The sandy waste which he tries to
place, and does place, between us is covered by his deeprooted pride;
he wraps himself in mystery. The hanging back is on his side, the
boldness on mine. This odd situation affords me the more amusement
because the whole thing is mere trifling. What is a man, a Spaniard,
and a teacher of languages to me? I make no account of any man
whatever, were he a king. We are worth far more, I am sure, than the
greatest of them. What a slave I would have made of Napoleon! If he
had loved me, shouldn't he have felt the whip!
Yesterday I aimed a shaft at M. Henarez which must have touched him to
the quick. He made no reply; the lesson was over, and he bowed with a
glance at me, in which I read that he would never return. This suits
me capitally; there would be something ominous in starting an
imitation Nouvelle Heloise. I have just been reading Rousseau's, and
it has left me with a strong distaste for love. Passion which can
argue and moralize seems to me detestable.
Clarissa also is much too pleased with herself and her long, little
letter; but Richardson's work is an admirable picture, my father tells
me, of English women. Rousseau's seems to me a sort of philosophical
sermon, cast in the form of letters.
Love, as I conceive it, is a purely subjective poem. In all that books
tell us about it, there is nothing which is not at once false and
true. And so, my pretty one, as you will henceforth be an authority
only on conjugal love, it seems to me my duty--in the interest, of
course, of our common life--to remain unmarried, and have a grand
passion, so that we may enlarge our experience.
Tell me every detail of what happens to you, especially in the first
few days, with that strange animal called a husband. I promise to do
the same for you if ever I am loved. Farewell, poor martyred darling.