SECOND LETTER[26]Das tristezas, não se pôde contar náda ordenadamente, porque desordenadamente acontescem ellas.Bernardim Ribeiro,Saudades, cap. i.
Das tristezas, não se pôde contar náda ordenadamente, porque desordenadamente acontescem ellas.Bernardim Ribeiro,Saudades, cap. i.
Das tristezas, não se pôde contar náda ordenadamente, porque desordenadamente acontescem ellas.
Bernardim Ribeiro,Saudades, cap. i.
YOURlieutenant has just told me that a storm has forced you to put into port in the Algarve.[27]I am afraid you have suffered much on the sea, and so much has this fear absorbed me that I have thought no more on all my troubles. Do you think, perchance,that your lieutenant takes more interest in what happens to you than I do? If not, why then is he better informed of it? And then, why have you not written to me? I am unlucky indeed if you have found no time for writing since you left, and still more so if you could have written and would not. Your injustice and ingratitude are too great; but I should be in despair if they were to cause you any harm. I had rather you should remain unpunished than that they should avenge me. I withstand all the appearances which ought to persuade me that you do not love me at all, and I feel much more disposed to yield myself blindly to my passion than to the reasons you give me tocomplain of your neglect. What mortification you would have spared me, if, in the days when I first saw you, your conduct had been as cold as it has seemed to me for some time now! But who would not have been deceived by such ardour as you then showed, and who would not have thought it sincere? How hard it is to make up one’s mind to doubt for any time the sincerity of those one loves! I see clearly that the least excuse is good enough for you; and, without your troubling to make it to me, my love for you serves you so faithfully that I cannot consent to find you guilty, except for the sake of enjoying the infinite pleasure of declaring you guiltless myself. You overcameme by your assiduities, you kindled my passions with your transports, your tenderness fascinated me, your vows persuaded me, but it was the violence of my own love which led me away; and this beginning at once so sweet and so happy, has left nothing behind it but tears, sighs, and a wretched death, without the possibility of my ministering any relief to myself. It is true that in loving you I enjoyed a pleasure unthought of before, but this very pleasure is now costing me a sorrow, which once I knew nothing of. All the emotions which you cause me run to extremes. If I had shown obstinacy in resisting your love, if I had given you any motive for anger or jealousy in order to draw you onthe more, if you had detected any artifice in my conduct, if, in a word, I had wished to oppose my reason to the natural inclination I felt for you, and which you soon made me perceive (though doubtless my efforts would have been useless), you might then have punished me severely and used your power over me with some show of justice. But you seemed to me worthy of my love before you had told me that you loved me: you gave evidence of a great passion for me: I was overjoyed at it, and I gave myself up to love you to distraction. You were not blinded as I was. Why then did you let me fall into the state in which I now am? What did you want with all my raptures,which must have been very troublesome to you? You well knew that you would not stay in Portugal for ever. Then why did you single me out to make me so unhappy? Doubtless you might, in this country, have found some woman more beautiful than I am, one with whom you could have enjoyed as much pleasure,—since in this you only sought the grosser kind—one who would have loved you faithfully as long as you were with her, whom time would have consoled for your absence, and whom you might have left without either treachery or cruelty. You act more like a tyrant bent on persecution than a lover whose only thought should be how to please. Alas! why doyou treat so harshly a heart which is yours? I can see very well that you let yourself be turned against me as easily as I let myself be convinced in your favour. Without needing to call on all my love, and without imagining that I had done anything out of the way, I should have resisted much stronger arguments than those can be which have moved you to leave me. They would have seemed to me very weak, and none could have been strong enough to tear me from your side. But you were ready to make use of the first pretexts that you found in order to get back to France. A vessel was sailing. Why did you not let it sail? Your family had written to you. Surelyyou know all the persecutions which I have suffered from mine? Your honour obliged you to abandon me. Did I take any care of mine? You were forced to go and serve your king. If all they say of him is true he has no need of your help, and would have excused you. I should have been only too happy if we could have passed our whole lives together, but since it was fated that a cruel absence should separate us, I think I ought to be glad indeed at the thought of not having been faithless, and I would not wish to have committed such a base act for anything in the world. What! you who have known the depths of my heart and affection, could you make up your mind to leave me for everand expose me to the dread of feeling that you only remember me in order to sacrifice me to some new passion?
I well know that I love you as one distracted. Withal I do not complain of all the violence of my heart’s emotions; I am accustoming myself to its tortures, and I could not live without the pleasure which I find and enjoy in loving you in the midst of a thousand sorrows. But a disgust and hatred for everything torments me constantly; I feel my family, my friends, and this convent unbearable. All I am forced to see and everything I am obliged to do is hateful to me. I have grown so jealous of my passion that methinks all my actions and all my duties have regard to you. Yes,I have scruples in not employing every moment of my life for you. Ah! what should I do without the extremities of hate and love which fill my heart? Could I survive that which incessantly fills my thoughts, and lead a quiet cold life? Such a void, and such a lack of feeling, could never suit me. All have noticed how completely I am changed in my humour, my manners, and my person. My mother[28]spoke to me about it, sharply at first, but afterwards more kindly. I know not what I said in reply. I think I confessed all to her. Even the strictest religious pity my condition, and are moved by a certain consideration and regard for me. Everyone, in fact, is touched by my love: and you alone remain profoundly indifferent. You write me letters at once cold and full of repetitions; the paper is not half filled, and you make it quite clear that you are dying to finish them.
Dona Brites has been importuning me for several days to get me to leave my room, and thinking to divert me she took me for a walk upon the balcony, from which one sees the gates of Mertola.[29]I went with her, but at once cruel memories assailed me, and these made me weep for the rest of the day. She brought me back to my room, and there Ithrew myself on the bed and thought a thousand times on the little hope I have of ever being well again. What is done to alleviate only embitters my grief, and I find in the very remedies themselves particular reasons for fresh sorrows. It was from that spot that I often saw you pass by with that air which charmed me so, and I was up on that balcony on the fatal day when I began to feel the first effects of my unhappy passion. Methought you were wishing to please me, although as yet you did not know me. I persuaded myself that you singled me out among all my companions. When you paused I thought you were pleased for me to see you better and admire your skilland grace whilst you caracoled your horse. A sudden fright came over me when you made it go over some difficult place. In a word, I interested myself secretly in every act of yours. I felt quite sure you were not indifferent to me, and I took as meant for me all that you did. You know too well what came of all this; and although I have nothing to hide, I ought not to write to you so much about it, lest I make you more guilty than you are already, if that be possible, and lest I have to reproach myself with so many useless efforts to oblige you to be faithful. This you will never be. Can I ever hope that my letters and reproaches will have an effect on your ingratitude that my lovefor you and your desertion of me have not had? I know my sad fate too well: your injustice leaves me not the slightest reason to doubt of it, and I am bound to fear the worst, since you have cast me off. Have you a charm only for me, and do not other eyes find you pleasing? I should not be annoyed, I think, were the feelings of others in some sort to justify mine, and I would wish all the women in France to find you agreeable, but none to love you, none please you. This idea is ridiculous and impossible I well know. I have already, however, found by experience that you are incapable of a great affection, and that you could easily forget me without any help, and without afresh love obliging you to it. I would, perhaps, wish you to have some reasonable pretext for your desertion of me. It is true that I should then be more unhappy, but you would not be so guilty. You mean to stay in France, I perceive, without great enjoyments, may be, but in the possession of full liberty. The fatigue of a long voyage, some punctilios of good manners, and the fear of not being able to correspond to my ardent passion, keep you there. Oh do not be afraid of me; I will be content with seeing you from time to time, and knowing only that we are in the same country; but perhaps I flatter myself, and may be you will be more touched by the rigour and hardnessof another woman than you have been by all my favours. Can it be that cruelty will inflame you more?
But before engaging yourself in any great passion, think well on the excess of my sorrows, on the uncertainty of my purposes, on the contradictions in my emotions, on the extravagance of my letters, on my trustfulness, my despair, my desires, and my jealousy. Oh! you are on the way to make yourself unhappy. I conjure you to profit by my example, that at least what I am suffering for you may not be useless to you. Five or six months ago you told me a secret which troubled me, and acknowledged, only too frankly, that you had once loved a lady in your own country. If itis she who prevents you from returning here, do not scruple to tell me, that I may fret no more. I am borne up by some remnants of hope still, but I should be well pleased, if it can have no good result, to lose it at a blow, and myself with it. Send me her likeness and some one of her letters, and write me all she says. Perchance I shall find reasons wherewith to console myself, or it may be to afflict myself still more. I cannot remain any longer in my present state, and any change whatsoever must be to my advantage. I should also like to have the portrait of your brother and of your sister-in-law.[30]All that concernsyou is very dear to me, and I am wholly given up to what touches you in any way: I have no inclination of my own left. Sometimes, methinks, I could even submit to wait upon her whom you love. Your bad treatment and disdain have broken me down so far that at times I do not dare to think I could be jealous and yet not displease you, and I go so far as to think that I should be doing the greatest wrong in the world were I to upbraid you. I am often convinced that I ought not to let you see, so madly as I do, feelings which you disown. An officer has now been waiting long for this letter. I had resolved to write it in such a way that you might receive it without annoyance, but as it is, it is too extravagant, and I must close it. Alas! I cannot bring myself to this. I seem to be speaking to you whilst I write, and you seem to be more present to me. The next[31]letter shall neither be so long nor so troublesome; you may open and read it assured of this. It is true that I ought not to speak of a passion which displeases you, and I will not speak of it again. In a few days it will be a year since I gave myself up to you without reserve. Your love seemed to me very warm and sincere, and I should never have thought that my favours would so annoy you as to obligeyou to voyage five hundred leagues and expose yourself to the risk of shipwreck to escape from them. I have not deserved such treatment as this at any man’s hands. You may remember my modesty, my shame, and my confusion, but you do not remember what would make you love me in spite of yourself. The officer who is to carry you this letter sends to me for the fourth time to say that he wishes to be gone. How pressing he is! doubtless he is leaving some unhappy lady in this country.
Good-bye. It costs me more to finish this letter than it cost you to quit me, perhaps for ever. Good-bye. I do not dare give you athousand names of love, nor abandon myself to all my feelings without restraint. I love you a thousand times more than my life, and a thousand times more than I think for. How dear you are to me, and yet how cruel! You do not write to me. I could not help saying this to you again. But I am beginning afresh, and the officer will be gone. What matters it? Let him go. ’Tis not so much for your sake that I write as for my own. I only seek some solace. Besides, the very length of my letter will frighten you, and you will not read it. What have I done to be so unhappy? And why have you poisoned my life? Why was I not born in some other country? Good-bye, and forgive me. I dare not now pray you to love me. See to what my fate has brought me. Good-bye!