Since your letter on March 6, I have not received a letter from you. If I were lying at your door, dying of hunger and thirst, would you not give me the means to satisfy those needs? My need to receive news of you, from you, in your handwriting, is as urgent as my need to eat and drink. I am, by the way, neither a glutton nor a drunk; I would be satisfied to have a note from you which assured me that you are about as happy as one can be, that you remember me, that you still love me: why no word since March 6?

I thank you for the vote that you kindly granted me for my admission to your honorable philosophical society. It could only have been resolved on your testimony, and your indulgence will have concealed my lack of worth. Kindly agree to pass on my thanks, to assure this wise company of my respect, and to promise them for me that I will strive to supplement by my enthusiasm the merit required for the honor they have done me. It will a pleasure and a responsibility to be their correspondent; the society may write me in English so long as I am permitted to answer in French.

My wife' s heart is also quite heavy from your long silence. She says there is a kind of piracy in making oneself loved so much and so faithfully by those whom one forgets so quickly.

My son has just lost M. Alex. Nairac, whom he was with in Bordeaux; this death has made his future worrisome, and it saddens us greatly.

Adieu, my dear and very honorable friend; we embrace you nevertheless, and we will always love you