_The Same to the Same_
_Naples_
I have waited, charming Matilda, with the most longing impatience in
hopes of receiving a letter from your own hand. Every post has agitated
me with suspense. My expectation has been continually raised, and as
often defeated. Many a cold and unanimated epistle has intruded
itself into my hands, when I thought to have found some token full of
gentleness and tenderness, which might have taught my heart to overflow
with rapture. If you knew, fair excellence, how much pain and uneasiness
your silence has given me, you could not surely have been so cruel. The
most rigid decorum could not have been offended by one scanty billet
that might just have informed me, I still retained a tender place in
your recollection. One solitary line would have raised me to a state of
happiness that princes might envy.
A jealous and contracted mind placed in my situation, might fear to
undergo the imputation of selfishness and interest. He would represent
to himself, how brilliant was your station, how exalted your rank, how
splendid your revenues, and what a poor, deserted, and contemptible
figure I made in the eyes of the world, when your father first honoured
me with his attention. My Matilda were a match for princes. Her external
situation in the highest degree magnificent. Her person lovely and
engaging beyond all the beauty that Italy has to boast. Her mind
informed with the most refined judgment, the most elegant taste, the
most generous sentiments. When the dictates of prudence and virtue flow
from her beauteous lips, philosophers might listen with rapture, sages
might learn wisdom. And is it possible that this all-accomplished
woman can stoop from the dignity of her rank and the greatness of her
pretensions, to a person so obscure, so slenderly qualified as I am?
But no, my Matilda, I am a stranger to these fears, my breast is
unvisited by the demon of suspicion. I employ no precaution. I do not
seek to constrain my passion. I lay my heart naked before you. I shall
ever maintain the most grateful sense of the benevolent friendship
of your venerable father, of your own unexampled and ravishing
condescension. But love, my amiable Matilda, knows no distinction of
rank. We cannot love without building our ardour upon the sense of a
kind of equality. All obligations must here in a manner cease but those
which are mutual. Those hearts that are sensible to the distance of
benefactor and client, are strangers to the sweetest emotions of this
amiable passion.
But who is there that is perfectly master of his own character? Who
is there that can certainly foretel what will be his feelings and
sentiments in circumstances yet untried? Do not then, fairest, gentlest,
of thy sex, torture the lover that adores you. Do not persist in cold
and unexpressive silence. A thousand times have those lips made the
chaste confession of my happiness. A thousand times upon that hand have
I sealed my gratitude. Yet do I stand in need of fresh assurances.
Mutual attachment subsists not but in communication and sympathy. I
count the tedious moments. My wayward fancy paints in turn all the
events that are within the region of possibility. Too many of them there
are, against the apprehension of which no precaution can secure me. Do
not, my lovely Matilda, do not voluntarily increase them. Is not the
comfortless distance to which I am banished a sufficient punishment,
without adding to it those uneasinesses it is so much in your power to
remove?