The month of September was drawing to a close. Julie wrote me that her
anxiety on the score of her husband's daily declining health (O pious
fraud of love to conceal her own sufferings and lighten my cares) would
detain her longer in Paris than she had expected. She pressed me to
start at once, and await her in Savoy, where she would join me without
fail towards the end of October. The letter was one of tender advice,
as that of a sister to a beloved brother. She implored and ordered me,
with the sovereign authority of love, to beware of that insidious
disease which lurks beneath the flowery surface of youth, and often
withers and consumes us at the very moment we think that we have
overcome its power. Enclosed, she sent a consultation and a
prescription from good Dr. Alain, ordering me in the most imperative
terms, and with most alarming threats, to remain during a long season
at the baths of Aix. I showed this prescription to my mother, to
account for my departure, and she was so disquieted by it that she
added her entreaties to the injunctions of the doctor to induce me to
go.
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