“I love the chevalier de Damville. I have loved him long; he is dearer to me than life; and he has cast me off for ever!”
“And am I the cause?”
“Yes, you, and you alone. I had for some time observed a change in his behaviour, that he was uncommonly grave, serious, and reserved. I endeavoured to soothe him; I redoubled my blandishments in our next season of unreserved discourse; I tenderly enquired into the source of his grief.
“For a long time he resisted my importunity. At length, ‘Faithless girl,’ said he, ‘have you the cruelty to ask the meaning of my depression? This is the extremity of insult. Is it not enough that I know your inconstancy? Is it not enough that I have found you, like the rest of your frivolous sex, the mere slave of your sense of sight, regardless of vows, regardless of an affection which despised all interests but that of tenderness and love, caught by the first appearance of something younger, softer, and more courtly, than I pretend or desire to be? Will nothing satisfy you but the confession of my unhappiness from my own mouth? Do you require expostulation, intreaty, and despair, from your discarded lover, to fill up the measure of your triumph?’
“For a long time I was totally at a loss to apprehend my dear chevalier’s meaning.
“‘No,’ continued he, ‘I am not jealous. There is no temper I hold in such sovereign contempt as jealousy. I am not of a disposition easily to conceive umbrage, or lightly to doubt the protestations of the woman I adore. I have been blind too long. But I see that you are eternally together. I see that you take advantage of the distance at which the despotic temper of Nadasti keeps us from each other, to give all your time to my favoured rival. You seem never to be happy out of his society. I was first led to throw off the dulness of my unsuspecting security, by the general voice of the public. The whole court gives you to each other. Not a creature it holds, but has discerned that passion, which you have the insolence to expect to conceal from me. Since I have been awakened from my security, I have seen it a thousand times. I have seen your eyes seek and encounter each other. I have seen them suddenly lighted up by your interchanging glances. I have seen the signs of your mutual intelligence. I have seen with what impatience, the moment you could escape from the crowded circle, you have joined each other, and retired together. Ungenerous Pandora!
“‘But do not imagine I will enter the lists with the gaudy butterfly who has now attracted your favour. I have told you already that I am not formed for jealousy. I am not the sort of man you have supposed me to be. I have loved you much; I have loved you long. But I would tear out my heart from my manly breast, if I believed it yet retained an atom of passion for you. I know what it was I loved; I loved a character of frankness, of ingenuousness, of simplicity, which I fondly imagined was yours, but which I now find was the creature of my own fancy. The Pandora that stands before me; the child of art; the base wretch that could take advantage of my forbearance in regard to her uncle, which was adopted purely out of love to her; the unfeeling coquette that would wish to retain me in her chains when she had discarded me from her affections; this creature I never did love, and I never will. I know how deeply rooted the habit has been in my bosom of regarding you as the thing you are not; I know how bitter it is to a temper like mine to detect so unlooked-for a delusion; I know what it will cost me to cast you off for ever. But I never yet proposed to myself a conquest over my own weakness that I did not gain, nor will I now. If you were to discard this wretched D’Aubigny to-morrow, if you were convinced of and contrite for your error, I must ingenuously tell you, no time, no penitence could restore you to my admiration. I had set up an imaginary idol in my bosom; but you have convinced me of its brittleness, and dashed it to pieces.’
“I endeavoured,” continued Pandora, “by every imaginable protestation to convince my late faithful lover of his mistake. But it was to no purpose; all I could say only tended to swell the tide of his fearful resentment.”
“‘Be silent,’ cried he: ‘add no further to the catalogue of your wanton and causeless delusions. Do not make me hate too much what I once so blindly and ardently adored. I feel that I have an enemy within me, that would fain co-operate with your deceptions and hypocrisy. I find that man, treacherous to himself, is formed by nature to be the fool of your artful sex. But I will subdue this propensity in me, though I die for it. I may be wretched; but I will not despise myself. Have I not seen your falsehood? Have not all my senses been witnesses of your guilt? The miracle is that I could have been duped so long. I have heard this stripling lover of yours inexhaustible in your praises, and dwelling upon them with an ardour that nothing but passion could have inspired. I have seen, as I have already told you, the intelligence of your eyes. I have seen those melting glances, I have heard those tender and familiar tones between you, that bespoke the most perfect confidence and the most entire mingling of heart. If I did not believe this, I should believe worse of you. I should think your heart not merely capricious, but an absolute prostitute; prepared to bestow upon hundreds those sweet, those nameless tendernesses of accent and countenance, which I fondly imagined were reserved for me alone. I should regard you as the worst and most pernicious acquisition that could fall to the lot of a man. ‘Go, Pandora,’ added he: ‘my heart is chaste; my soul is firm. I can no longer be deceived by you; I will not dispute your charms with the idle boy you have now thought proper to favour.’ And, saying thus, he burst from me in an agony of impatience.
“Alas!” continued the sweet and ingenuous Pandora, “my dear Henry, what shall I do? How shall I remove the unreasonable imaginations of this noble mind? Bear me witness, Heaven! nothing could be more innocent than the correspondence I allowed myself to hold with you. My adorable Charles was continually calling you brother; I scarcely ever heard him speak of you by any other appellation. I regarded Charles as my husband; I already viewed you in anticipation as the brother of my lord. Excluded as I was from frequent conversation with him whom I most loved, I endeavoured to supply the deficiency by an unreserved communication with you. The extreme resemblance of your persons increased my gratification. You were his picture, his speaking image. While I looked at you, I said, ‘Such once was my Charles, before he was the great man, the gallant soldier, the accomplished cavalier, the adored object, that now engrosses my affections.’ Beside, I knew that Charles loved you as much as he did any man on earth, and that knowledge made you dear to me. You were constantly eager to dwell upon and describe his excellences; could I fail to be pleased with your conversation? I own that the pleasure I took in it was unbounded, and the emotions it awakened in my affectionate heart delicious. But all this, candidly explained, was only an additional proof of the tenderness and constancy of my earliest attachment.