Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/113

96 love better, but he who made me unfaithful and guilty, he for whom I live after losing the object and interest of every mo- ment of my life, is he who has had most empire over my soul, he who has taken from me the liberty to live solely for an- other and to die when neither hope nor desire remains to me! No doubt I have been held to life by the same spell that drew me towards you, that potent charm attached to your pres- ence, which intoxicates my soul and bewilders it to such ex- cess that the memory of my sorrow is effaced. Mon ami, with three words you have created a new soul within me, you have filled it with an interest so keen, a sentiment so tender, so profound, that I lose the faculty to recall the past and to foresee the future.

Yes, mon ami, I live in you ; I exist because I love you ; and that is so true that it seems to me impossible not to die if I should lose the hope of seeing you. The happiness of having seen you, the desire, the expectation of seeing you again aid and sustain me against my grief. Alas ! what would become of me if, instead of hope, I had only the sorrowful yegret of not seeing you ? Mon ami, with you I have not been able to die, without you I neither could — nor would I — live. Ah ! if you knew what I suffer, what dreadful laceration my heart feels when I am left to myself, when your presence, or your thought no longer sustains me ! Ah ! it is then that the memory of M. de Mora becomes a senti- ment so active, so piercing, that my life, my feelings cause me horror. I abhor the aberration, the passion that made me guilty, that made me cast trouble and fear into that sensitive soul that was all my own.

Mon ami, do you conceive to what point I love you ? You