_The Answer_
_Zamora_
My dear lord,
It is with the utmost pleasure that I have it now in my power to assure
you that your affair is finally closed at the court of Madrid, in a
manner the most advantageous and honourable to your name and family. You
will perceive from the date of this letter that I had no need of the
request you have made in order to remind me of my duty to my friend.
I was no sooner able to quit the capital with propriety, than I
immediately repaired hither. The derangement however of your affairs at
this place is greater than either of us could have imagined, and it
will take a considerable time to reduce them to that order, which shall
render them most beneficial to the peasant, and most productive to the
lord.
The employment which I find at this place, serves in some degree to
dissipate the anguish of my mind. It is an employment embellished
by innocence, and consecrated by friendship. It is therefore of all
pursuits that which has the greatest tendency to lull the sense of
misery.
Rinaldo, I had drawn the pangs of absence with no flattering pencil. I
had expressed them in the most harsh and aggravated colours. But dark
and gloomy as were the prognostics I had formed to myself, they, alas,
were but shadows of what was reserved for me. The event laughs to scorn
the conceptions I had entertained. Explain to me, best, most faithful of
friends, for you only can, what dark and portentous meaning is concealed
beneath the silence of Matilda. So far from your present epistle
assisting the conjectures of my madding brain, it bewilders me more
than ever. My friend dates his letter from the very place in which she
resides, and yet by not a single word does he inform me how, and what
she is.
It is now six tedious months since a single line has reached me from her
hand. I have expostulated with the voice of apprehension, with the voice
of agony, but to no purpose. Had it not been for the tenfold obligation
in which I am bound to the best of friends, I had long, very long ere
this, deserted the kingdom of Spain for ever. The concerns of no man
upon earth, but those of my Rinaldo, could have detained me. Had they
related to myself alone, I had not wasted a thought on them. And yet
here I am at a greater distance from the centre of my solicitude than
ever.
You, my friend, know not the exquisite and inexpressible anguish of a
mind, in doubt about that in which he is most interested. I have not the
most solitary and slender clue to guide me through the labyrinth. All
the events, all the calamities that may have overtaken me, are alike
probable and improbable, and there is not one of them that I can invent,
which can possibly have escaped the knowledge of that friend, into whose
hands I committed my all. Sickness, infidelity, death itself, all the
misfortunes to which humanity is heir, are alike certain and palpable.
Oh, my Rinaldo, it was a most ill-judged and mistaken indulgence, that
led you to suppress the story of my disaster. Give me to know it. It may
be distressful, it may be tremendous. But be it as it will, there is
not a misfortune in the whole catalogue of human woes, the knowledge of
which would not be elysium to what I suffer. To be told the whole is
to know the worst. Time is the medicine of every anguish. There is no
malady incident to a conscious being, which if it does not annihilate
his existence, does not, after having attained a crisis, insensibly fall
away and dissolve. But apprehension, apprehension is hell itself. It
is infinite as the range of possibility. It is immortal as the mind
in which it takes up its residence. It gains ground every moment.
Compounded as it is of hope and fear, there is not a moment in which
it does not plume the wings of expectation. It prepares for itself
incessant, eternal disappointment. It grows for ever. At first it may
be trifling and insignificant, but anon it swells its giant limbs, and
hides its head among the clouds.
Lost as I am to the fate, the character, the present dispositions of
Matilda, I have now no prop to lean upon but you. Upon you I place an
unshaken confidence. In your fidelity I can never be deceived. I owe you
greater obligations than ever man received from man before. When I was
forlorn and deserted by all the world, it was then you flew to save me.
You left the blandishments that have most power over the unsuspecting
mind of youth, you left the down of luxury, to search me out. It was you
that saved my life in the forest of Leontini. They were your generous
offers that afforded me the first specimens of that benevolence and
friendship, which restored me from the annihilation into which I was
plunged, to an existence more pleasant and happy than I had yet known.
Rinaldo, I committed to your custody a jewel more precious than all the
treasures of the east. I have lost, I am deprived of her. Where shall I
seek her? In what situation, under what character shall I discover her?
Believe me, I have not in all the paroxysms of grief, entertained a
doubt of you. I have not for a moment suffered an expression of blame to
escape my lips. But may I not at least know from you, what it is that
has effected this strange alteration, to what am I to trust, and what is
the fate that I am to expect for the remainder of an existence of which
I am already weary?
Yes, my dear marquis, life is now a burden to me. There is nothing but
the dear business of friendship, and the employment of disinterested
affection that could make it supportable. Accept at least this last
exertion of your St. Julian. His last vows shall be breathed for your
happiness. Fate, do what thou wilt me, but shower down thy choicest
blessings on my friend! Whatever thou deniest to my sincere exertions in
the cause of rectitude, bestow a double portion upon that artless and
ingenuous youth, who, however misguided for a moment, has founded even
upon the basis of error, a generous return and an heroic resolution,
which the most permanent exertions of spotless virtue scarce can equal!