The Letter


If you ask me why it is now three weeks since I received your letter
and why it is only today that I answer it, I must tell you the truth
lest further things I may have to tell you should not be worthy of your
dignity or of mine. It was because at first I dared not, then later I
reasoned with myself, and so bred delay, and at last took refuge in more
delay. I will offer no excuse: I will not tell you that I suffered
illness, or that some accident of war had taken me away from this old
house, or that I have but just returned from a journey to my hill and my
view over the Plain and the great River.

Your messenger I have kept, and I have entertained him well. I looked at
him a little narrowly at his first coming, thinking perhaps he might be
a gentleman of yours, but I soon found that he was not such, and that he
bore no disguise, but was a plain rider of your household. I put him in
good quarters by the Hunting Stables. He has had nothing to do but to
await my resolution, which is now at last taken, and which you receive
in this.

But how shall I begin, or how express to you what not distance but a
slow and bitter conclusion of the mind has done?

I shall not return to Meudon. I shall not see the woods, the summer
woods turning to autumn, nor follow the hunt, nor take pleasure again in
what is still the best of Europe at Versailles. And now that I have said
it, you must read it so; for I am unalterably determined. Believe me, it
is something much more deep than courtesy which compels me to give you