If your letter is the outcome of long poetic reveries on the fate which conventions bring to women, if, constrained by the impulse of a lofty and intelligent mind, you have wished to understand the life of a man to whom you attribute the gift of genius, to the end that you may create a friendship withdrawn from the ordinary relations of life, with a soul in communion with your own, disregarding thus the ordinary trammels of your sex,--then, assuredly, you are an exception.

The law which rightly limits the actions of the crowd is too limited for you.

But in that case, the remark in my first letter returns in greater force,--you have done too much or not enough.
Accept once more my thanks for the service you have rendered me, that of compelling me to sound my heart.

You have corrected in me the false idea, only too common in France, that marriage should be a means of fortune.

While I struggled with my conscience a sacred voice spoke to me.