_[Paris] Feb. 10 [1795]._
You talk of "permanent views and future comfort"--not for me, for I am
dead to hope. The inquietudes of the last winter have finished the
business, and my heart is not only broken, but my constitution destroyed.
I conceive myself in a galloping consumption, and the continual anxiety I
feel at the thought of leaving my child, feeds the fever that nightly
devours me. It is on her account that I again write to you, to conjure
you, by all that you hold sacred, to leave her here with the German lady
you may have heard me mention! She has a child of the same age, and they
may be brought up together, as I wish her to be brought up. I shall write
more fully on the subject. To facilitate this, I shall give up my present
lodgings, and go into the same house. I can live much cheaper there,
which is now become an object. I have had 3000 livres from ----, and I
shall take one more, to pay my servant's wages, &c. and then I shall
endeavour to procure what I want by my own exertions. I shall entirely
give up the acquaintance of the Americans.
---- and I have not been on good terms a long time. Yesterday he very
unmanlily exulted over me, on account of your determination to stay. I had
provoked it, it is true, by some asperities against commerce, which have
dropped from me, when we have argued about the propriety of your remaining
where you are; and it is no matter, I have drunk too deep of the bitter
cup to care about trifles.
When you first entered into these plans, you bounded your views to the
gaining of a thousand pounds. It was sufficient to have procured a farm in
America, which would have been an independence. You find now that you did
not know yourself, and that a certain situation in life is more necessary
to you than you imagined--more necessary than an uncorrupted heart--For a
year or two, you may procure yourself what you call pleasure; eating,
drinking, and women; but in the solitude of declining life, I shall be
remembered with regret--I was going to say with remorse, but checked my
pen.
As I have never concealed the nature of my connection with you, your
reputation will not suffer. I shall never have a confident: I am content
with the approbation of my own mind; and, if there be a searcher of
hearts, mine will not be despised. Reading what you have written relative
to the desertion of women, I have often wondered how theory and practice
could be so different, till I recollected, that the sentiments of passion,
and the resolves of reason, are very distinct. As to my sisters, as you
are so continually hurried with business, you need not write to them--I
shall, when my mind is calmer. God bless you! Adieu!