On Monday then, if you do not hear—­to the contrary.

Papa has been walking to and fro in this room, looking thoughtfully and talking leisurely—­and every moment I have expected I confess, some word (that did not come) about Pisa.  Mr. Kenyon thinks it cannot end so—­and I do sometimes—­and in the meantime I do confess to a little ‘savageness’ also—­at heart!  All I asked him to say the other day, was that he was not displeased with me—­and he wouldn’t; and for me to walk across his displeasure spread on the threshold of the door, and moreover take a sister and brother with me, and do such a thing for the sake of going to Italy and securing a personal advantage, were altogether impossible, obviously impossible!  So poor Papa is quite in disgrace with me just now—­if he would but care for that!

May God bless you.  Amuse yourself well on Saturday.  I could not see you on Thursday any way, for Mr. Kenyon is here every day ... staying in town just on account of this Pisa business, in his abundant kindness....  On Monday then.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]

But you, too, will surely want, if you think me a rational creature, my explanation—­without which all that I have said and done would be pure madness, I think.  It is just ‘what I see’ that I do see,—­or rather it has proved, since I first visited you, that the reality was infinitely worse than I know it to be ... for at, and after the writing of that first letter, on my first visit, I believed—­through some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too—­that your complaint was of quite another nature—­a spinal injury irremediable in the nature of it.  Had it been so—­now speak for me, for what you hope I am, and say how that should affect or neutralize what you were, what I wished to associate with myself in you?  But as you now are:—­then if I had married you seven years ago, and this visitation came now first, I should be ’fulfilling a pious duty,’ I suppose, in enduring what could not be amended—­a pattern to good people in not running away ... for where were now the use and the good and the profit and—­

I desire in this life (with very little fluctuation for a man and too weak a one) to live and just write out certain things which are in me, and so save my soul.  I would endeavour to do this if I were forced to ‘live among lions’ as you once said—­but I should best do this if I lived quietly with myself and with you.  That you cannot dance like Cerito does not materially disarrange this plan—­nor that I might (beside the perpetual incentive and sustainment and consolation) get, over and above the main reward, the incidental, particular and unexpected happiness of being allowed when not working to rather occupy myself with watching you, than with certain other pursuits I might be otherwise addicted to—­this, also, does not constitute an obstacle, as I see obstacles.