Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister

by Aphra Behn

SYLVIA.

This letter she sent him back by his page, but not the bracelets, which were indeed very fine, and very considerable: at the same time she threatened him with banishment, she so absolutely expected to be disobeyed in all things of that kind, that she dressed herself that day to advantage, which since her arrival she had never done in her own habits: what with her illness, and Philander's absence, a careless negligence had seized her, till roused and weakened to the thoughts of beauty by Octavio's love, she began to try its force, and that day dressed. While she was so employed, the page hastes with the letter to his lord, who changed colour at the sight of it ere he received it; not that he hoped it brought love, it was enough she would but answer, though she railed: 'Let her' (said he opening it) 'vow she hates me: let her call me traitor, and unjust, so she take the pains to tell it this way;' for he knew well those that argue will yield, and only she that sends him back his own letters without reading them can give despair. He read therefore without a sigh, nor complained he on her rigours; and because it was too early yet to make his visit, to shew the impatience of his love, as much as the reality and resolution of it, he bid his page wait, and sent her back this answer.

OCTAVIO to SYLVIA.

Fair angry Sylvia, how has my love offended? Has its excess betrayed the least part of that respect due to your birth and beauty? Though I am young as the gay ruddy morning, and vigorous as the gilded sun at noon, and amorous as that god, when with such haste he chased young Daphne over the flowery plain, it never made me guilty of a thought that Sylvia might not pity and allow. Nor came that trifling present to plead for any wish, or mend my eloquence, which you with such disdain upbraid me with; the bracelets came not to be raffled for your love, nor pimp to my desires: youth scorns those common aids; no, let dull age pursue those ways of merchandise, who only buy up hearts at that vain price, and never make a barter, but a purchase. Youth has a better way of trading in love's markets, and you have taught me too well to judge of, and to value beauty, to dare to bid so cheaply for it: I found the toy was gay, the work was neat, and fancy new; and know not any thing they would so well adorn as Sylvia's lovely hands: I say, if after this I should have been the mercenary fool to have dunned you for return, you might have used me thus----Condemn me ere you find me sin in thought! That part of it was yet so far behind it was scarce arrived in wish. You should have stayed till it approached more near, before you damned it to eternal silence. To love, to sigh, to weep, to pray, and to complain; why one may be allowed it in devotion; but you, nicer than heaven itself, make that a crime, which all the powers divine have never decreed one. I will not plead, nor ask you leave to love; love is my right, my business, and my province; the empire of the young, the vigorous, and the bold; and I will claim my share; the air, the groves, the shades are mine to sigh in, as well as your Philander's; the echoes answer me as willingly, when I complain, or name the cruel Sylvia; fountains receive my tears, and the kind spring's reflection agreeably flatters me to hope, and makes me vain enough to think it just and reasonable I should pursue the dictates of my soul----love on in spite of opposition, because I will not lose my privileges; you may forbid me naming it to you, in that I can obey, because I can; but not to love! Not to adore the fair! And not to languish for you, were as impossible as for you not to be lovely, not to be the most charming of your sex. But I am so far from a pretending fool, because you have been possessed, that often that thought comes cross my soul, and checks my advancing love; and I would buy that thought off with almost all my share of future bliss! Were I a god, the first great miracle should be to form you a maid again: for oh, whatever reasons flattering love can bring to make it look like just, the world! The world, fair Sylvia, still will censure, and say----you were to blame; but it was that fault alone that made you mortal, we else should have adored you as a deity, and so have lost a generous race of young succeeding heroes that may be born of you! Yet had Philander loved but half so well as I, he would have kept your glorious fame entire; but since alone for Sylvia I love Sylvia, let her be false to honour, false to love, wanton and proud, ill-natured, vain, fantastic, or what is worse--let her pursue her love, be constant, and still dote upon Philander--yet still she will be the Sylvia I adore, that Sylvia born eternally to enslave

OCTAVIO.

This he sent by Florio his page, at the same time that she expected the visit of his lord, and blushed with a little anger and concern at the disappointment; however she hasted to read the letter, and was pleased with the haughty resolution he made in spite of her, to love on as his right by birth; and she was glad to find from these positive resolves that she might the more safely disdain, or at least assume a tyranny which might render her virtue glorious, and yet at the same time keep him her slave on all occasions when she might have need of his service, which, in the circumstances she was in, she did not know of what great use it might be to her, she having no other design on him, bating the little vanity of her sex, which is an ingredient so intermixed with the greatest virtues of women-kind, that those who endeavour to cure them of that disease rob them of a very considerable pleasure, and in most it is incurable: give Sylvia then leave to share it with her sex, since she was so much the more excusable, by how much a greater portion of beauty she had than any other, and had sense enough to know it too; as indeed whatever other knowledge they want, they have still enough to set a price on beauty, though they do not always rate it; for had Sylvia done that, she had been the happiest of her sex: but as she was she waited the coming of Octavio, but not so as to make her quit one sad thought for Philanders love and vanity, though they both reigned in her soul; yet the first surmounted the last, and she grew to impatient ravings whenever she cast a thought upon her fear that Philander grew cold; and possibly pride and vanity had as great a share in that concern of hers as love itself, for she would oft survey herself in her glass, and cry, 'Gods! Can this beauty be despised? This shape! This face! This youth! This air! And what's more obliging yet, a heart that adores the fugitive, that languishes and sighs after the dear runaway. Is it possible he can find a beauty,' added she, 'of greater perfection----But oh, it is fancy sets the rate on beauty, and he may as well love a third time as he has a second. For in love, those that once break the rules and laws of that deity, set no bounds to their treasons and disobedience. Yes, yes,----' would she cry, 'He that could leave Myrtilla, the fair, the young, the noble, chaste and fond Myrtilla, what after that may he not do to Sylvia, on whom he has less ties, less obligations? Oh wretched maid----what has thy fondness done, he is satiated now with thee, as before with Myrtilla, and carries all those dear, those charming joys, to some new beauty, whom his looks have conquered, and whom his soft bewitching vows will ruin.' With that she raved and stamped, and cried aloud, 'Hell----fires----tortures----daggers----racks and poison----come all to my relief! Revenge me on the perjured lovely devil----But I will be brave----I will be brave and hate him----' This she spoke in a tone less fierce, and with great pride, and had not paused and walked above a hasty turn or two, but Octavio, as impatient as love could make him, entered the chamber, so dressed, so set out for conquest, that I wonder at nothing more than that Sylvia did not find him altogether charming, and fit for her revenge, who was formed by nature for love, and had all that could render him the dotage of women: but where a heart is prepossessed, all that is beautiful in any other man serves but as an ill comparison to what it loves, and even Philander's likeness, that was not indeed Philander, wanted the secret to charm. At Octavio's entrance she was so fixed on her revenge of love, that she did not see him, who presented himself as so proper an instrument, till he first sighing spoke, 'Ah, Sylvia, shall I never see that beauty easy more? Shall I never see it reconciled to content, and a soft calmness fixed upon those eyes, which were formed for looks all tender and serene; or are they resolved' (continued he, sighing) 'never to appear but in storms when I approach?' 'Yes,' replied she, 'when there is a calm of love in yours that raises it.' 'Will you confine my eyes,' said he, 'that are by nature soft? May not their silent language tell you my heart's sad story?' But she replied with a sigh, 'It is not generously done, Octavio, thus to pursue a poor unguarded maid, left to your care, your promises of friendship. Ah, will you use Philander with such treachery?' 'Sylvia,' said he,'my flame is so just and reasonable, that I dare even to him pronounce I love you; and after that dare love you on----' 'And would you' (said she) 'to satisfy a little short lived passion, forfeit those vows you have made of friendship to Philander? 'That heart that loves you, Sylvia,' (he replied) 'cannot be guilty of so base a thought; Philander is my friend, and as he is so, shall know the dearest secrets of my soul. I should believe myself indeed ungrateful' (continued he) 'wherever I loved, should I not tell Philander; he told me frankly all his soul, his loves, his griefs, his treasons, and escapes, and in return I will pay him back with mine.' 'And do you imagine' (said she) 'that he would permit your love?' 'How should he hinder me?' (replied he.) 'I do believe' (said she) 'he'd forget all his safety and his friendship, and fight you.' 'Then I'd defend myself,' (said he) 'if he were so ungrateful.' While they thus argued, Sylvia had her thoughts apart, on the little stratagems that women in love sometimes make use of; and Octavio no sooner told her he would send Philander word of his love, but she imagined that such a knowledge might retrieve the heart of her lover, if indeed it were on the wing, and revive the dying embers in his soul, as usually it does from such occasions; and on the other side, she thought that she might more allowably receive Octavio's addresses, when they were with the permission of Philander, if he could love so well to permit it; and if he could not, she should have the joy to undeceive her fears of his inconstancy, though she banished for ever the agreeable Octavio; so that on Octavio's farther urging the necessity of his giving Philander that sure mark of his friendship she permitted him to write, which he immediately did on her table, where there stood a little silver escritoire which contained all things for this purpose.

OCTAVIO to PHILANDER.

My Lord,

Since I have vowed you my eternal friendship, and that I absolutely believe myself honoured with that of yours, I think myself obliged by those powerful ties to let you know my heart, not only now as that friend from whom I ought to conceal nothing, but as a rival too, whom in honour I ought to treat as a generous one: perhaps you will be so unkind as to say I cannot be a friend and a rival at the same time, and that almighty love, that sets the world at odds, chases all things from the heart where that reigns, to establish itself the more absolutely there; but, my lord, I avow mine a love of that good nature, that can endure the equal sway of friendship, where like two perfect friends they support each other's empire there; nor can the glory of one eclipse that of the other, but both, like the notion we have of the deity, though two distinct passions, make but one in my soul; and though friendship first entered, 'twas in vain, I called it to my aid, at the first soft invasion of Sylvia's power; and you my charming friend, are the most oblig'd to pity me, who already know so well the force of her beauty. I would fain have you think, I strove at first with all my reason against the irresistible lustre of her eyes: and at the first assaults of love, I gave him not a welcome to my bosom, but like slaves unused to fetters, I grew sullen with my chains, and wore them for your sake uneasily. I thought it base to look upon the mistress of my friend with wishing eyes; but softer love soon furnished me with arguments to justify my claim, since love is not the choice but the face of the soul, who seldom regards the object lov'd as it is, but as it wishes to have it be, and then kind fancy makes it soon the same. Love, that almighty creator of something from nothing, forms a wit, a hero, or a beauty, virtue, good humour, honour, any excellence, when oftentimes there is neither in the object, but where the agreeing world has fixed all these; and since it is by all resolved, (whether they love or not) that this is she, you ought no more, Philander, to upbraid my flame, than to wonder at it: it is enough I tell you that it is Sylvia to justify my passion; nor is it a crime that I confess I love, since it can never rob Philander of the least part of what I have vowed him: or if his mere honour will believe me guilty of a fault, let this atone for all, that if I wrong my friend in loving Sylvia, I right him in despairing; for oh, I am repulsed with all the rigour of the coy and fair, with all the little malice of the witty sex, and all the love of Sylvia to Philander----There, there is the stop to all my hopes and happiness, and yet by heaven I love thee, oh thou favoured rival!

After this frank confession, my Philander, I should be glad to hear your sentiment, since yet, in spite of love, in spite of beauty, I am resolved to die Philander's constant friend,