me out of all streets, within sight of beauties that I am sure you too would love, if you did not share my enthusiasm for the town. I have not another minute, having promised to go out before dinner—so, dearest, take my letter as a hasty kiss, just to let you know how constantly I love you—how, the longer I live and the more I have felt, the better I know how to value you.
Letter to Charles Bray, 4th Dec. 1849.
I write at once to answer your questions about business. Spinoza and I have been divorced for several months. My want of health has obliged me to renounce all application. I take walks, play on the piano, read Voltaire, talk to my friends, and just take a dose of mathematics every day to prevent my brain from becoming quite soft. If you are anxious to publish the translation in question I could, after a few months, finish the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" to keep it company; but I confess to you that I think you would do better to abstain from printing a translation. What is wanted in English is not a translation of Spinoza's works, but a true estimate of his life and system. After one has rendered his Latin faithfully into English, one feels that there is another yet more difficult process of translation for the reader to effect, and that the only mode of making Spinoza accessible to a larger number is to study his books, then shut them, and give an analysis. For those who read the very words Spinoza wrote there is the same sort of interest in his style as in the conversation of a person of great capacity who has led a solitary life, and who says from his own soul what all the world is saying by rote; but this interest hardly belongs to a translation.
Letter to Mrs. Bray, 4th Dec. 1849.
Your letter is very sweet to me, giving me a picture of your quiet life. How shall I enable you to imagine mine, since you know nothing of the localities? My good friends here only change for the better. Mme. d'Albert is all affection; M. d'Albert all delicacy and intelligence; the friends to whom they have introduced me very kind in their attentions. In fact, I want nothing but a little more money, to feel more at ease about my fires, etc. I am in an atmosphere of love and refinement; even the little servant Jeanne seems to love me, and does me good every time she comes into the room. I can say anything to M. and Mme. d'Albert. M. d'A. understands everything, and if madame does not understand, she believes—that is, she seems always sure that I mean something edifying. She kisses me like a mother, and I am baby enough to find that a great addition to my happiness. Au reste, I am careful for nothing; I am a sort of supernumerary spoon, and there will be no damage to the set if I am lost. My heart-ties are not loosened by distance—it is not in the nature of ties to be so; and when I think of my loved ones as those to whom I can be a comforter, a help, I long to be with them again. Otherwise, I can only think with a shudder of returning to England. It looks to me like a land of gloom, of ennui, of platitude; but in the midst of all this it is the land of duty and affection, and the only ardent hope I have for my future life is to have given to me some woman's duty—some possibility of devoting myself where I may see a daily result of pure, calm blessedness in the life of another.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 4th Dec. 1849.
How do you look? I hope that bandeau of silvery locks is not widening too fast on the head I love so well—that the eyes are as bright as ever. Your letter tells me they will beam as kindly as ever when I see them once more. Never make apologies about your letters, or your words, or anything else. It is your soul to which I am wedded; and do I not know too well how the soul is doubly belied—first, by the impossibility of being in word and act as great, as loving, as good as it wills to be; and again, by the miserable weaknesses of the friends who see the words and acts through all sorts of mists raised by their own passions and preoccupations? In all these matters I am the chief of sinners, and I am tempted to rejoice in the offences of my friends, because they make me feel less humiliation. I am quite satisfied to be at Geneva instead of Paris; in fact, I am becoming passionately attached to the mountains, the lake, the streets, my own room, and, above all, the dear people with whom I live.
Letter to the Brays, 23d Dec. 1849.
A thousand Christmas pleasures and blessings to you—good resolutions and bright hopes for the New Year! Amen. People who can't be witty exert themselves to be pious or affectionate. Henceforth I tell you nothing whatever about myself; for if I speak of agreeables, and say I am contented, Mr. Bray writes me word that you are all trying to forget me. If I were to tell you of disagreeables and privations and sadness, Sara would write: "If you are unhappy now, you will be so à fortiori ten years hence." Now, since I have a decided objection to doses sent by post which upset one's digestion for a fortnight, I am determined to give you no pretext for sending them. You shall not know whether I am well or ill, contented or discontented, warm or cold, fat or thin. But remember that I am so far from being of the same mind as Mr. Bray, that good news of you is necessary to my comfort. I walk more briskly, and jump out of bed more promptly, after a letter that tells me you are well and comfortable, that business is promising, that men begin to speak well of you, etc. "I am comforted in your comfort," as saith St. Paul to the troublesome Corinthians. When one is cabined, cribbed, confined in one's self, it is good to be enlarged in one's friends. Good Mr. Marshall! We wish to keep even unamiable people when death calls for them, much more good souls like him. I am glad he had had one more pleasant visit to Cara for her to think of. Dear Sara's letter is very charming—not at all physicky—rather an agreeable draught of vin sucré. Dear Mr. Hennell, we shall never look upon his like.
I am attending a course of lectures on Experimental Physics by M. le Professeur de la Rive, the inventor, among other things, of electroplating. The lectures occur every Wednesday and Saturday. It is time for me to go. I am distressed to send you this shabby last fragment of paper, and to write in such a hurry, but the days are really only two hours long, and I have so many things to do that I go to bed every night miserable because I have left out something I meant to do. Good-bye, dear souls. Forget me if you like, you cannot oblige me to forget you; and the active is worth twice of the passive all the world over! The earth is covered with snow, and the government is levelling the fortifications.
Letter to the Brays, 28th Jan. 1850.
You leave me a long time without news of you, though I told you they were necessary as a counteractive to the horrors of this terrible winter. Are you really so occupied as to have absolutely no time to think of me? I console myself, at least to-day, now we have a blue sky once more after two months of mist, with thinking that I am excluded by pleasanter ideas—that at least you are well and comfortable, and I ought to content myself with that. The fact is, I am much of Touchstone's mind—in respect my life is at Geneva, I like it very well, but in respect it is not with you, it is a very vile life. I have no yearnings to exchange lake and mountains for Bishop Street and the Radford Fields, but I have a great yearning to kiss you all and talk to you for three days running. I do not think it will be possible for me to undertake the journey before the end of March. I look forward to it with great dread. I see myself looking utterly miserable, ready to leave all my luggage behind me at Paris for the sake of escaping the trouble of it. We have had Alboni here—a very fat siren. There has been some capital acting of comedies by friends of M. d'Albert—one of them is superior to any professional actor of comedy I have ever seen. He reads vaudevilles so marvellously that one seems to have a whole troupe of actors before one in his single person. He is a handsome man of fifty, full of wit and talent, and he married about a year ago.
Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 9th Feb. 1850.
It is one of the provoking contrarieties of destiny that I should have written my croaking letter when your own kind, consolatory one was on its way to me. I have been happier ever since it came. After mourning two or three months over Chrissey's account of your troubles, I can only dwell on that part of your letter which tells that there is a little more blue in your sky—that you have faith in the coming spring. Shall you be as glad to see me as to hear the cuckoo? I mean to return to England as soon as the Jura is passable without sledges—probably the end of March or beginning of April. I have a little Heimweh "as it regards" my friends. I yearn to see those I have loved the longest, but I shall feel
