Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/138

1774] to Mme. de Maintenon. Being forced to take a rather long journey with her tete a tete, " Madame, " she said, " let us forget our hatred, our quarrels, and be good company to one another." Well ! I say to you : " Let us forget our mutual dis- pleasure, and do you be docile enough to bring back to me what I asked you for." Yes, it is I who am speaking to you, and I am not mad ; at any rate, my madness is of a kind less harsh and more unhappy. August 25, 1774. Yes, mon ami, that which has most force, most power in nature, is assuredly passion; it has just imposed upon me privation, and it enables me to bear it with a thousand-fold more courage than reason or virtue could inspire. But pas- sion is an absolute tyrant; a tyrant that makes slaves of those only who hate and treasure, by turns, their chain, and never have strength to break it. It commands me to-day to pursue a conduct absolutely the contrary to that I have prescribed to myself for the last two weeks. I see my own inconsistency ; I am ashamed of it, but I yield to the need of my heart. I find a sweetness in being weak, and though you may abuse it, mon ami, I will love you, and will say it to you sometimes with pleasure, oftener with pain when I think you will not respond to it.

Listen to all I have suffered since you left me. An hour after your departure, I learned that you had hidden from me that Mme. de. . . had started the night before. Then I believed you had delayed your departure on her account. I judged you with a passion the true character of which is never to see things as they are. I saw and believed all that could distress me most : — I was deceived ; you were guilty, you had come to bid me adieu in the very act of abusing my tenderness. That thought roused my soul to indignation, it irritated my self-love; I felt myself at the summit of un-