FIFTH LETTEREstou pôsto sem medoA tudo o que o fatal destino ordene:Póde ser que cansado,Ou seja tarde, ou cedo,Com pena de penar-me, me despene.Camões,Cançãoix.
Estou pôsto sem medoA tudo o que o fatal destino ordene:Póde ser que cansado,Ou seja tarde, ou cedo,Com pena de penar-me, me despene.Camões,Cançãoix.
Estou pôsto sem medoA tudo o que o fatal destino ordene:Póde ser que cansado,Ou seja tarde, ou cedo,Com pena de penar-me, me despene.Camões,Cançãoix.
Estou pôsto sem medoA tudo o que o fatal destino ordene:Póde ser que cansado,Ou seja tarde, ou cedo,Com pena de penar-me, me despene.
Estou pôsto sem medo
A tudo o que o fatal destino ordene:
Póde ser que cansado,
Ou seja tarde, ou cedo,
Com pena de penar-me, me despene.
Camões,Cançãoix.
Camões,Cançãoix.
I AMwriting to you for the last time, and I hope to let you see by the difference in the terms and manner of this letter that you have at last persuaded me that you no longer love me, and that therefore I ought no longer to love you. I will send you on thefirst opportunity all that I still have of yours. Do not be afraid that I shall write to you; I will not even put your name on the packet. With all these details I have charged Dona Brites,[35]whom I have accustomed to confidences very different from this. Her care will be less suspected than mine. She will take all the necessary precautions, that I may be assured that you have received the portrait and bracelets which you gave me. I wish you to know, however, that for some days I have felt as if I could burn and tear up these tokens of your love, once so dear to me. But I have revealed such weakness toyour eyes that you would perhaps never have believed me capable of going to a like extremity. I wish, however, to enjoy all the pain I have experienced in separating from them, and cause you some vexation at least. I confess, to your shame and mine, that I found myself more attached to these trifles than I should like to tell you, and I felt that I had again need of all my reasoning powers to enable me to get rid of each object in spite of my flattering myself that I cared no more for you. But, provided with such good reasons as mine, one always achieves the end one seeks. I have placed them in the hands of Dona Brites. What tears this resolution cost me! Aftera thousand different emotions and doubts which you know not of, and of which I shall certainly not give you an account, I have conjured her to speak no more to me of these baubles, and never to give them back to me even though I should beg to see them once again, and, in a word, to send them you without letting me know.
It is only since I have been employing all my efforts to heal myself that I have come to know the excess of my love, and I fear that I should not have dared to take it in hand had I foreseen so many difficulties and such violence. I am persuaded that I should have experienced less disagreeable emotions in loving you, ungrateful though youare, than in quitting you for ever. I have found out that you were less dear to me than my passion; and I have had hard work to fight against it even after your insulting behaviour made you hateful to me. The pride natural to my sex has not helped me to resolve aught against you. Alas! I suffered your scorn, and I could have supported your hate and all the jealousy which the attachment you might have had for another woman could have caused me. I should have had at least some passion to combat, but your indifference is insupportable to me. Your impertinent protestations of friendship, and the ridiculous civilities of your last letter, convince me that you have received all those which I have written toyou, that they have stirred no emotions in your heart, and yet that you have read them. O ungrateful man! I am still foolish enough to be in despair at not being able to flatter myself that they have not reached you or been given into your hands. I detest your frankness. Did I ever ask you to tell me the truth sincerely? Why did you not leave me my love? You had only not to write; I did not seek to be enlightened. Am I not unhappy enough with all my inability to make the task of deceiving me difficult to you, and now at not being able to exculpate you. Know that I am convinced that you are unworthy of all my love, and that I understand all your base qualities.If, however, all that I have done for you deserves that you should pay some slight regard to the favours I ask of you, write no more to me, I beg you, and help me to forget you entirely. If you were to show, even slightly, that you had felt some grief at the reading of this letter, perchance I should believe you. Perchance, also, your acknowledgment and assent would vex and anger me, and all that would inflame my love afresh. Do not then take any account of my life, or you would doubtless overthrow all my plans, however you entered into them. I care not to know the result of this letter, and I beg of you not to disturb the peace which I am preparing for myself. Methinks youmay content yourself with the harm which you have already caused me, whatever be the intention you formed to make me miserable. Do not tear me from my state of uncertainty; I hope in time to combine with it something like peace of heart. I promise not to hate you; indeed I distrust any violent feelings too much to adventure that. I am persuaded that I should find, it may be in this country, another lover more faithful and handsomer; but, alas! who could make me feel love? Would a passion for another man fill my thoughts? Has mine had any power over you? Have I not experienced that a tender heart never forgets what first awakened it to feelings it knew not that itwas capable of? I have found that all the feelings of such a heart are bound up with the idol it has created for itself—that its first impressions, its first wounds, can neither be healed nor effaced—that all the passions which offer their help and attempt to fill and content it promise it but vainly an emotion which it never feels again—that all the pleasures which it seeks, without any desire of finding them, serve only to convince it that nothing is so dear as the remembrance of its sorrows? Why have you made me feel the imperfection and bitterness of an attachment which cannot endure for ever, and all the evils that result from a violent love, when it is not mutual? Why is it that blindinclination and cruel fate agree as a rule in determining us in favour of those who could only love others? Even if I could hope for some diversion in a new engagement, and could find a man of good faith, I pity myself so much that I should have great scruples in putting the worst man in the world in the condition to which you have brought me; and although I may not be obliged to spare you I could not make up my mind to avenge myself so cruelly, even though it were to depend on me, by a change which I certainly do not foresee. At this very moment I am seeking excuses for you, and I understand that a religious is not as a rule loveable. Methinks, however, if reason guided one’s choiceone ought to be more attached to them than to other women. Nothing prevents their thinking constantly of their passion, and they are not turned aside by a thousand things which divert and occupy the mind in the world. Surely it cannot be very pleasing to see those whom one loves ever distracted by a thousand trifles, and one must needs have but little delicacy to suffer them (without being in despair at it) to talk of nothing but assemblies, dress, and promenades. One is constantly exposed to fresh jealousies, for they are tied down to attentions, politenesses, and conversations with all. Who can be assured that they find no pleasure in all these occasions, and that they always enduretheir husbands with extreme disgust and never of their freewill? Ah, how they ought to distrust a lover who does not make them render an exact account of all, who believes easily and without disquiet what they tell him, who in unruffled trust sees them bound to all these society duties. But I do not seek to prove to you by good reasons that you ought to love me; these are very ill means, and I have made use of much better, without success. Too well do I know my fate to try to rise above it. I shall be miserable all my life. Was I not so even when I saw you daily? I was dying for fear that you would not be faithful. I wished to see you every moment, and I could not.The danger you ran in entering the convent troubled me. I almost died when you were with the army. I was in despair at not being more beautiful and more worthy of you. I used to murmur against my modest rank,[36]and I often thought that the attachment you appeared to cherish for me would be hurtful to you in some way. Methought I did not love you enough. I feared the anger of my parents against you, and I was, in a word, in as lamentable a state then as now. If you had shown me any signs of affection since you left Portugal I should have made every effort to leave it, and I would have disguised myselfto go and find you. Ah, what would have became of me if you had troubled no more about me after I had arrived in France?—what confusion, what a false step, what depths of shame for my family which is so dear to me since I have ceased to love you! I quite understand, you see, that I might have been even more wretched than I am. At least for once in my life I am speaking reasonably to you. How delighted you will doubtless be at my moderation, and how pleased with me? But I wish not to know it. I have already prayed you not to write to me again, and I repeat it now. Have you never reflected on the way in which you have treated me? Have you neverconsidered that you owe me more than any one else in the world? I have loved you as a mad woman might. How I despised everything else!
Besides, you have not acted like an honourable man. You must have had a natural aversion for me, since you have not loved me to distraction. I allowed myself to be enchanted by very mediocre qualities. What have you ever done to please me? What sacrifice have you made for me? Did you not always seek a thousand other pleasures? Did you ever give up gaming or the chase? Were you not ever the first to leave for the army, and did you not always come back the last? You exposed yourself rashly, although I had begged you to spare yourself for my sake. You never sought the means of settling down in Portugal, where you were esteemed. A single letter from your brother made you leave without a moment’s hesitation. Do I not know that during the voyage you were in the best of humours? It must be confessed that I ought to hate you with a deadly hatred. Ah, I have brought down all these misfortunes on myself. I accustomed you from the first to a boundless love, and that with too much ingenuousness, while one needs to employ artifice to make one’s self loved. One should seek the means of skilfully exciting it, for love of itself does not engender love. Youwished me to love you, and since you had formed this design there is nothing that you would not have done to accomplish it. You would even have made up your mind to love me had that been necessary, but you knew that you could succeed in your enterprise without passion, and that you had no need of it. What treachery! did you think that you could deceive me with impunity? If any chance brings you again to this country, I declare that I will hand you over to the vengeance of my kinsfolk. I have lived too long, in an abandonment and idolatry which strikes me with horror, and feelings of remorse persecute me with unbearable severity. I feel a lively shame forthe crimes which you have made me commit, and I have no more, alas! the love which prevented me from comprehending their enormity. When will this heart of mine cease to be torn? When shall I be freed from these cruel trammels?
In spite of all, methinks I do not wish you harm, and could resolve to consent to your being happy. But how could you be so, if you had a true heart? I mean to write you another letter, to show you that I shall perchance be more at peace some day. What pleasure I shall find in being able to reproach you for your injustice when I am no longer so vividly touched by it, in letting you know that I despise you, and that I can speak withindifference of your deceit, that I have forgotten all my pleasures and all my sorrows, and that I only remember you when I wish to do so! I recognise that you have a great advantage over me, and that you have inspired in me a love which has upset my reason; but at the same time you should take little credit to yourself for it. I was young, I was trustful, I had been shut up in this convent since my childhood,[37]I had only seen people whom I did not care for. I had never heard the praises which you constantly gave me. MethoughtI owed you the charms and the beauty which you found in me, and which you were the first to make me perceive: I heard you well talked of; every one spoke in your favour: you did all that was necessary to awake love in me. But I have at last returned to myself from this enchantment. You yourself helped me greatly, and I confess that I had much need of it. When I return you your letters I shall take care to keep the last two which you wrote me; and I shall re-read them more often than I have the previous ones, in order that I may not relapse into my former weakness. Ah! how dear they cost me, and how happy I should have been if you had allowedme to love you always. I well know that I am still a little too much taken up with my reproaches and your faithlessness, but remember that I have promised myself a state of greater peace, and that I shall reach it, or take some desperate resolve against myself, which you will learn, without great displeasure. But I wish no more of you, and I am foolish to repeat the same things so often. I must leave you, and think no more on you. I even think that I shall not write to you again. Am I under any obligation to render you an exact account of all I do?