  If Canalis’ songs delight you?  I read the books you read.  Even to your boating on the lake every incident touched me.  Your letter is as lovely, as sweet as your soul!  Oh! flower of heaven, perpetually adored, could I have lived without those dear letters, which for eleven years have upheld me in my difficult path like a light, like a perfume, like a steady chant, like some divine nourishment, like everything which can soothe and comfort life.

  “Do not fail me!  If you knew what anxiety I suffer the day before
  they are due, or the pain a day’s delay can give me!  Is she ill? 
  Is he?  I am midway between hell and paradise.