Liber Amoris [11]
is the return she makes me! Can you account for it, except on the admission of my worst doubts concerning her? Oh God! can I bear after all to think of her so, or that I am scorned and made a sport of by the creature to whom I had given my whole heart? Thus has it been with me all my life; and so will it be to the end of it!--If you should learn anything, good or bad, tell me, I conjure you: I can bear anything but this cruel suspense. If I knew she was a mere abandoned creature, I should try to forget her; but till I do know this, nothing can tear me from her, I have drank in poison from her lips too long--alas! mine do not poison again. I sit and indulge my grief by the hour together; my weakness grows upon me; and I have no hope left, unless I could lose my senses quite. Do you know I think I should like this? To forget, ah! to forget--there would be something in that--to change to an idiot for some few years, and then to wake up a poor wretched old man, to recollect my misery as past, and die! Yet, oh! with her, only a little while ago, I had different hopes, forfeited for nothing that I know of! * * * * * * If you can give me any consolation on the subject of my tormentor, pray do. The pain I suffer wears me out daily. I write this on the supposition that Mrs. ----- may still come here, and that I may be detained some weeks longer. Direct to me at the Post-office; and if I return to town directly as I fear, I will leave word for them to forward the letter to me in London--not at my old lodgings. I will not go back there: yet how can I breathe away from her? Her hatred of me must be great, since my love of her could not overcome it! I have finished the book of my conversations with her, which I told you of: if I am not mistaken, you will think it very nice reading.
Yours ever.
Have you read Sardanapalus? How like the little Greek slave, Myrrha, is to HER!
LETTER IV
(Written in the Winter)
My good Friend, I received your letter this morning, and I kiss the rod not only with submission, but gratitude. Your reproofs of me and your defences of her are the only things that save my soul from perdition. She is my heart's idol; and believe me those words of yours applied to the dear saint--"To lip a chaste one and suppose her wanton"--were balm and rapture to me. I have LIPPED HER, God knows how often, and oh! is it even possible that she is chaste, and that she has bestowed her loved "endearments" on me (her own sweet word) out of true regard? That thought, out of the lowest depths of despair, would at any time make me strike my forehead against the stars. Could I but think the love "honest," I am proof against all hazards. She by her silence makes my dark hour; and you by your encouragements dissipate it for twenty-four hours. Another thing has brought me to life. Mrs. ----- is actually on her way here about the divorce. Should this unpleasant business (which has been so long talked of) succeed, and I should become free, do you think S. L. will agree to change her name to -----? If she WILL, she SHALL; and to call her so to you, or to hear her called so by others, would be music to my ears, such as they never drank in. Do you think if she knew how I love her, my depressions and my altitudes, my wanderings and my constancy, it would not move her? She knows it all; and if she is not an INCORRIGIBLE, she loves me, or regards me with a feeling next to love. I don't believe that any woman was ever courted more passionately than she has been by me. As Rousseau said of Madame d'Houptot (forgive the allusion) my heart has found a tongue in speaking to her, and I have talked to her the divine language of love. Yet she says, she is insensible to it. Am I to believe her or you? You--for I wish it and wish it to madness, now that I am like to be free, and to have it in my power to say to her without a possibility of suspicion, "Sarah, will you be mine?" When I sometimes think of the time I first saw the sweet apparition, August 16, 1820, and that possibly she may be my bride
Yours ever.
Have you read Sardanapalus? How like the little Greek slave, Myrrha, is to HER!
LETTER IV
(Written in the Winter)
My good Friend, I received your letter this morning, and I kiss the rod not only with submission, but gratitude. Your reproofs of me and your defences of her are the only things that save my soul from perdition. She is my heart's idol; and believe me those words of yours applied to the dear saint--"To lip a chaste one and suppose her wanton"--were balm and rapture to me. I have LIPPED HER, God knows how often, and oh! is it even possible that she is chaste, and that she has bestowed her loved "endearments" on me (her own sweet word) out of true regard? That thought, out of the lowest depths of despair, would at any time make me strike my forehead against the stars. Could I but think the love "honest," I am proof against all hazards. She by her silence makes my dark hour; and you by your encouragements dissipate it for twenty-four hours. Another thing has brought me to life. Mrs. ----- is actually on her way here about the divorce. Should this unpleasant business (which has been so long talked of) succeed, and I should become free, do you think S. L. will agree to change her name to -----? If she WILL, she SHALL; and to call her so to you, or to hear her called so by others, would be music to my ears, such as they never drank in. Do you think if she knew how I love her, my depressions and my altitudes, my wanderings and my constancy, it would not move her? She knows it all; and if she is not an INCORRIGIBLE, she loves me, or regards me with a feeling next to love. I don't believe that any woman was ever courted more passionately than she has been by me. As Rousseau said of Madame d'Houptot (forgive the allusion) my heart has found a tongue in speaking to her, and I have talked to her the divine language of love. Yet she says, she is insensible to it. Am I to believe her or you? You--for I wish it and wish it to madness, now that I am like to be free, and to have it in my power to say to her without a possibility of suspicion, "Sarah, will you be mine?" When I sometimes think of the time I first saw the sweet apparition, August 16, 1820, and that possibly she may be my bride