I SAT down and wrote as follows:—
“I hear that you are not well, and am extremely sorry for it. I wish I
were with you, and enabled to assist you as a friend. I hope your
illness is the sole cause why you have not written to me during the last
three days. Did you take offence at my little strictures the other day?
Believe me they were dictated by no ill will or spleen, but with the
single object of drawing your attention to more serious subjects. Should
it be irksome for you to write, send me an exact account, by word, how
you find yourself. You shall hear from me every day, and I will try to
say something to amuse you, and to show you that I really wish you well.”
Imagine my unfeigned surprise when I received an answer, couched in these
terms:
“I renounce your friendship: if you are at a loss how to estimate mine, I
return the compliment in its full force. I am not a man to put up with
injurious treatment; I am not one, who, once rejected, will be ordered to
return.”
“Because you heard I was unwell, you approach me with a hypocritical air,
in the idea that illness will break down my spirit, and make me listen to
your sermons . . . ”
In this way he rambled on, reproaching and despising me in the most
revolting terms he could find, and turning every thing I had said into
ridicule and burlesque. He assured me that he knew how to live and die
with consistency; that is to say, with the utmost hatred and contempt for
all philosophical creeds differing from his own. I was dismayed!
“A pretty conversion I have made of it!” I exclaimed; “yet God is my
witness that my motives were pure. I have done nothing to merit an
attack like this. But patience! I am once more undeceived. I am not
called upon to do more.”
In a few days I became less angry, and conceived that all this bitterness
might have resulted from some excitement which might pass away. Probably
he repents, yet scorns to confess he was in the wrong. In such a state
of mind, it might be generous of me to write to him once more. It cost
my self-love something, but I did it. To humble one’s self for a good
purpose is not degrading, with whatever degree of unjust contempt it may
be returned.
I received a reply less violent, but not less insulting. The implacable
patient declared that he admired what he called my evangelical
moderation. “Now, therefore,” he continued, “let us resume our
correspondence, but let us speak out. We do not like each other, but we
will write, each for his own amusement, setting everything down which may
come into our heads. You will tell me your seraphic visions and
revelations, and I will treat you with my profane adventures; you again
will run into ecstasies upon the dignity of man, yea, and of woman; I
into an ingenuous narrative of my various profanations; I hoping to make
a convert of you, and you of me.
“Give me an answer should you approve these conditions.”
I replied, “Yours is not a compact, but a jest. I was full of good-will
towards you. My conscience does not constrain me to do more than to wish
you every happiness both as regards this and another life.”
Thus ended my secret connexion with that strange man. But who knows; he
was perhaps more exasperated by ill fortune, delirium, or despair, than
really bad at heart.