As it will be necessary for me, my dear friend, to leave for America one day, without the hope of ever seeing you again, I have sometimes had the thought that it would be prudent for me to detach myself from you by degrees: at first, to see you only once a week; after that, only once every two weeks, once a month, etc., etc., in order to reduce, little by little, the immoderate desire that I always feel for your enchanting company, and by this means to avoid the great pain that I must otherwise suffer at our final separation. But as I make experiments on a small scale, I find that absence, instead of reducing this desire, augments it. The pain that I fear is thus without remedy, and I will come to see you tonight.