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St. Julian, I once again resume my pen. I was willing you should be acquainted with all the distress and softness of my heart. I was willing to furnish you with every motive to redeem the character of a man, before it were too late. Do not however think me incapable of a spirited and a steady resolution. It were easy for me to address a letter to the family of Aranda, I might describe to them all my wrong, and prevent that dreaded union, the thought of which distresses me. My letter might probably arrive before the mischief were irretrievable. It is not likely that so illustrious a house, however they may have previously condescended to the speciousness of your qualities, would persist in their design in the face of so cogent objections. But I am not capable of so weak and poor spirited a revenge.
Return, my lord, yet return to her you have deserted. Let your return be voluntary, and it shall be welcome as the light of day to these sad and weeping eyes, and it shall be dear and precious to my soul, as the ruddy drops that warm my heart. But I will not force an unwilling victim. Such a prize would be unworthy of the artless and constant spirit of Matilda. Such a husband would be the bane of my peace, and the curse of my hapless days. That he were the once loved St. Julian, would but aggravate the distress, and rankle the arrow. It would continually remind me of the dear prospects, and the fond expectations I had once formed, without having the smallest tendency to gratify them.
Letter XIII
The Marquis of Pescara to the Marquis of San Severino
Cosenza
My dear lord,
Why is it that a heart feeble and unheroic as mine, should be destined to encounter so many temptations? I might have passed through the world honourable and immaculate, had circumstances been a little more propitious. As it is, I shall probably descend to the grave with a character, at least among the scrupulous and the honest, reproachful and scandalous. Now this I can never account for. My heart is a stranger to all the dark and malignant passions. I am not cursed with an unbounded ambition. I am a stranger to inexorable hate and fell revenge. I aim at happiness and gratification. But if it were in my power I would have all my fellow-creatures happy as myself.
Why is the fair Matilda so incomparably beautiful and so inexpressibly attractive? Had her temper been less sweet and undesigning, had her understanding been less delicate and refined, had not the graces dwelt upon those pouting lips, my heart had been sound and unhurt to this very hour. But to see her every day, to converse with her at all opportunities, to be regarded by her as her only friend and chosen protector, tell me, ye gods, what heart, that was not perfectly invulnerable, that was not totally impregnated with the waters of the Styx, could have come off victorious from trials like these?
And yet, my dear Ferdinand, to see the distress of the lovely Matilda, to see her bosom heave with anguish, and her eyes suffused with tears, to hear the heart-rending sighs continually bursting from her, in spite of the fancied resolution, and the sweet pride that fill her soul, how callous, how void of feeling and sympathy ought the man to be, in whom objects like these can call up no relentings? Ah, my lord, when I observe how her tender frame is shaken with misfortune, I am sometimes ready to apprehend that it totters to its fall, that it is impossible she should survive the struggling, tumultuous passions that rage within her. What a glorious prize would then be lost? What would then become of all the deep contrivances, the mighty politics, that your friendship suggested?