_The Count de St. Julian to the Marquis of Pescara_
_Livorno_
My lord,
I hoped before this time to have presented before you the form of
that injured friend, which, if your heart is not yet callous to every
impression, must be more blasting to your sight, than all the chimeras
that can be conjured up by a terrified imagination, or a guilty
conscience. I no sooner received the accursed intelligence at Zamora,
than I flew with the speed of lightning. I permitted no consideration
upon earth to delay me till I arrived at Alicant. But the sea was less
favourable to the impatience of my spirit. I set sail in a boisterous
and unpromising season. I have been long tossed about at the mercy of
the ocean. I thank God, after having a thousand times despaired of it,
that I have at length set foot in a port of Italy. It is distant
indeed, but the ardour of my purpose were sufficient to cut short all
intermission.
My lord, I trusted you as my own soul. No consideration could have moved
me to entertain a moment's suspicion of your fidelity. I placed in your
hand the most important pledge it ever was my fortune to possess. I
employed no guard. I opened to you an unsuspecting bosom, and you have
stung me to the heart. I gave you the widest opportunity, and it is
through my weak and groundless confidence that you have reached me. You
have employed without scruple all those advantages it put into your
hands. You have undermined me at your ease. I left you to protect my
life's blood, my heart of heart, from every attack, to preserve the
singleness of her affections, and the constancy of her attachment. It
was yours to have breathed into her ear the sighs of St. Julian. It was
yours ambitiously to expatiate upon his amiable qualities. You were
every day to have added fuel to the flame. You were to have presented
Matilda to my arms, more beautiful, more tender, more kind, than she had
ever appeared. From this moment then, let the name of trust be a by-word
for the profligate to scoff at! Let the epithet of friend be a mildew to
the chaste and uncorrupted ear! Let mutual confidence be banished from
the earth, and men, more savage than the brute, devour each other!
Was it possible, my lord, that you should dream, that the benefits you
had formerly conferred upon me, could deprive my resentment of all its
sting under the present provocation! If you did, believe me, you were
most egregiously mistaken. It is true I owed you much, and heaven
has not cursed me with a heart of steel. What bounds did I set to my
gratitude? I left my natal shore, I braved all the dangers of the ocean,
I fought in foreign climes the power of requital. I fondly imagined that
I could never discharge so vast obligations. But the invention of your
lordship is more fertile than mine. You have found the means to blot
them in a moment. Yes, my lord, from henceforth all contract between
us is canceled. You have set us right upon our first foundations.
Friendship, affection, pity, I give you to the winds! Come to my bosom,
unmixed malignity, black-boiling revenge! You are now the only inmates
welcome to my heart.
Oh, Rinaldo, that character once so dear to me, that youth over whose
opening inclinations I watched with so unremitting care, is it you that
are the author of so severe a misfortune? I held you to my breast. I
poured upon your head all that magazine of affection and tenderness,
with which heaven had dowered me. Never did one man so ardently love
another. Never did one man interest himself so much in another's truth
and virtue, in another's peace and happiness. I formed you for heroism.
I cultivated those features in your character which might have made
you an ornament to your country and mankind. I strewed your path with
flowers, I made the couch beneath you violets and roses. Hear me, yet
hear me! Learn to perceive all the magnitude of your crime. You have
murdered your friend. You have wounded him in the tenderest part. You
have seduced the purest innocence and the most unexampled truth. For
is it possible that Matilda, erewhile the pattern of every spotless
excellence, could have been a party in the black design?
But it is no longer time for the mildness of censure and the sobriety of
reproach. I would utter myself in the fierce and unqualified language of
invective. You have sinned beyond redemption. I would speak daggers.
I would wring blood from your heart at every word. But no; I will not
waste myself in angry words. I will not indulge to the bitterness of
opprobrium. Nothing but the anguish of my soul should have wrung from
me these solitary lines. Nothing but the fear of not surviving to my
revenge, should have prevented me from forestalling them in person.--I
will meet thee at Cerenzo.