Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/137

118 if I can, to die. I repeat to you, and it is the last cry of my soul to you : in pity, leave me ; if not, you will know remorse. 1774. Mon Dieu ! how you trouble my life ! you make me pass through in one day the most contrary conditions ; sometimes I am carried away by passionate emotion ; then I turn to ice at the thought that you will not respond to me. Then this last reflection makes me angry with my own nature, and to recover a little calmness, I abandon myself to the heart- rending memory of him whom I have lost. Presently my soul is filled with gentler feeling ; I am in a state to dwell on the few moments of happiness that I have tasted iu loving. All these thoughts, which ought to take me farther from you, bring me closer. I feel that I love you, and so much that I can have no hope of repose except in death. That is my only support, the only help that I expect, the need of which I feel in almost all the moments of my life.

Mon ami, you have shed a balm on the little wound I gave myself last night; this proves the truth of what M. d'Alembert asserts, that there are circumstances in which pain is not pain. Yes, you shall have the Eulogy before midnight. I have sent to the Archbishop of Toulouse [Lomdnie de Brienne] to return it. Adieu, once more, mon ami; you cause my sUence, my sadness, my unhap- piness ; in a word, it is you who give life to my soul, and my soul drags me onward. I dare not tell you to what point I love you. Ten o'clock, 1774. You do not care to see me again to-day ; you are sufficiently indifferent to me, so that I need not fear to disturb the interests that are agitating you. Listen to me, and let us make a compact with each other, such as Mme. de Montespan proposed