There is a life invisible, that of the heart, to which letters may suffice; and there is a life material, to which more importance is, alas, attached than you are aware of at your age.

These two existences must, however, be made to harmonize in the ideal which you cherish; and this, I may remark in passing, is very rare.
The pure, spontaneous, disinterested homage of a solitary soul which is both educated and chaste, is one of those celestial flowers whose color and fragrance console for every grief, for every wound, for every betrayal which makes up the life of a literary man; and I thank you with an impulse equal to your own.
But after this poetical exchange of my griefs for the pearls of your charity, what next?
what do you expect?
I have neither the genius nor the splendid position of Lord Byron; above all, I have not the halo of his fictitious damnation and his false social woes.

But what could you have hoped from him in like circumstances?
His friendship?
Well, he who ought to have felt only pride was eaten up by vanity of every kind,--sickly, irritable vanity which discouraged friendship.

I, a thousand-fold more insignificant than he, may I not have discordances of character, and make friendship a burden heavy indeed to bear?
In exchange for your reveries, what will you gain?
The dissatisfaction of a life which will not be wholly yours.

The compact is madness.