One final word on the other matters—­the ’worldly matters’—­I shall own I alluded to them rather ostentatiously, because—­because that would be the one poor sacrifice I could make you—­one I would cheerfully make, but a sacrifice, and the only one:  this careless ’sweet habitude of living’—­this absolute independence of mine, which, if I had it not, my heart would starve and die for, I feel, and which I have fought so many good battles to preserve—­for that has happened, too—­this light rational life I lead, and know so well that I lead; this I could give up for nothing less than—­what you know—­but I would give it up, not for you merely, but for those whose disappointment might re-act on you—­and I should break no promise to myself—­the money getting would not be for the sake of it; ’the labour not for that which is nought’—­indeed the necessity of doing this, if at all, now, was one of the reasons which make me go on to that last request of all—­at once; one must not be too old, they say, to begin their ways.  But, in spite of all the babble, I feel sure that whenever I make up my mind to that, I can be rich enough and to spare—­because along with what you have thought genius in me, is certainly talent, what the world recognizes as such; and I have tried it in various ways, just to be sure that I was a little magnanimous in never intending to use it.  Thus, in more than one of the reviews and newspapers that laughed my ‘Paracelsus’ to scorn ten years ago—­in the same column, often, of these reviews, would follow a most laudatory notice of an Elementary French book, on a new plan, which I ‘did’ for my old French master, and he published—­’that was really an useful work’!—­So that when the only obstacle is only that there is so much per annum to be producible, you will tell me.  After all it would be unfair in me not to confess that this was always intended to be my own single stipulation—­’an objection’ which I could see, certainly,—­but meant to treat myself to the little luxury of removing.

So, now, dearest—­let me once think of that, and of you as my own, my dearest—­this once—­dearest, I have done with words for the present.  I will wait.  God bless you and reward you—­I kiss your hands now.  This is my comfort, that if you accept my feeling as all but unexpressed now, more and more will become spoken—­or understood, that is—­we both live on—­you will know better what it was, how much and manifold, what one little word had to give out.

God bless you—­

Your R.B.

On Thursday,—­you remember?

This is Tuesday Night—­

I called on Saturday at the Office in St. Mary Axe—­all uncertainty about the vessel’s sailing again for Leghorn—­it could not sail before the middle of the month—­and only then if &c.  But if I would leave my card &c. &c.

E.B.B. to R.B.