ABSTRACT
Your last letter but one gave me great qualms of conscience about Charlotte. I feel that I have got into a position with that woman which makes my conduct look false in my own eyes. While I make fun of her with you, I send her from time to time, out of decency, letters filled with affectionate and grandiloquent nonsense, and if anyone compared my letters to her with my letters about her, I would rightly be considered an evil and treacherous lunatic. Either I must have nothing further to do with her, or stop making fun of her to you or anyone else. And, since I don’t want to break off relations with her, I must adopt the latter course. So can I ask you-and I think I have a right to ask it of you-to burn what I’ve written about her? Thanks to what I say about myself I am already run down enough by people without needing to be criticized still more.
