“I have received all your letters, but none has made so much impression on me as the last one.  How can you, my adored friend, speak to me in that way?  Do you not believe that my situation here is already horrible enough, without your exciting my longings, and still more setting my soul in rebellion?  What a style! what emotions you describe!  They glow like fire, they burn my poor heart!  My own Josephine, away from you, there is no joy; away from you, the world is a wilderness in which I feel alone, and have no one in whom I can confide.  You have taken from me more than my soul; you are the only thought of my life.  When I feel weary with the burden of affairs, when I dread some inauspicious result, when men oppose me, when I am ready to curse life itself, I place my hand upon my heart, your image beats there; I gaze on it, and love is for me absolute bliss, and everything smiles except when I am away from my beloved.

“By what art have you been able to enchain all my powers, and to concentrate in yourself all my mental existence?  It is an enchantment, my dear friend, which is to end only with my life.  To live for Josephine, such is the history of my life!  I am working to return to you, I am dying to approach you!  Fool that I am, I see not that I am more and more drifting away from you!  How much space, how many mountains separate us! how long before you can read these words, the feeble expression of a throbbing soul in which you rule!  Ah, my adored wife, I know not what future awaits me, but if it keeps me much longer away from you, it will be intolerable; my courage reaches not that far.  There was a time when I was proud of my reputation; and sometimes when I cast my eyes on the wrong which men could have done me, on the fate which Providence might have in reserve for me, I prepared myself for the most unheard-of adversities without wrinkling the brow or suffering fear; but now the thought that my Josephine should be uncomfortable, or sick, or, above all, the cruel, horrible thought that she might love me less, makes my soul tremble, and my blood to remain still, bringing on sadness, despondency, and taking away even the courage of anger and despair.  In times past I used to say, ’Men have no power over him who dies without regret.’  But now to die without being loved by you, to die without the certainty of being loved, is for me the pains of hell, the living, fearful feeling of complete annihilation.  It is as if I were going to suffocate!  My own companion, you whom fate has given me, to make life’s painful journey, the day when no more I can call your heart mine, when nature will be for me without warmth, without vitality. ...  I will give way, my sweet friend (ma douce amie); my soul is sorrowful, my body languishes; men weary me.  I have a good right to detest them, for they keep me away from my heart.