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pitiable to have wings if it is only to break them against prison bars! I am alone in a hostile universe; my father, whom I love, does not understand me. I am not so very old, but already how many fair flowers of hope lie broken, how many dews have turned to floods of rain, how many pleasures have been frustrated, what despairs have embittered my life!
    Forgive me, beloved, for being so lugubrious—I suppose my “character is being formed.” My brain is in a ferment; my heart even more so, were that possible. Let us remain united for ever. Together we will steer clear of the rocks and reefs, and of the whirlpool men call pleasure.
    Everything has turned to ashes in my hands; but there remains the supreme delight of knowing I am yours, and of our secret, O chosen of my heart!!
    J.
    P.S. I end this letter in great haste, as I have my recitation to learn by heart and I don’t know a word of it yet, damn it!
    O my love, if I didn’t have you, I really think I’d kill myself!

    Daniel had replied immediately:

So you are suffering?
    Why should you, dearest of friends, why should you, who are so young, curse life? It’s sacrilege! You say your soul is tethered to the earth. Well, then—work, hope, love, read books!
    How can I console you for the sorrow that is preying on your soul? What remedy can I offer for your cries of despair? No, my friend, the Ideal is not incompatible with human nature. No, no, it is not a mere childish fancy, a phantom born of some poet’s dream. For me the Ideal (it’s hard to explain), for me it’s the mingling of what is greatest with the humblest earthly things; it is to bring greatness into all one does; it is the complete development of all those divine faculties that the Creative Breath has instilled in us. Do you understand me? That is the Ideal as I feel it in the depths of my heart.
    And then, if you will but trust a friend who is faithful unto death, who has lived much because he has dreamed and suffered so much; if you will trust your friend who has never wished anything but your happiness, let me remind you once again that you don’t live for those who cannot understand you, for the outside world that despises you, poor boy, but for someone—that “someone” is I—who never ceases thinking of you, and feeling like you, with you, about all things.
    O my friend, may the sweetness of our wonderful love be like a holy balm on your wounds.
    D.

    Instantly Jacques had scribbled in the margin:

Forgive me! It is the fault of my violent, extravagant, fantastical nature, dearest love!! I pass from the depths of despair to the most futile hopes; one moment I am in the abyss and the next carried aloft into the clouds! Am I then never to love anything continuously? (If it be not you!!) (And my Art!!!) Yes, such is my destiny—let me confess it … to you!
    I adore you for your generosity, for your flower-like sensitiveness, for the earnestness you impart to all your thoughts, to all your actions, even to the delights of love. All your tender emotions I share with you, at the selfsame moment as you feel them. Let us thank Providence that we love each other and that our lonely, suffering hearts have been able to mingle thus, indissolubly, flesh to flesh!
    Never forsake me.
    And let us both remember eternally that each has in the other
    the passionate object of
His Love
    J.
    There followed two long pages from Daniel, written in a bold, firm hand.

Tuesday, April 7.

My Friend,
Tomorrow I shall be fourteen. Last year I used to whisper to myself: “Fourteen!” It was like some lovely, impossible dream. Time passes and marks us. But in our depths nothing changes. We are always ourselves. Nothing has changed except that I feel weary and grown old.
Yesterday evening as I was going to bed I took up a volume of Musset. The last time I read it I began to tremble, at the first verse, and sometimes even wept. Yesterday for long sleepless hours I struggled to feel a thrill, but nothing came. I found