'Suffering is the common lot of humanity—but, pardon me, when I say, your conduct has not tended to lessen my vexations!'
'My errors have been the errors of affection—Do they deserve this rigor?'
'Their source is not important, their consequences have been the same—you make not the allowances you claim.'
'Dear, and severe, friend!—Be not unjust—the confidence which I sought, and merited, would have been obviated'—
'I know what you would alledge—that confidence, you had reason to judge, was of a painful nature—it ought not to have been extorted.'
'If I have been wrong, my faults have been severely expiated—if the error has been only mine, surely my sufferings have been in proportion; seduced by the fervor of my feelings; ignorant of your situation, if I wildly sought to oblige you to chuse happiness through a medium of my creation—yet, to have assured yours, was I not willing to risque all my own? I perceive my extravagance, my views were equally false and romantic—dare I to say—they were the ardent excesses of a generous mind? Yes! my wildest mistakes had in them a dignified mixture of virtue. While the institutions of society war against nature and happiness, the mind of energy, struggling to emancipate itself, will entangle itself in error'—
'Permit me to ask you,' interrupted Augustus, 'whether, absorbed in your own sensations, you allowed yourself to remember, and to respect, the feelings of others?'
I could no longer restrain my tears, I wept for some moments in silence—Augustus breathed a half-suppressed sigh, and turned from me his face.
'The pangs which have rent my heart,' resumed I, in low and broken accents, 'have, I confess, been but too poignant! That lacerated heart still bleeds—we have neither of us been guiltless—Alas! who is? Yet in my bosom, severe feelings are not more painful than transient—already have I lost sight of your unkindness, (God knows how little I merited it!) in stronger sympathy for your sorrows—whatever be their nature! We have both erred—why should we not exchange mutual forgiveness? Why should we afflict each other? Friendship, like charity, should suffer all things and be kind!'
'My mind,' replied he coldly, 'is differently constituted.'