My dearest Teresa,
I have read this book in your garden;--my love, you were absent,
or else I could not have read it.
It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine.
You will not understand these English words, and others will not
understand them,--which is the reason I have not
scrawled them in Italian.
But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately
loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours,
he could only think of love.
In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in
yours--Amor mio--is comprised my existence here and hereafter.
I feel I exist here, and I feel I shall exist hereafter,--to what
purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a
woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent.
I wish that you had staid there, with all my heart,--or, at least,
that I had never met you in your married state.
But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me,--at least,
you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great
consolation in all events.
But I more than love you, and cannot
cease to love you.
Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us,--but
they never will, unless you wish it.
~
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