when it will be disagreeable or even mortifying if you are unfamiliar
with French. I do not know, indeed, to what degree this is true of
you, but reading is in any case a way to keep what you have and to
acquire more. If it pleases you, we shall find a way for you to become
more fluent in talking, than, as you say, you are now. If you do not
like it, rely with entire confidence on the preface to my request.

I wrote to poor Moritz yesterday, and, after reading your description
of his sadness, my letter lies like a stone on my conscience, for,
like a heartless egotist, I mocked his pain by describing my
happiness, and in five pages did not refer to his mourning by even a
syllable, speaking of myself again and again, and using him as
father-confessor. He is an awkward comforter who does not himself feel
pain sympathetically, or not vividly enough. My first grief was the
passionate, selfish one at the loss I had sustained; for Marie,[11] so
far as she is concerned, I do not feel it, because I know that she is
well provided for, but that my sympathy with the suffering of my
warmest friend, to whom I owe eternal thanks, is not strong enough to
produce a word of comfort, of strong consolation from overflowing
feeling, that burdens me sorely. Weep not, my angel; let your sympathy
be strong and full of confidence in God; give him real consolation
with encouragement, not with tears, and, if you can, doubly, for
yourself and for your thankless friend whose heart is just now filled
with you and has room for nothing else. Are you a withered leaf, a
faded garment? I will see whether my love can foster the verdure once
more, can brighten up the colors. You must put forth fresh leaves, and
the old ones I shall lay between the pages of the book of my heart so
that we may find them when we read there, as tokens of fond
recollection. You have fanned to life again the coal that under ashes
and débris still glowed in me; it shall envelop you in life-giving