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August 10, 1894
Nothing could have given me
greater pleasure that to get news of you. The prospect
of remaining two months without hearing about you had
been extremely disagreeable to me: that is to say, your
little note was more than welcome.
I hope you are laying up a stock of good air and that
you will come back to us in October. As for me, I think
I shall not go anywhere; I shall stay in the country,
where I spend the whole day in front of my open window
or in the garden.
We have promised each other -- haven't we? -- to be at
least great friends. If you will only not change your
mind! For there are no promises that are binding; such
things cannot be ordered at will. It would be a fine
thing, just the same, in which I hardly dare believe, to
pass our lives near each other, hypnotized by our
dreams: your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream,
and our scientific dream.
Of all those dreams the last is, I believe, the only
legitimate one. I mean by that that we are powerless to
change the social order and, even if we were not, we
should not know what to do; in taking action, no matter
in what direction, we should never be sure of not doing
more harm than good, by retarding some inevitable
evolution. From the scientific point of view, on the
contrary, we may hope to do something; the ground is
solider here, and any discovery that we may make,
however small, will remain acquired knowledge.
See how it works out: it is agreed that we shall be
great friends, but if you leave France in a year it
would be an altogether too Platonic friendship, that of
two creatures who would never see each other again.
Wouldn't it be better for you to stay with me? I know
that this question angers you, and that you don't want
to speak of it again -- and then, too, I feel so
thoroughly unworthy of you from every point of view.
I thought of asking your permission to meet you by
chance in Fribourg. But you are staying there, unless I
am mistaken, only one day, and on that day you will of
course belong to our friends the Kovalskis.
Believe me your very
devoted
Peirre Curie
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