VILLA D'-----, A------.

I can never express to you, my beloved Eulalie, the strange charm which a
letter from you throws over my poor little lonely world for days after it
is received. There is always in it something that comforts, something
that sustains, but also a something that troubles and disquiets me. I
suppose Goethe is right, "that it is the property of true genius to
disturb all settled ideas," in order, no doubt, to lift them into a
higher level when they settle down again.

Your sketch of the new work you are meditating amid the orange groves of
Provence interests me intensely; yet, do you forgive me when I add that
the interest is not without terror? I do not find myself able to
comprehend how, amid those lovely scenes of Nature, your mind voluntarily
surrounds itself with images of pain and discord. I stand in awe of the
calm with which you subject to your analysis the infirmities of reason
and the tumults of passion. And all those laws of the social state which
seem to me so fixed and immovable you treat with so quiet a scorn, as if
they were but the gossamer threads which a touch of your slight woman's
hand could brush away. But I cannot venture to discuss such subjects
with you. It is only the skilled enchanter who can stand safely in the
magic circle, and compel the spirits that he summons, even if they are
evil, to minister to ends in which he foresees a good.

We continue to live here very quietly, and I do not as yet feel the worse
for the colder climate. Indeed, my wonderful doctor, who was recommended
to me as American, but is in reality English, assures me that a single
winter spent here under his care will suffice for my complete
re-establishment. Yet that career, to the training for which so many
years have been devoted, does not seem to me so alluring as it once did.