------ Hotel, London.
For the first time in my life I write to you! How my hand trembles--how
my cheek flushes! a thousand, thousand thoughts rush upon me, and almost
suffocate me with the variety and confusion of the emotions they awaken!
I am agitated alike with the rapture of writing to you, and with the
impossibility of expressing the feelings which I cannot distinctly
unravel even to myself. You love me, Emily, and yet I have fled from
you, and at your command; but the thought that, though absent, I am not
forgotten, supports me through all.
It was with a feverish sense of weariness and pain that I found myself
entering this vast reservoir of human vices. I became at once sensible
of the sterility of that polluted soil so incapable of nurturing
affection, and I clasped your image the closer to my heart. It is you,
who, when I was most weary of existence, gifted me with a new life. You
breathed into me a part of your own spirit; my soul feels that influence,
and becomes more sacred. I have shut myself from the idlers who would
molest me: I have built a temple in my heart: I have set within it a
divinity; and the vanities of the world shall not profane the spot which
has been consecrated to you. Our parting, Emily,--do you recall it?
Your hand clasped in mine; your cheek resting, though but for an instant,
on my bosom; and the tears which love called forth, but which virtue
purified even at their source. Never were hearts so near, yet so
divided; never was there an hour so tender, yet so unaccompanied with
danger. Passion, grief, madness, all sank beneath your voice, and lay
hushed like a deep sea within my soul! "Tu abbia veduto il leone
ammansarsi alla sola tua voce."
'Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis.
I tore myself from you; I hurried through the wood; I stood by the lake,
on whose banks I had so often wandered with you: I bared my breast to the
winds; I bathed my temples with the waters. Fool that I was! the fever,
the fever was within! But it is not thus, my adored and beautiful
friend, that I should console and support you. Even as I write, passion
melts into tenderness, and pours itself in softness over your
remembrance. The virtue so gentle, yet so strong; the feelings so kind,
yet so holy; the tears which wept over the decision your lips
proclaimed--these are the recollections which come over me like dew. Let
your own heart, my Emily, be your reward; and know that your lover only
forgets that he adores, to remember that he respects you.