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Paris, Tuesday
February 2, 1886
My beloved sweet darling
You write so charmingly and sensibly and every time you speak your mind about something I feel soothed. I don't know how to thank you; I have recently decided to show you a special kind of consideration (you will laugh): by making up my mind not to be ill. For my tiredness is a sort of minor illness; neurasthenia, it is called; produced by the toils, the worries and excitements of these last years, and whenever I have been with you it has always left me as though touched by a magic wand. So I must aim at being with you very soon and for a long time, and since this is hardly possible except by marrying I must try soon to earn the famous 3000 florins a year; and as I am not unindustrious and the prospects aren't bad, I am not unhappy either and am not concerned about my nervousness.
I am delighted that you credit me with having remembered the fee.1 It really wasn't out of thoughtlessness but of decency that I