But why should I not test and choose the man to whom I am to be like the life to the body?
Is a man ever impeded by life?
What can that woman be who thwarts the man she loves ?--an illness, a disease, not life.

By life, I mean that joyous health which makes each hour a pleasure.
But to return to your letter, which will always be precious to me.
Yes, jesting apart, it contains that which I desired, an expression of prosaic sentiments which are as necessary to family life as air to the lungs; and without which no happiness is possible.

To act as an honest man, to think as a poet, to love as women love, that is what I longed for in my friend, and it is now no longer a chimera.
Adieu, my friend.

I am poor at this moment.

That is one of the reasons why I cling to my concealment, my mask, my impregnable fortress.