Page 670 - the-idiot

could; but, oh! I am not putting myself on a level with you!—
Look at the signature—quick, look at the signature!’
‘However, observe’ (she wrote in another of the letters),
‘that although I couple you with him, yet I have not once
asked you whether you love him. He fell in love with you,
though he saw you but once. He spoke of you as of ‘the light.’
These are his own words—I heard him use them. But I un-
derstood without his saying it that you were all that light is
to him. I lived near him for a whole month, and I under-
stood then that you, too, must love him. I think of you and
him as one.’
‘What was the matter yesterday?’ (she wrote on another
sheet). ‘I passed by you, and you seemed to me to BLUSH.
Perhaps it was only my fancy. If I were to bring you to the
most loathsome den, and show you the revelation of undis-
guised vice—you should not blush. You can never feel the
sense of personal affront. You may hate all who are mean,
or base, or unworthy—but not for yourself—only for those
whom they wrong. No one can wrong YOU. Do you know,
I think you ought to love me—for you are the same in my
eyes as in his-you are as light. An angel cannot hate, per-
haps cannot love, either. I often ask myself—is it possible to
love everybody? Indeed it is not; it is not in nature. Abstract
love of humanity is nearly always love of self. But you are
different. You cannot help loving all, since you can com-
pare with none, and are above all personal offence or anger.
Oh! how bitter it would be to me to know that you felt anger
or shame on my account, for that would be your fall—you
would become comparable at once with such as me.