I hate my health!

_Later_.

Noemi, could you not contrive to let the enclosed half-sheet of paper,
upon which I have written in pencil, fall into _his_ hands? You hesitate
to tell him how obedient I am; could you not, at least, help me to let
him know it in this way?

I am not satisfied with your letters, first of all because they are too
short. You know how eager I am to hear all about him. He is a guest in
the same house with you; at Subiaco he can surely not know how to
employ his time, and you sum up everything in two or three words!--He
is better. He reads a great deal. He has been working in the
kitchen-garden. Perhaps he will spend the summer with us. He
writes.--And you have never yet told me what malady he is really
suffering from, what he reads, where he will go if he does not spend the
summer with you, whether he writes letters or books, and what you talk
about together, for it is not possible that you never talk together. Do
not repeat your excuse that the less you speak of him, the better it
is for me. That is a convenient excuse you have invented, but it is
foolish, because, whether you talk to me of him or not, it is all the
same. My hopes are quite dead; they will not revive. Then write me long
letters, I am sure he wishes to convert you, that you have very serious
talks together, and that is why you tell me so little about him. It
would not be a very glorious achievement to convert _you_, for you are
sentimental in matters of religion; you do not possess that clear, cold,
and positive insight which is, unfortunately, natural to me, and which I
wish _I_ did not possess.

When do you intend to return to Belgium? Do not your affairs there
need your attention? You once mentioned an agent in whom you had little
confidence. We shall probably travel in August. At least, that is what
Carlino says at present, but he changes his mind very easily. I should
like to visit Holland with you, in September. Good-bye! Please write.
If he reads much you might get him to lend you a book, and leave the
half-sheet of paper in it as a book-mark, At any rate, find some way.
That or something else; you are a woman! Contrive some means, if you
love me! But I really believe you no longer love me at all! You would
confess it if you told the truth! However, there is a lady at this hotel
who is in love with me! Laugh, if you like, but it is true. She lives in
Rome. Her husband is Under-Secretary of State. She is determined th