_[Copenhagen] September 6 [1795]._
I received just now your letter of the 20th. I had written you a letter
last night, into which imperceptibly slipt some of my bitterness of soul.
I will copy the part relative to business. I am not sufficiently vain to
imagine that I can, for more than a moment, cloud your enjoyment of
life--to prevent even that, you had better never hear from me--and repose
on the idea that I am happy.
Gracious God! It is impossible for me to stifle something like
resentment, when I receive fresh proofs of your indifference. What I have
suffered this last year, is not to be forgotten! I have not that happy
substitute for wisdom, insensibility--and the lively sympathies which bind
me to my fellow-creatures, are all of a painful kind.--They are the
agonies of a broken heart--pleasure and I have shaken hands.
I see here nothing but heaps of ruins, and only converse with people
immersed in trade and sensuality.
I am weary of travelling--yet seem to have no home--no resting-place to
look to.--I am strangely cast off.--How often, passing through the rocks,
I have thought, "But for this child, I would lay my head on one of them,
and never open my eyes again!" With a heart feelingly alive to all the
affections of my nature--I have never met with one, softer than the stone
that I would fain take for my last pillow. I once thought I had, but it
was all a delusion. I meet with families continually, who are bound
together by affection or principle--and, when I am conscious that I have
fulfilled the duties of my station, almost to a forgetfulness of myself, I
am ready to demand, in a murmuring tone, of Heaven, "Why am I thus
abandoned?"