How your account of the actors in the ‘Love’s Labour Lost’ amused me!  I rather like, though, the notion of that steady, business-like pursuit of love under difficulties; and the sobbing proves something surely!  Serjt.  Talfourd says—­is it not he who says it?—­’All tears are not for sorrow.’  I should incline to say, from my own feeling, that no tears were.  They only express joy in me, or sympathy with joy—­and so is it with you too, I should think.

Understand that I do not disbelieve in Mesmerism—­I only object to insufficient evidence being put forward as quite irrefragable.  I keep an open sense on the subject—­ready to be instructed; and should have refused such testimony as Miss Martineau’s if it had been adduced in support of something I firmly believed—­’non tali auxilio’—­indeed, so has truth been harmed, and only so, from the beginning.  So, I shall read what you bid me, and learn all I can.

I am not quite so well this week—­yesterday some friends came early and kept me at home—­for which I seem to suffer a little; less, already, than in the morning—­so I will go out and walk away the whirring ... which is all the mighty ailment.  As for ‘Luria’ I have not looked at it since I saw you—­which means, saw you in the body, because last night I saw you; as I wonder if you know!

Thursday, and again I am with you—­and you will forget nothing ... how the farewell is to be returned?  Ah, my dearest, sweetest Ba; how entirely I love you!

May God bless you ever—­

R.

2. p.m.  Your parcel arrives ... the penholder; now what shall I say?  How am I to use so fine a thing even in writing to you?  I will give it you again in our Isle, and meantime keep it where my other treasures are—­my letters and my dear ringlet.

Thank you—­all I can thank.

R.B. to E.B.B.

                              Wednesday.
                              [Post-mark, January 28, 1846.]

Ever dearest—­I will say, as you desire, nothing on that subject—­but this strictly for myself:  you engaged me to consult my own good in the keeping or breaking our engagement; not your good as it might even seem to me; much less seem to another.  My only good in this world—­that against which all the world goes for nothing—­is to spend my life with you, and be yours.  You know that when I claim anything, it is really yourself in me—­you give me a right and bid me use it, and I, in fact, am most obeying you when I appear most exacting on my own account—­so, in that feeling, I dare claim, once for all, and in all possible cases (except that dreadful one of your becoming worse again ... in which case I wait till life ends with both of us), I claim your promise’s fulfilment—­say, at the summer’s end:  it cannot be for your good that this state of things should continue.  We can go to Italy for a year or two and be happy as day and night are long.