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, _Canção_ ix.
I am writing 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 the first 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 to your 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!
After a 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 you are, 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 to you, 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 you may 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 it was 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 blind inclination 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 choice one 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 endure their 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 myself to 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 never considered 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. You wished 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 for the 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 with indifference 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. Methought I
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 allowed me 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?