You were not, like me, condemned to laugh, and to jest, and to listen with apparently attentive ear to all those often heard and constantly repeated phrases of praise and adoration from those about me.

You were at least free to suffer.

I was not.

It is true I smiled, but amidst the pains of death.

It is true my cheeks did not blanch, but rouge was the veil with which I covered their paleness; and then, Henry, in the midst of my pains and longings, I had, too, a sweet consolation--your letters, your poems, which fell like the dew of heaven upon my sick soul, and restored it to health, for new torments and new hopes.