DO but think, my love, how much thou wert wanting in foresight. Ah! unfortunate, thou wert betrayed, and thou didst betray me with illusive hopes. A passion on which thou didst rest so many prospects of pleasure now only causes thee a deadly despair, which is like nothing else but the cruelty of the absence which occasions it. What! must this absence, to which my sorrow, all ingenious though it be, cannot give a sad enough name, deprive me for ever of a sight of those eyes in which I was wont to see so much love, which made me feel so full of joy, which took the place of all else to me, and which, in a word, were all that I desired? Mine eyes, alas! have lost the only light that gave them life, tears alone are left them, and ceaseless weeping is the sole employment I have given them since I learned that you were bent upon a separation so unbearable to me that it must soon bring about my death. But yet it seems to me that I cling in some sort to the sorrows of which you are the sole cause. I consecrated my life to you from the moment when I first saw you, and I feel a certain pleasure in sacrificing it to you. I send you my sighs a thousand times each day, they seek you everywhere, and as sole recompense of so much disquietude they bring me back a warning too true, alas, of my unhappiness: an unhappiness which is cruel enough to prevent me from flattering myself with hope, and which is ever calling to me—Cease, cease to wear thyself out in vain, ill-fated Marianna, cease looking for a lover whom thou wilt never see again, who has crossed the seas to fly from thee, who is now in France in the midst of pleasures, who is not thinking for one moment on thy sorrows, who would not thank thee for these pangs for which he feels no gratitude. But no, I cannot make up my mind to think so ill of you, and I am too much concerned that you should right yourself. I do not even wish to think that you have forgotten me. Am I not unhappy enough already without torturing myself with false suspicions? And why should I try so hard to forget all the care you took to prove your love for me? I was so enchanted with it all that I should be ungrateful indeed were I not still to love you with the same transports that my passion lent me when I enjoyed the pledges of your love. How can the memory of moments so sweet have become so bitter? And, contrary to their nature, must they serve only to tyrannise over my heart? Alas, poor heart! your last letter brought it into a strange state; it endured such strong pangs that it seemed to be trying to tear itself from me to go and seek for you. I was so overcome by all these violent emotions that I was beside myself for more than three hours.[25] It was as though I refused to come back to a life which I feel bound to lose for you since I cannot preserve it for you. In spite of myself, however, I became myself again; I flattered myself with the feeling that I was dying of love, and besides, I was well pleased at the thought of being no longer obliged to see my heart torn by grief at your absence. Ever since those first symptoms I have suffered much from ill-health, but can I ever be well again until I see you? And yet I am bearing it without a murmur since it comes from you. What! is this the reward you give me for loving you so tenderly? But it matters not; I am resolved to adore you all my life and to care for no one else, and I tell you that you too will do well to love no other. Could you ever content yourself with a love colder than mine? You will perhaps find more beauty elsewhere (yet you told me once that I was very beautiful), but you will never find so much love: and all the rest is nothing. Do not fill any more of your letters with trifles: and do not write and tell me again to remember you. I cannot forget you, and as little do I forget the hope you gave me that you would come and spend some time with me. Alas! why are you not willing to pass your whole life at my side? Could I leave this unhappy cloister I should not await in Portugal the fulfilment of your promises. I should go fearlessly over the whole world seeking you, following you, and loving you. I dare not flatter myself that this can be. I do not care to feed a hope that would certainly give me some pleasure, while I wish to feel nothing but sorrow. Yet I confess the chance of writing to you which my brother gave me suddenly aroused in me a certain feeling of joy, and checked for a time the despair in which I live. I conjure you to tell me why you set yourself to bewitch me as you did, when you well knew that you would have to forsake me. Why were you so bent on making me unhappy? Why did you not leave me at peace in my cloister? Had I done you any wrong? But I ask your pardon. I am not accusing you. I am not in a state to think on vengeance, and I only blame the harshness of my fate. It seems to me that in separating us it has done us all the harm that we could fear from it. It will not succeed in separating our hearts,—for love, more powerful than it, has united them for ever. If you take any interest in my lot write to me often. I well deserve your taking some pains to let me know the state of your heart and fortune. Above all, come and see me. Good-bye. I cannot make up my mind to part from this letter. It will fall into your hands: would I might have the same happiness! Ah, how foolish I am! I know so well that this is impossible. Good-bye. I can no more. Good-bye. Love me always and make me suffer still more.

SECOND LETTER[26]

YOUR lieutenant has just told me that a storm has forced you to put into port in the Algarve.[27] I am afraid you have suffered much on the sea, and so much has this fear absorbed me that I have thought no more on all my troubles. Do you think, perchance, that your lieutenant takes more interest in what happens to you than I do? If not, why then is he better informed of it? And then, why have you not written to me? I am unlucky indeed if you have found no time for writing since you left, and still more so if you could have written and would not. Your injustice and ingratitude are too great; but I should be in despair if they were to cause you any harm. I had rather you should remain unpunished than that they should avenge me. I withstand all the appearances which ought to persuade me that you do not love me at all, and I feel much more disposed to yield myself blindly to my passion than to the reasons you give me to complain of your neglect. What mortification you would have spared me, if, in the days when I first saw you, your conduct had been as cold as it has seemed to me for some time now! But who would not have been deceived by such ardour as you then showed, and who would not have thought it sincere? How hard it is to make up one’s mind to doubt for any time the sincerity of those one loves! I see clearly that the least excuse is good enough for you; and, without your troubling to make it to me, my love for you serves you so faithfully that I cannot consent to find you guilty, except for the sake of enjoying the infinite pleasure of declaring you guiltless myself. You overcame me by your assiduities, you kindled my passions with your transports, your tenderness fascinated me, your vows persuaded me, but it was the violence of my own love which led me away; and this beginning at once so sweet and so happy, has left nothing behind it but tears, sighs, and a wretched death, without the possibility of my ministering any relief to myself. It is true that in loving you I enjoyed a pleasure unthought of before, but this very pleasure is now costing me a sorrow, which once I knew nothing of. All the emotions which you cause me run to extremes. If I had shown obstinacy in resisting your love, if I had given you any motive for anger or jealousy in order to draw you on the more, if you had detected any artifice in my conduct, if, in a word, I had wished to oppose my reason to the natural inclination I felt for you, and which you soon made me perceive (though doubtless my efforts would have been useless), you might then have punished me severely and used your power over me with some show of justice. But you seemed to me worthy of my love before you had told me that you loved me: you gave evidence of a great passion for me: I was overjoyed at it, and I gave myself up to love you to distraction. You were not blinded as I was. Why then did you let me fall into the state in which I now am? What did you want with all my raptures, which must have been very troublesome to you? You well knew that you would not stay in Portugal for ever. Then why did you single me out to make me so unhappy? Doubtless you might, in this country, have found some woman more beautiful than I am, one with whom you could have enjoyed as much pleasure,—since in this you only sought the grosser kind—one who would have loved you faithfully as long as you were with her, whom time would have consoled for your absence, and whom you might have left without either treachery or cruelty. You act more like a tyrant bent on persecution than a lover whose only thought should be how to please. Alas! why do you treat so harshly a heart which is yours? I can see very well that you let yourself be turned against me as easily as I let myself be convinced in your favour. Without needing to call on all my love, and without imagining that I had done anything out of the way, I should have resisted much stronger arguments than those can be which have moved you to leave me. They would have seemed to me very weak, and none could have been strong enough to tear me from your side. But you were ready to make use of the first pretexts that you found in order to get back to France. A vessel was sailing. Why did you not let it sail? Your family had written to you. Surely you know all the persecutions which I have suffered from mine? Your honour obliged you to abandon me. Did I take any care of mine? You were forced to go and serve your king. If all they say of him is true he has no need of your help, and would have excused you. I should have been only too happy if we could have passed our whole lives together, but since it was fated that a cruel absence should separate us, I think I ought to be glad indeed at the thought of not having been faithless, and I would not wish to have committed such a base act for anything in the world. What! you who have known the depths of my heart and affection, could you make up your mind to leave me for ever and expose me to the dread of feeling that you only remember me in order to sacrifice me to some new passion?

I well know that I love you as one distracted. Withal I do not complain of all the violence of my heart’s emotions; I am accustoming myself to its tortures, and I could not live without the pleasure which I find and enjoy in loving you in the midst of a thousand sorrows. But a disgust and hatred for everything torments me constantly; I feel my family, my friends, and this convent unbearable. All I am forced to see and everything I am obliged to do is hateful to me. I have grown so jealous of my passion that methinks all my actions and all my duties have regard to you. Yes, I have scruples in not employing every moment of my life for you. Ah! what should I do without the extremities of hate and love which fill my heart? Could I survive that which incessantly fills my thoughts, and lead a quiet cold life? Such a void, and such a lack of feeling, could never suit me. All have noticed how completely I am changed in my humour, my manners, and my person. My mother[28] spoke to me about it, sharply at first, but afterwards more kindly. I know not what I said in reply. I think I confessed all to her. Even the strictest religious pity my condition, and are moved by a certain consideration and regard for me. Every one, in fact, is touched by my love: and you alone remain profoundly indifferent. You write me letters at once cold and full of repetitions; the paper is not half filled, and you make it quite clear that you are dying to finish them.

Dona Brites has been importuning me for several days to get me to leave my room, and thinking to divert me she took me for a walk upon the balcony, from which one sees the gates of Mertola.[29] I went with her, but at once cruel memories assailed me, and these made me weep for the rest of the day. She brought me back to my room, and there I threw myself on the bed and thought a thousand times on the little hope I have of ever being well again. What is done to alleviate only embitters my grief, and I find in the very remedies themselves particular reasons for fresh sorrows. It was from that spot that I often saw you pass by with that air which charmed me so, and I was up on that balcony on the fatal day when I began to feel the first effects of my unhappy passion. Methought you were wishing to please me, although as yet you did not know me. I persuaded myself that you singled me out among all my companions. When you paused I thought you were pleased for me to see you better and admire your skill and grace whilst you caracoled your horse. A sudden fright came over me when you made it go over some difficult place. In a word, I interested myself secretly in every act of yours. I felt quite sure you were not indifferent to me, and I took as meant for me all that you did. You know too well what came of all this; and although I have nothing to hide, I ought not to write to you so much about it, lest I make you more guilty than you are already, if that be possible, and lest I have to reproach myself with so many useless efforts to oblige you to be faithful. This you will never be. Can I ever hope that my letters and reproaches will have an effect on your ingratitude that my love for you and your desertion of me have not had? I know my sad fate too well: your injustice leaves me not the slightest reason to doubt of it, and I am bound to fear the worst, since you have cast me off. Have you a charm only for me, and do not other eyes find you pleasing? I should not be annoyed, I think, were the feelings of others in some sort to justify mine, and I would wish all the women in France to find you agreeable, but none to love you, none please you. This idea is ridiculous and impossible I well know. I have already, however, found by experience that you are incapable of a great affection, and that you could easily forget me without any help, and without a fresh love obliging you to it. I would, perhaps, wish you to have some reasonable pretext for your desertion of me. It is true that I should then be more unhappy, but you would not be so guilty. You mean to stay in France, I perceive, without great enjoyments, may be, but in the possession of full liberty. The fatigue of a long voyage, some punctilios of good manners, and the fear of not being able to correspond to my ardent passion, keep you there. Oh do not be afraid of me; I will be content with seeing you from time to time, and knowing only that we are in the same country; but perhaps I flatter myself, and may be you will be more touched by the rigour and hardness of another woman than you have been by all my favours. Can it be that cruelty will inflame you more?

But before engaging yourself in any great passion, think well on the excess of my sorrows, on the uncertainty of my purposes, on the contradictions in my emotions, on the extravagance of my letters, on my trustfulness, my despair, my desires, and my jealousy. Oh! you are on the way to make yourself unhappy. I conjure you to profit by my example, that at least what I am suffering for you may not be useless to you. Five or six months ago you told me a secret which troubled me, and acknowledged, only too frankly, that you had once loved a lady in your own country. If it is she who prevents you from returning here, do not scruple to tell me, that I may fret no more. I am borne up by some remnants of hope still, but I should be well pleased, if it can have no good result, to lose it at a blow, and myself with it. Send me her likeness and some one of her letters, and write me all she says. Perchance I shall find reasons wherewith to console myself, or it may be to afflict myself still more. I cannot remain any longer in my present state, and any change whatsoever must be to my advantage. I should also like to have the portrait of your brother and of your sister-in-law.[30] All that concerns you is very dear to me, and I am wholly given up to what touches you in any way: I have no inclination of my own left. Sometimes, methinks, I could even submit to wait upon her whom you love. Your bad treatment and disdain have broken me down so far that at times I do not dare to think I could be jealous and yet not displease you, and I go so far as to think that I should be doing the greatest wrong in the world were I to upbraid you. I am often convinced that I ought not to let you see, so madly as I do, feelings which you disown. An officer has now been waiting long for this letter. I had resolved to write it in such a way that you might receive it without annoyance, but as it is, it is too extravagant, and I must close it. Alas! I cannot bring myself to this. I seem to be speaking to you whilst I write, and you seem to be more present to me. The next[31] letter shall neither be so long nor so troublesome; you may open and read it assured of this. It is true that I ought not to speak of a passion which displeases you, and I will not speak of it again. In a few days it will be a year since I gave myself up to you without reserve. Your love seemed to me very warm and sincere, and I should never have thought that my favours would so annoy you as to oblige you to voyage five hundred leagues and expose yourself to the risk of shipwreck to escape from them. I have not deserved such treatment as this at any man’s hands. You may remember my modesty, my shame, and my confusion, but you do not remember what would make you love me in spite of yourself. The officer who is to carry you this letter sends to me for the fourth time to say that he wishes to be gone. How pressing he is! doubtless he is leaving some unhappy lady in this country.

Good-bye. It costs me more to finish this letter than it cost you to quit me, perhaps for ever. Good-bye. I do not dare give you a thousand names of love, nor abandon myself to all my feelings without restraint. I love you a thousand times more than my life, and a thousand times more than I think for. How dear you are to me, and yet how cruel! You do not write to me. I could not help saying this to you again. But I am beginning afresh, and the officer will be gone. What matters it? Let him go. ’Tis not so much for your sake that I write as for my own. I only seek some solace. Besides, the very length of my letter will frighten you, and you will not read it. What have I done to be so unhappy? And why have you poisoned my life? Why was I not born in some other country? Good-bye, and forgive me. I dare not now pray you to love me. See to what my fate has brought me. Good-bye!

THIRD LETTER

WHAT will become of me, and what would you have me do? How far I am now from all that I had looked forward to! I hoped that you would write me from every place you passed through, and that your letters would be very long ones,—that you would feed my love by the hope of seeing you again, that full trust in your fidelity would give me some sort of rest, and that I should then remain in a state bearable enough, and without the extremes of sorrow. I had even thought of some poor plans of endeavouring, as far as possible, my own cure, in case I could but once assure myself that you had entirely forgotten me. The distance which you are at, certain impulses of devotion, the fear of entirely destroying the remainder of my health by so many wakeful nights and so many cares, the improbability of your return, the coldness of your love, and your last good-byes, your departure based on such cruel pretexts, and a thousand other reasons which are only too good and too useless, seemed to offer me a safe refuge if I needed one. Having indeed only myself to reckon with, I could never have been on my guard against all my weaknesses, nor foresee all that I now suffer. Ah! how pitiful it is for me,—I that am not able to share with you my sorrows, and must be all alone in my grief! This thought is killing me, and I almost die of horror when I think that you were never really affected by all the bliss that we shared. Yes, I understand now the untruth of all your transports. You betrayed me every time you told me that your supreme delight was to be alone with me. It is to my importunities alone that I owe your warmth and passion. Deliberately and in cold blood you formed a design to kindle my love; you only regarded my passion as your triumph, and your heart was never deeply touched. Are you not very wretched? and have you so little delicacy that you made no other use of my love but this?

How then can it be that with such love I have not been able to make you entirely happy? It is solely for love of you that I regret the infinite pleasures you have lost. Can it be that you did not care to enjoy them? Ah! if you only knew them you would doubtless find them much greater than that of having deceived me, and you would have experienced how much happier it is, and how much more poignant it is to love violently than to be loved. I know not what I am, or what I do, or what I wish for. I am torn asunder by a thousand contrary emotions. Can a more deplorable state be imagined? I love you to distraction, and therefore I spare you sufficiently not to dare to wish that the same emotions should trouble you. I should kill myself or die of grief without were I to be assured that you were never having any rest, that your life was as anxious and disturbed as mine, that you were weeping ceaselessly, and that everything was hateful to you. I cannot bear my own sufferings, how then could I support the sorrow a thousand times more grievous which yours would give me? I cannot, on the other hand, make up my mind to wish that you should think no more of me; and to speak frankly, I am furiously jealous of all that gives you pleasure, and comes near to your heart and fancy in France. I know not why I write to you. I perceive that you will only pity me, and I wish for none of your pity. I hate myself when I look back on all that I have sacrificed for you. I have lost my honour. I have exposed myself to the anger of my parents, to all the severity of the laws of this country against religious, and finally to your ingratitude, which has seemed to me the greatest of all my evils. Withal, I feel that my remorse is not real, and that I would willingly, with all my heart, have run the greatest risks for the love of you, and that I experience a sad pleasure in having risked my life and honour in your service. Ought not all that I hold most dear to be at your disposal? Ought I not to be satisfied at having employed it as I have done? Methinks, even, I am not at all content with my sorrows, or the excess of my love, although I cannot, alas! flatter myself sufficiently to be content with you. I live, unfaithful that I am; I do as much to preserve my life as to lose it. Ah! I am dying of shame. Is my despair then only in my letters? If I loved you, as I have told you a thousand times, should I not have been dead long ago? I have deceived you, and you may rightly complain of me. Alas! why do you not complain of me? I saw you leave, I can never hope to see you come back, and in spite of all I yet breathe! I have deluded you. I ask your pardon, but do not grant it me. Treat me harshly—say my love for you is too weak; be more hard to please; tell me that you would have me die of love for your sake. Help me thus, I conjure you, to overcome the weakness of my sex, and to put an end to all my wavering in real despair. Doubtless a tragic end would force you to think of me often, my memory would become dear to you, and perhaps you would be really touched by so uncommon a death. Would not death be better than the state to which you have brought me? Good-bye. How I wish that I had never seen you. Ah! I feel how false this phrase is, and I know at the very moment in which I write it that I had far rather be unhappy in my love for you than never have seen you. Willingly, and without a murmur, I consent to my evil fate, since it has not been your wish to make it happier. Good-bye; promise me a few tender regrets if I die of grief, or at least that you will let the violence of my love give you a disgust and repulsion for everything else. This consolation will suffice me, and if I must leave you for ever, I would wish not to leave you to another woman. Would it not be very cruel indeed of you to make use of my despair to render yourself more agreeable, and to let it be seen that you have inspired the greatest passion in the world? Good-bye once again. My letters are too long, and I do not regard you sufficiently. I ask your pardon, and dare hope that you will show some indulgence to a poor mad woman who was not so, as you know, before she loved you. Good-bye. Methinks I too often speak to you of the insufferable state in which I am, yet I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the despair which you cause me, and I hate the peace which I lived in before I knew you.

Good-bye! My love grows stronger each moment. Oh what a world of things I have to tell you of!

FOURTH LETTER[32]

METHINKS I do the greatest possible wrong to the feelings of my heart in trying to make them known to you in writing. How happy should I be could you judge of my passion by the violence of yours! But I must not compare my feelings with yours, though I cannot help telling you, much less strongly than I feel it, it is true, that you ought not to maltreat me as you do by a forgetfulness which thrusts me into despair, and which even for you is dishonourable. It is but fair that you should allow me to complain of the evils which I clearly foresaw when I perceived that you were resolved to forsake me. I well know now that I deluded myself, thinking as I did that you would deal with me in better faith than is usually the case, because the excess of my love put me, it seemed, above all kind of suspicion, and merited more fidelity than is ordinarily met with. But your wish to deceive me overruled the justice you owe me for all that I have done for you. I should still be unhappy even if you only loved me because I love you, and I would wish to owe it all to your inclination alone. But so far is this from being the case that I have not received a single letter from you for the last six months. I put down all my misfortunes to the blindness with which I gave myself up to love of you. Should I not have foreseen that the end of my pleasure would come before that of my love? Could I expect you to stay all your life in Portugal and give up both country and career and think only of me? Nothing can lighten my sorrow, and the remembrance of all that I enjoyed fills me with despair. What! is all my desire then to be in vain? and shall I never see you again in my room with all the ardour and passion which you once showed? But, alas! I am deceiving myself, and I know too well that all the feelings that filled my head and heart were only excited in you by a few pleasures, and that they both ended at the same time. I ought then in those moments of supreme happiness to have called reason to my aid to moderate the deadly excess of my delight, and to foretell to me all that I am now suffering. But I gave myself up to you entirely, and I was not in a state to think of anything which would have poisoned my pleasure and prevented me from fully enjoying the pledges of your ardent love. I was too much delighted to feel that I was with you to think that you would one day be far from me. I remember, however, having told you sometimes that you would make me unhappy, but these fears were soon dissipated, and I took pleasure in sacrificing them to you, and in giving myself up to the enchantment and the faithlessness of your protests. I see clearly the remedy for all the evils which I suffer, and I should be soon rid of them if I loved you no more. But alas! what a remedy! I had rather suffer still more than forget you. Does that, alas! depend on me? I cannot reproach myself with having for a single moment wished to cease to love you. You are more to be pitied than I am, and all my sufferings are better than the cold pleasures which your French mistresses give you. I do not envy you your indifference, and you make me pity you. I defy you to forget me entirely. I flatter myself that I have put you in a state in which you can enjoy but imperfect pleasures without me, and I am happier than you because I am more occupied. Some little time ago I was made portress of this convent. All who speak to me think that I am mad. I know not what I answer them. The religious must be as mad as myself to have thought me capable of taking care of anything. Oh how I envy the good fortune of Manoel and Francisco![33] Why am I not always with you, as they are? I would have followed you and waited upon you with more goodwill, it is certain. To see you is all that I desire in this world. At least remember me; for you to remember me will content me, but I dare not make sure even of this. I used not to limit my hopes to your remembrance of me when I saw you daily, but you have taught me the necessity of submitting to all that you wish. Withal I do not repent of having adored you; I am glad that you betrayed me, and your absence, cruel though it is, and perhaps eternal, diminishes in no way the violence of my love. I wish everybody to know it; I make no mystery of it; and I pride myself on having done for you all that I did against every kind of decorum. My honour and religion consist but in loving you to distraction all my life through, since I have begun to love you. I am not telling you all this to oblige you to write to me. Oh do not force yourself; I only wish from you what comes spontaneously, and I reject all the testimonies of your love which you can control. I shall find pleasure in excusing you, because you will perhaps be glad not to have the trouble of writing to me, and I feel deeply disposed to pardon you all your faults. A French officer had the charity to talk to me of you for three hours this morning; he told me that peace was made with France.[34] If this is so could you not come and see me, and take me to France? But I do not deserve it. Do as you please, for my love no longer depends on the way in which you may treat me. I have not been well for a single moment since you left, and my only pleasure has been that of repeating your name a thousand times each day. Some religious who know the deplorable state into which you have plunged me often speak to me of you. I leave my room, where you so often used to come to see me, as little as possible, and I constantly look at your likeness, which is to me a thousand times clearer than life itself. It gives me some pleasure, but also much sorrow, when I consider that I shall perchance never see you again.

Why must it be that I shall possibly never see you again? Have you then left me for ever? I am in despair. Your poor Marianna can no more; she is almost fainting while she finishes this letter. Good-bye, Good-bye. Have pity on me.

I AM writing to you for the last time, and I hope to let you see by the difference in the terms and manner of this letter that you have at last persuaded me that you no longer love me, and that therefore I ought no longer to love you. I will send you on the first opportunity all that I still have of yours. Do not be afraid that I shall write to you; I will not even put your name on the packet. With all these details I have charged Dona Brites,[35] whom I have accustomed to confidences very different from this. Her care will be less suspected than mine. She will take all the necessary precautions, that I may be assured that you have received the portrait and bracelets which you gave me. I wish you to know, however, that for some days I have felt as if I could burn and tear up these tokens of your love, once so dear to me. But I have revealed such weakness to your eyes that you would perhaps never have believed me capable of going to a like extremity. I wish, however, to enjoy all the pain I have experienced in separating from them, and cause you some vexation at least. I confess, to your shame and mine, that I found myself more attached to these trifles than I should like to tell you, and I felt that I had again need of all my reasoning powers to enable me to get rid of each object in spite of my flattering myself that I cared no more for you. But, provided with such good reasons as mine, one always achieves the end one seeks. I have placed them in the hands of Dona Brites. What tears this resolution cost me! After a thousand different emotions and doubts which you know not of, and of which I shall certainly not give you an account, I have conjured her to speak no more to me of these baubles, and never to give them back to me even though I should beg to see them once again, and, in a word, to send them you without letting me know.

It is only since I have been employing all my efforts to heal myself that I have come to know the excess of my love, and I fear that I should not have dared to take it in hand had I foreseen so many difficulties and such violence. I am persuaded that I should have experienced less disagreeable emotions in loving you, ungrateful though you are, than in quitting you for ever. I have found out that you were less dear to me than my passion; and I have had hard work to fight against it even after your insulting behaviour made you hateful to me. The pride natural to my sex has not helped me to resolve aught against you. Alas! I suffered your scorn, and I could have supported your hate and all the jealousy which the attachment you might have had for another woman could have caused me. I should have had at least some passion to combat, but your indifference is insupportable to me. Your impertinent protestations of friendship, and the ridiculous civilities of your last letter, convince me that you have received all those which I have written to you, that they have stirred no emotions in your heart, and yet that you have read them. O ungrateful man! I am still foolish enough to be in despair at not being able to flatter myself that they have not reached you or been given into your hands. I detest your frankness. Did I ever ask you to tell me the truth sincerely? Why did you not leave me my love? You had only not to write; I did not seek to be enlightened. Am I not unhappy enough with all my inability to make the task of deceiving me difficult to you, and now at not being able to exculpate you. Know that I am convinced that you are unworthy of all my love, and that I understand all your base qualities. If, however, all that I have done for you deserves that you should pay some slight regard to the favours I ask of you, write no more to me, I beg you, and help me to forget you entirely. If you were to show, even slightly, that you had felt some grief at the reading of this letter, perchance I should believe you. Perchance, also, your acknowledgment and assent would vex and anger me, and all that would inflame my love afresh. Do not then take any account of my life, or you would doubtless overthrow all my plans, however you entered into them. I care not to know the result of this letter, and I beg of you not to disturb the peace which I am preparing for myself. Methinks you may content yourself with the harm which you have already caused me, whatever be the intention you formed to make me miserable. Do not tear me from my state of uncertainty; I hope in time to combine with it something like peace of heart. I promise not to hate you; indeed I distrust any violent feelings too much to adventure that. I am persuaded that I should find, it may be in this country, another lover more faithful and handsomer; but, alas! who could make me feel love? Would a passion for another man fill my thoughts? Has mine had any power over you? Have I not experienced that a tender heart never forgets what first awakened it to feelings it knew not that it was capable of? I have found that all the feelings of such a heart are bound up with the idol it has created for itself—that its first impressions, its first wounds, can neither be healed nor effaced—that all the passions which offer their help and attempt to fill and content it promise it but vainly an emotion which it never feels again—that all the pleasures which it seeks, without any desire of finding them, serve only to convince it that nothing is so dear as the remembrance of its sorrows? Why have you made me feel the imperfection and bitterness of an attachment which cannot endure for ever, and all the evils that result from a violent love, when it is not mutual? Why is it that blind inclination and cruel fate agree as a rule in determining us in favour of those who could only love others? Even if I could hope for some diversion in a new engagement, and could find a man of good faith, I pity myself so much that I should have great scruples in putting the worst man in the world in the condition to which you have brought me; and although I may not be obliged to spare you I could not make up my mind to avenge myself so cruelly, even though it were to depend on me, by a change which I certainly do not foresee. At this very moment I am seeking excuses for you, and I understand that a religious is not as a rule loveable. Methinks, however, if reason guided one’s choice one ought to be more attached to them than to other women. Nothing prevents their thinking constantly of their passion, and they are not turned aside by a thousand things which divert and occupy the mind in the world. Surely it cannot be very pleasing to see those whom one loves ever distracted by a thousand trifles, and one must needs have but little delicacy to suffer them (without being in despair at it) to talk of nothing but assemblies, dress, and promenades. One is constantly exposed to fresh jealousies, for they are tied down to attentions, politenesses, and conversations with all. Who can be assured that they find no pleasure in all these occasions, and that they always endure their husbands with extreme disgust and never of their freewill? Ah, how they ought to distrust a lover who does not make them render an exact account of all, who believes easily and without disquiet what they tell him, who in unruffled trust sees them bound to all these society duties. But I do not seek to prove to you by good reasons that you ought to love me; these are very ill means, and I have made use of much better, without success. Too well do I know my fate to try to rise above it. I shall be miserable all my life. Was I not so even when I saw you daily? I was dying for fear that you would not be faithful. I wished to see you every moment, and I could not. The danger you ran in entering the convent troubled me. I almost died when you were with the army. I was in despair at not being more beautiful and more worthy of you. I used to murmur against my modest rank,[36] and I often thought that the attachment you appeared to cherish for me would be hurtful to you in some way. Methought I did not love you enough. I feared the anger of my parents against you, and I was, in a word, in as lamentable a state then as now. If you had shown me any signs of affection since you left Portugal I should have made every effort to leave it, and I would have disguised myself to go and find you. Ah, what would have became of me if you had troubled no more about me after I had arrived in France?—what confusion, what a false step, what depths of shame for my family which is so dear to me since I have ceased to love you! I quite understand, you see, that I might have been even more wretched than I am. At least for once in my life I am speaking reasonably to you. How delighted you will doubtless be at my moderation, and how pleased with me? But I wish not to know it. I have already prayed you not to write to me again, and I repeat it now. Have you never reflected on the way in which you have treated me? Have you never considered that you owe me more than any one else in the world? I have loved you as a mad woman might. How I despised everything else!

Besides, you have not acted like an honourable man. You must have had a natural aversion for me, since you have not loved me to distraction. I allowed myself to be enchanted by very mediocre qualities. What have you ever done to please me? What sacrifice have you made for me? Did you not always seek a thousand other pleasures? Did you ever give up gaming or the chase? Were you not ever the first to leave for the army, and did you not always come back the last? You exposed yourself rashly, although I had begged you to spare yourself for my sake. You never sought the means of settling down in Portugal, where you were esteemed. A single letter from your brother made you leave without a moment’s hesitation. Do I not know that during the voyage you were in the best of humours? It must be confessed that I ought to hate you with a deadly hatred. Ah, I have brought down all these misfortunes on myself. I accustomed you from the first to a boundless love, and that with too much ingenuousness, while one needs to employ artifice to make one’s self loved. One should seek the means of skilfully exciting it, for love of itself does not engender love. You wished me to love you, and since you had formed this design there is nothing that you would not have done to accomplish it. You would even have made up your mind to love me had that been necessary, but you knew that you could succeed in your enterprise without passion, and that you had no need of it. What treachery! did you think that you could deceive me with impunity? If any chance brings you again to this country, I declare that I will hand you over to the vengeance of my kinsfolk. I have lived too long, in an abandonment and idolatry which strikes me with horror, and feelings of remorse persecute me with unbearable severity. I feel a lively shame for the crimes which you have made me commit, and I have no more, alas! the love which prevented me from comprehending their enormity. When will this heart of mine cease to be torn? When shall I be freed from these cruel trammels?

In spite of all, methinks I do not wish you harm, and could resolve to consent to your being happy. But how could you be so, if you had a true heart? I mean to write you another letter, to show you that I shall perchance be more at peace some day. What pleasure I shall find in being able to reproach you for your injustice when I am no longer so vividly touched by it, in letting you know that I despise you, and that I can speak with indifference of your deceit, that I have forgotten all my pleasures and all my sorrows, and that I only remember you when I wish to do so! I recognise that you have a great advantage over me, and that you have inspired in me a love which has upset my reason; but at the same time you should take little credit to yourself for it. I was young, I was trustful, I had been shut up in this convent since my childhood,[37] I had only seen people whom I did not care for. I had never heard the praises which you constantly gave me. Methought I owed you the charms and the beauty which you found in me, and which you were the first to make me perceive: I heard you well talked of; every one spoke in your favour: you did all that was necessary to awake love in me. But I have at last returned to myself from this enchantment. You yourself helped me greatly, and I confess that I had much need of it. When I return you your letters I shall take care to keep the last two which you wrote me; and I shall re-read them more often than I have the previous ones, in order that I may not relapse into my former weakness. Ah! how dear they cost me, and how happy I should have been if you had allowed me to love you always. I well know that I am still a little too much taken up with my reproaches and your faithlessness, but remember that I have promised myself a state of greater peace, and that I shall reach it, or take some desperate resolve against myself, which you will learn, without great displeasure. But I wish no more of you, and I am foolish to repeat the same things so often. I must leave you, and think no more on you. I even think that I shall not write to you again. Am I under any obligation to render you an exact account of all I do?