I retired but did not sleep.  After I had tossed about for an hour or two, I decided to get up and write some letters.

I opened a little mahogany desk with brass trimmings, which was placed between the two windows, in hope of finding some ink and paper; but all I found was a quill-pen, very much worn, and chewed at the end.  I was about to close this piece of furniture, when a shining spot attracted my attention it looked like the yellow head of a nail.  I scratched it with my finger, and it seemed to move.  I seized it between two finger-nails, and pulled as hard as I could.  It came toward me gently.  It was a long gold pin which had been slipped into a hole in the wood and remained hidden there.

Why?  I immediately thought that it must have served to work some spring which hid a secret, and I looked.  It took a long time.  After about two hours of investigation, I discovered another hole opposite the first one, but at the bottom of a groove.  Into this I stuck my pin:  a little shelf sprang toward my face, and I saw two packages of yellow letters, tied with a blue ribbon.

I read them.  Here are two of them: 

So you wish me to return to you your letters, my dearest friend.  Here they are, but it pains me to obey.  Of what are you afraid?  That I might lose them?  But they are under lock and key.  Do you fear that they might be stolen?  I guard against that, for they are my dearest treasure.

Yes, it pains me deeply.  I wondered whether, perhaps you might not be feeling some regret!  Not regret at having loved me, for I know that you still do, but the regret of having expressed on white paper this living love in hours when your heart did not confide in me, but in the pen that you held in your hand.  When we love, we have need of confession, need of talking or writing, and we either talk or write.  Words fly away, those sweet words made of music, air and tenderness, warm and light, which escape as soon as they are uttered, which remain in the memory alone, but which one can neither see, touch nor kiss, as one can with the words written by your hand.

   Your letters?  Yes, I am returning them to you!  But with what
   sorrow!

Undoubtedly, you must have had an after thought of delicate shame at expressions that are ineffaceable.  In your sensitive and timid soul you must have regretted having written to a man that you loved him.  You remembered sentences that called up recollections, and you said to yourself:  “I will make ashes of those words.”

   Be satisfied, be calm.  Here are your letters.  I love you.

   My friend: 

   No, you have not understood me, you have not guessed.  I do not
   regret, and I never shall, that I told you of my affection.

   I will always write to you, but you must return my letters to me as
   soon as you have read them.