'Ah,' cried I, 'you are relenting, you are weeping. Bless you for that. Dear, dear father, look up, and see with what joy a daughter can embrace you.'
'My child, my child!' cried he, turning, and throwing himself upon my bosom. 'A heart of stone could not withstand this! There, there, there, I forgive you all!'
Fast and fondly did we cling round each other, and sweet were the sighs that we breathed, and the tears that we shed.
But I suffered too much: the disorder which had some time been engendering in my frame now burst forth with alarming vehemence, and I was conveyed raving into a carriage. On our arrival at the hotel, they sent for a physician, who pronounced me in a violent fever of a nervous nature. For a fortnight I was not expected to recover; and I myself felt so convinced of my speedy dissolution, that I requested the presence of a clergyman. He came; and his conversations, by composing my mind, contributed in a great degree to my recovery. At my request, he paid me daily visits. Our subject was religion,—not those theological controversies which excite so much irreligious feeling, and teach men to hate each other for the love of God; but those plain and simple truths which convince without confounding, and which avoid the bigotry that would worship error, because it is hereditary; and the fanaticism that would lay rash hands on the holy temple, because some of its smaller pillars appear unsound.
After several days of discussion on this important topic, he led me, by degrees, to give him an account of my late adventures; and as I related, he made comments.
Affected by his previous precepts, and by my own awful approach to eternity, which had suppressed in my heart the passions of ambition and pride, I now became as desirous of conviction as I had heretofore been sophistical in support of my folly. To be predisposed is to be half converted; and soon this exemplary pastor convinced my understanding of the impious and immoral tendency of my past life. He shewed me, that to the inordinate gratification of a particular caprice, I had sacrificed my duty towards my natural protectors, myself, and my God. That my ruling passion, though harmless in its nature, was injurious in its effects; that it gave me a distaste for all sober occupations, perverted my judgment, and even threatened me with the deprivation of my reason. Religion itself, he said, if indulged with immoderate enthusiasm, at last degenerates into zealotry, and leaves the poor devotee too rapturous to be rational, and too virulent to be religious.
In a word, I have risen from my bed, an altered being; and I now look back on my past delusions with abhorrence and disgust. Though the new principles of conduct which I have adopted are not yet rooted or methodized in my mind, and though the prejudices of a whole life are not (and indeed could not be) entirely eradicated in a few days; still, as I am resolved on endeavouring to get rid of them, I trust that my reason will second my desire, and that the final consequence of my perceiving what is erroneous will be my learning what is correct.
Adieu.
LETTER XLVII
My health is now so far re-established, that I am no longer confined to my room. Stuart pays us constant visits, and his lively advice and witty reasoning, more complimentary than reproachful, and more insinuated than expressed, have tended to perfect my reformation.