reat. My
love is selfish; I cannot breathe without you."

(II.)

[Date uncertain--say towards June 15, 1820.]

"My dearest Fanny,--My head is puzzled this morning, and I scarce
know what I shall say, though I am full of a hundred things. 'Tis
certain I would rather be writing to you this morning,
notwithstanding the alloy of grief in such an occupation, than
enjoy any other pleasure, with health to boot, unconnected with
you. Upon my soul I have loved you to the extreme. I wish you
could know the tenderness with which I continually brood over
your different aspects of countenance, action, and dress. I see
you come down in the morning; I see you meet me at the window; I
see everything over again eternally that I ever have seen. If I
get on the pleasant clue, I live in a sort of happy misery; if on
the unpleasant, 'tis miserable misery.

"You complain of my ill-treating you in word, thought, and
deed.[7] I am sorry--at times I feel bitterly sorry that I ever
made you unhappy. My excuse is that those words have been wrung
from me by the sharpness of my feelings. At all events, and in
any case, I have been wrong: could I believe that I did it
without any cause, I should be the most sincere of penitents. I
could give way to my repentant feelings now, I could recant all
my suspicions, I could mingle with you heart and soul, though
absent, were it not for some parts of your letters. Do you
suppose it possible I could ever leave you? You know what I think
of myself, and what of you: you know that I should feel how much
it was my loss, and how little yours.

"'My friends laugh at you.' I know some of them: when I know them
all, I shall never think of them again as friends, or even
acquaintance. My friends have behaved well to me in every
instance but one; and there they have become tattlers, and
inquisitors into my conduct--spying upon a secret I would rather
die than share it with anybody's confidence. For this I cannot
wish them well; I care not to see any of them again. If I am the
theme, I will not be the friend of idle gossips. Good gods, what
a shame it is our loves should be so put into the microscope of a
coterie! Their laughs should not affect you--(I may perhaps give
you reasons some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people
to hate me well enough, _for reasons I know of_, who have
preten