LETTER V.
Cape Francois.
Three of your letters arriving at the same time, my dear friend, have made me blush for my impatience, and force me to acknowledge that I have wronged you. But your friendship is so necessary to my happiness that the idea of losing it is insupportable. You know what clouds of misfortune have obscured my life. An orphan without friends, without support, separated from my sister from my infancy, and, at an age when the heart is most alive to tenderness and affection, deprived by the unrelenting hand of death, of him who had taught me to feel all the transports of passion, and for whose loss I felt all its despair—Cast on the world without an asylum, without resource, I met you:—you raised me—soothed me—whispered peace to my lacerated breast! Ah! can I ever forget that delightful moment when your care saved me? It was so long since I had known sympathy or consolation that my astonished soul knew not how to receive the enchanting visitants; fleeting as fervent was my joy: but let me not repine! Your friendship has shed a ray of light on my solitary way, and though removed from the influence of your immediate presence, I exist only in the hope of seeing you again.
In restoring me to my sister, at the moment of her marriage, you procured for me a home not only respectable, but in which all the charms of fashionable elegance, all the attractions of pleasure are united. Unfortunately, Clara, amidst these intoxicating scenes of ever-varying amusement, and attended by crowds, who offer her the incense of adulation, is wretched, and I cannot be happy!
You know her early habits have been different from mine; affluence might have been thought necessary to her, yet the sensibility of her heart rejects the futile splendour that surrounds her, and the tears that often stain her brilliant robes, shew that they cover a bosom to which peace is a stranger!
The fortune of her husband was his only advantage. The friend who had been charged with Clara from her infancy had accustomed her to enjoy the sweets of opulence, and thought nothing more desirable than to place her in a situation where she could still command them. Alas her happiness has been the sacrifice of his mistaken, though well meant, intentions. St. Louis is too sensible of the real superiority of his wife not to set some value on that which he derives from his money, and tears of bitterest regret often fill her eyes when contemplating the splendor which has been so dearly purchased. Though to me he has been invariably kind yet my heart is torn with regret at the torments which his irascible temper inflict on his wife. They force her to seek relief in the paths of pleasure, whilst destined by nature to embellish the sphere of domestic felicity.