_The_ Chevalier Danceny _to_ Cecilia Volanges.
What then has happened to you, my adorable Cecilia! What can have
caused so sudden, so cruel a change in you? What are become of your
vows of eternal constancy? Even yesterday you renewed them with so
much pleasure: what! can to-day make you forget them? In vain do I
examine—I can’t find any reason given by myself; and it afflicts me
much to have to seek the cause in you. Ah, no! you are neither fickle
or deceitful; and even in this moment of despair, no unworthy suspicion
shall disgrace my heart; and yet, from what fatality are you no longer
the same? No, cruel creature, you are not! The tender Cecilia, the
Cecilia I adore! whose constancy is pledged to me, would not have
shunned my tender looks; would not have thwarted the happy accident
that placed me near her; or, if any reason that I can’t conceive, had
forced her treat to me with so much rigour, she would at least have
condescended to have informed me of it.
Ah! you don’t know, you never can know, what you have made me suffer at
this day, what I shall suffer at this instant! Do you then think I can
live without your love? Yet, when I begged but a word, a single word,
to dispel my fears, instead of making a reply, you feigned a dread of
being overheard; and this obstacle, which then had no existence, you
gave birth to by the place yon fixed on in the circle. When forced
to leave you, and I asked what hour I should see you to-morrow, you
feigned not to know; and to Madame de Volanges was I obliged for
telling me. Thus the moment hitherto so much panted for, of being with
you to-morrow, will bring me only distress and grief; and the pleasure
of seeing you, as yet the greatest my heart could experience, must now
give way to the dread of being troublesome.
I already feel this: my fears prevent me from talking to you of my
passion. Though _I love you_, that enchanting sound, which I so much
delighted in repeating, when I could hear it, in my turn; that sweet
word which sufficed for my felicity, no longer offers me, if you
are altered, but eternal despair. I cannot however think that this
talisman of love has lost all its effect, and I still strive to make
use of it. Yes, my Cecilia, _I love you_[1]. Repeat then this happy
expression with me. Remember you have accustomed me to it; and now to
deprive me of it, would be to condemn me to torments, which, like my
love, will only end with my life.
_Aug._ 29, 17—.
[1] Those who have not sometimes had occasion to feel the value of a
word, of an expression consecrated by love, will not find any sense in
this phrase.