If you were able to follow me to the exquisite retreat where I
fancy ourselves happy, if you knew my plans and projects, the
dreadful word "folly!" might escape you, and I should be cruelly
punished for sending poetry to a poet. Yes, I wish to be a spring
of waters inexhaustible as a fertile land for the twenty years
that nature allows me to shine. I want to drive away satiety by
charm. I mean to be courageous for my friend as most women are for
the world. I wish to vary happiness. I wish to put intelligence
into tenderness, and to give piquancy to fidelity. I am filled
with ambition to kill the rivals of the past, to conjure away all
outside griefs by a wife's gentleness, by her proud abnegation, to
take a lifelong care of the nest,--such as birds can only take for
a few weeks.
Tell me, do you now think me to blame for my first letter? The
mysterious wind of will drove me to you, as the tempest brings the
little rose-tree to the pollard window. In your letter, which I
hold here upon my heart, you cried out, like your ancestor when he
departed for the Crusades, "God wills it.
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