I am sure you have much more time to write to me than I to write to you, so let me hear often how things go.

I understand by your last how, with good reason, you wish me to return soon.

It made me anxious for several days; therefore, when you write to me, write strongly and clearly what the matter is so that I may understand it--and enough.
Know that I desire to return soon even more than you desire it, for I pass my life here in the greatest discomfort and with the hardest labour, doing nothing but work day and night, and I have endured so much fatigue and hardship that if I should have to go through it again, I do not believe my life would hold out, for it has been an enormous undertaking, and if it had been in any one else's hands it would have come out very badly.

But I believe the prayers of some one have sustained me and kept me in health, for all Bologna was of opinion that I should never finish it after it was cast, and before also, when no one would believe that I should ever cast it.

Enough that I have brought it to a good end, but I shall not quite have finished it by the end of this month, as I hoped; but next month, at any rate, it will be done, and I will return.