(Madame dArblay to Mrs. Locke) NO- 54, Rue Basse, Passy, near Paris, April 30, 1803. How to write I know not, at a period so tremendous-nor yet how to be silent. My dearest, dearest friends ! if the war indeed prove inevitable, what a heart-breaking position is ours!-to explain it fully would demand folios, and yet be never so well done as you, with a little consideration, can do it for us. Who better than Mr. Locke and his Fredy-who so well can comprehend, that, where one must be sacrificed, the other will be yet more to be pitied ?-I will not go on-I will talk only of you, till our fate must be determined. And M. d'Arblay, who only in the wide world loves his paternal uncle as well (we always except ourselves at Westminster! how tenderly does he join in my every feeling! and how faithfully keep unimpaired all our best and happiest sympathies!
May 2.—Better appearances in the political horizon now somewhat recruit my spirits, which have been quite indescribably tortured, rather than sunk, by the impossibility of any private arrangement for our mutual happiness in the dread event of war. God Almighty yet avert it! And should it fall to the lot of Lauriston to confirm the peace, what a guardian angel upon earth I shall deem him! How I wish he could meet with you! he is so elegant in his manners he would immediately give you pleasure; and his countenance is so true in announcing him amiable, that you might look at him with trust as well as satisfaction. . . .
May 13—Ah, my dearest friends—what a melancholy end to my hopes and my letter. I have just heard that Lord Whitworth(206) set off for Chantilly last night; war therefore seems inevitable; and my grief, I, who feel myself now of two countries, is far greater than I can wish to express. While posts are yet open, write to me, my beloved friend, and by Hamburg. I trust we may still and regularly correspond, long as the letters may be in travelling. As our letters never
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treat but of our private concerns, health and welfare neither country can object to our intercourse.
(Madame d'Arblay to Dr. Burney). Passy, May 6, 1803. if my dearest father has the smallest idea of the suspense and terror in which I have spent this last fortnight, from the daily menace of war, he will be glad, I am sure, of the respite allowed me-if no more—from a visit I have just received from Mrs. Huber, who assures me the Ambassador has postponed his setting off, and consented to send another courier.(207) To say how I pray for his success would indeed be needless. I have hardly closed my eyes many nights past. My dearest father will easily conceive the varying conflicts of our minds, and how mutual are our sufferings. . . .
We were buoyed up here for some days with the hope that General Lauriston was gone to England as plenipo, to end the dread contest without new effusion of blood: but Paris, like London, teems with hourly false reports, and this intelligence, unhappily, was of the number. The continued kindness and friendship of that gentleman for M. d'Arblay make me take a warm interest in whatever belongs to him. About ten days ago, when M. d'Arblay called upon him, relative to the affair so long impending of his retraite, he took his hand, and said "Fais-moi ton compliment!"(208) You are sure how heartily M. d'Arblay would be ready to comply-"but "what," he demanded, "can be new to you of honours?" "I have succeeded," he answered, "for you!—the first Consul has signed your mmoire." When such delicacy is joined to warm attachment, my dearest father will not wonder I should be touched by it. . . .
M. d'Arblay has now something in his native country, where all other claims are vain, and all other expectations completely destroyed. He had been flattered with recovering some portion, at least, of his landed property near Joigny; but those who have purchased it during his exile add such enormous and unaccountable charges to what they paid for it at that period, that it is become, to us, wholly unattainable.
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