I have waited, charming Matilda, with the most longing impatience in hopes of receiving a letter from your own hand. Every post has agitated me with suspense. My expectation has been continually raised, and as often defeated. Many a cold and unanimated epistle has intruded itself into my hands, when I thought to have found some token full of gentleness and tenderness, which might have taught my heart to overflow with rapture. If you knew, fair excellence, how much pain and uneasiness your silence has given me, you could not surely have been so cruel. The most rigid decorum could not have been offended by one scanty billet that might just have informed me, I still retained a tender place in your recollection. One solitary line would have raised me to a state of happiness that princes might envy.
A jealous and contracted mind placed in my situation, might fear to undergo the imputation of selfishness and interest. He would represent to himself, how brilliant was your station, how exalted your rank, how splendid your revenues, and what a poor, deserted, and contemptible figure I made in the eyes of the world, when your father first honoured me with his attention. My Matilda were a match for princes. Her external situation in the highest degree magnificent. Her person lovely and engaging beyond all the beauty that Italy has to boast. Her mind informed with the most refined judgment, the most elegant taste, the most generous sentiments. When the dictates of prudence and virtue flow from her beauteous lips, philosophers might listen with rapture, sages might learn wisdom. And is it possible that this all-accomplished woman can stoop from the dignity of her rank and the greatness of her pretensions, to a person so obscure, so slenderly qualified as I am?
But no, my Matilda, I am a stranger to these fears, my breast is unvisited by the demon of suspicion. I employ no precaution. I do not seek to constrain my passion. I lay my heart naked before you. I shall ever maintain the most grateful sense of the benevolent friendship of your venerable father, of your own unexampled and ravishing condescension. But love, my amiable Matilda, knows no distinction of rank. We cannot love without building our ardour upon the sense of a kind of equality. All obligations must here in a manner cease but those which are mutual. Those hearts that are sensible to the distance of benefactor and client, are strangers to the sweetest emotions of this amiable passion.
But who is there that is perfectly master of his own character? Who is there that can certainly foretel what will be his feelings and sentiments in circumstances yet untried? Do not then, fairest, gentlest, of thy sex, torture the lover that adores you. Do not persist in cold and unexpressive silence. A thousand times have those lips made the chaste confession of my happiness. A thousand times upon that hand have I sealed my gratitude. Yet do I stand in need of fresh assurances. Mutual attachment subsists not but in communication and sympathy. I count the tedious moments. My wayward fancy paints in turn all the events that are within the region of possibility. Too many of them there are, against the apprehension of which no precaution can secure me. Do not, my lovely Matilda, do not voluntarily increase them. Is not the comfortless distance to which I am banished a sufficient punishment, without adding to it those uneasinesses it is so much in your power to remove?
Letter XVI
Matilda della Colonna to the Count de St. Julian
Cosenza
Is it possible you can put an unfavourable construction upon my silence? You are not to be informed that it was nothing more than the simplest dictates of modesty and decency required. I cannot believe, that if I had offended against those dictates, it would not have sunk me a little in your esteem. Your sex indeed is indulged with a large and extensive licence. But in ours, my dear friend, propriety and decorum cannot be too assiduously preserved. Our reputation is at the disposal of every calumniator. The minutest offence can cast a shade upon it. A long and uninterrupted course of the most spotless virtue can never restore it to its first unsullied brightness. Many and various indeed are the steps by which it may be tarnished, short of the sacrifice of chastity, and the total dereliction of character.
There is no test of gentleness and integrity of heart more obvious, than the discharge of the filial duties. A truly mild and susceptible disposition will sympathize in the concerns of a parent with the most ardent affection, will be melted by his sufferings into the tenderest sorrow. The child whose heart feels not with peculiar anguish the distresses of him, from whom he derived his existence, to whom he owes the most important obligations, and with whom he has been in habits of unbounded confidence from earliest infancy, must be of a character harsh, savage, and detestable. How can he be expected to melt over the tale of a stranger? How can his hand be open to relief and munificence? How can he discharge aright the offices of a family, and the duties of a citizen?
Recollect, my friend, never had any child a parent more gentle and affectionate than mine. I was all his care and all his pride. He knew no happiness but that of gratifying my desires, and outrunning my wishes. He was my all. I have for several years, and even before I was able properly to understand her value, lost a tender mother. In my surviving parent then all my attachments centered. He was my protector and my guide, he was my friend and my companion. All other connexions were momentary and superficial. And till I knew my St. Julian, my warmest affections never strayed from my father's roof.