must close my letter quickly.
Beloved, take care of your head! Ah, do not write poems, nor read, nor
neglect the walking, nor take that shower-bath. _Will_ you, instead,
try the warm bathing? Surely the experiment is worth making for a
little while. Dearest beloved, do it for your own

BA.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, March 6, 1846.]

I am altogether your own, dearest--the words were only words and the
playful feelings were play--while the _fact_ has always been so
irresistibly obvious as to make them _break_ on and off it,
fantastically like water turning to spray and spurts of foam on a
great solid rock. _Now_ you call the rock, a rock, but you must have
known what chance you had of pushing it down when you sent all those
light fancies and free-leaves, and refusals-to-hold-responsible, to do
what they could. It _is_ a rock; and may be quite barren of good to
you,--not large enough to build houses on, not small enough to make a
mantelpiece of, much less a pedestal for a statue, but it is real
rock, that is all.

It is always _I_ who 'torment' _you_--instead of taking the present
and blessing you, and leaving the future to its own cares. I certainly
am not apt to look curiously into what next week is to bring, much
less next month or six months, but you, the having you, my own,
dearest beloved, _that_ is as different in kind as in degree from any
other happiness or semblance of it that even seemed possible of
realization. Then, now, the health is all to stay, or retard us--oh,
be well, my Ba!

Let me speak of that letter--I am ashamed at having mentioned those
circumstances, and should not have done so, but for their
insignificance--for I knew that if you ever _did_ hear of them, all
any body _would_ say would not amount to enough to be repeated to me
and so get explained at once. Now that the purpose is gained, it seems
little worth gaining. You bade me not send the letter: I will not.

As for 'what people say'--ah--Here lies a book, Bartoli's 'Simboli'
and this morning I dipped into his Chapter XIX. His 'Symbol' is
'Socrate fatto ritrar su' Boccali' and the theme of his dissertating,
'L'indegnita del mettere in disprezzo i piu degni filosofi
dell'antichita.' He sets out by enlarging on the horror of it--then
describes the character of Socrates, then tells the story o