_Cape Francois._
Three of your letters arriving at the same time, my dear friend, have
made me blush for my impatience, and force me to acknowledge that I
have wronged you. But your friendship is so necessary to my happiness
that the idea of losing it is insupportable. You know what clouds of
misfortune have obscured my life. An orphan without friends, without
support, separated from my sister from my infancy, and, at an age when
the heart is most alive to tenderness and affection, deprived by the
unrelenting hand of death, of him who had taught me to feel all the
transports of passion, and for whose loss I felt all its despair--Cast
on the world without an asylum, without resource, I met you:--you
raised me--soothed me--whispered peace to my lacerated breast! Ah! can
I ever forget that delightful moment when your care saved me? It was so
long since I had known sympathy or consolation that my astonished soul
knew not how to receive the enchanting visitants; fleeting as fervent
was my joy: but let me not repine! Your friendship has shed a ray of
light on my solitary way, and though removed from the influence of your
immediate presence, I exist only in the hope of seeing you again.
In restoring me to my sister, at the moment of her marriage, you
procured for me a home not only respectable, but in which all the
charms of fashionable elegance, all the attractions of pleasure are
united. Unfortunately, Clara, amidst these intoxicating scenes of
ever-varying amusement, and attended by crowds, who offer her the
incense of adulation, is wretched, and I cannot be happy!
You know her early habits have been different from mine; affluence
might have been thought necessary to her, yet the sensibility of her
heart rejects the futile splendour that surrounds her, and the tears
that often stain her brilliant robes, shew that they cover a bosom to
which peace is a stranger!
The fortune of her husband was his only advantage. The friend who had
been charged with Clara from her infancy had accustomed her to enjoy
the sweets of opulence, and thought nothing more desirable than to
place her in a situation where she could still command them. Alas her
happiness has been the sacrifice of his mistaken, though well meant,
intentions. St. Louis is too sensible of the real superiority of his
wife not to set some value on that which he derives from his money, and
tears of bitterest regret often fill her eyes when contemplating the
splendor which has been so dearly purchased. Though to me he has been
invariably kind yet my heart is torn with regret at the torments which
his irascible temper inflict on his wife. They force her to seek relief
in the paths of pleasure, whilst destined by nature to embellish the
sphere of domestic felicity.