I write to you. It’s all I can do. And now I know it’s in your power to punish my presuming heart. Yet if you have one drop of pity, you’ll not abandon me to my unhappy fate. I am in love with you and I must tell you this or my heart, my heart which belongs to you will surely break. I’d have never revealed my shame to you, if just once a week I might see you, exchange a word or two, and then think day and night of one thing alone till our next meeting. But you are unsocial they say that the country bore you. Is it true? Does the country bore you? Sometimes I wonder that you ever visited us. Why? I never know you or know this agony and fever. I know that all my life’s been leading me to this union with you. I recognize you at first sight and knew with certainty and say to myself: “it’s him, he’s come.” Help me. Resolve my doubts. Perhaps this is all nonsense, emptiness, a delusion, and quite another fate await me. Imagine it. I’m here alone, half out of my mind. I dread to read this over. My secret longing. I know that I can trust your honor, though I feel faint from shame and fear.
I can foresee the bitter scorn blazing at me from your proud eyes, when you have read my secret sorrow. When we first met, through chance, I saw tenderness, like a shooting star, but did not dare to put my faith to it. Then Lensky fell, which parted us still further. Then I tore my heart away from everything it loved, rootless, estranged from all I thought that liberty and peace would serve, instead of happiness. My god! How wrong I was! How I’ve been punished. No. Day by day to be with you, follow you everywhere, alive to every smile, each movement of your eyes, dwell upon your soul’s perfection, listen to your voice, grow faint with yearning. That is bliss. And I’m cut off from it. My time is short and each day and hour is precious. Yet I just drag myself around in boredom. Every day a desert, unless, when I wake up, I know the day will bring a glimpse of you. If you but knew the flames that burn in me, which I attempt to beat down with my reason. But let it be. I cannot struggle against my feelings anymore. I am entirely in your will.
