Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/161

142 Monday, September 26, 1774. Mon ami, I desired all day yesterday to write to you, but strength failed me, I was in a state of suffering which has taken from me the power to speak and act. I cannot eat; the words food and pain are synonymous to me now. — But it is of you I wish to speak, it is with you that my mind is occupied, for you that I am anxious. I see you ill; I reproach myself for having caused you some moments of sadness; without flattering myself that you attach much interest either to my feelings or to me, I know that I have troubled your peace of mind, and I am greatly distressed. Mon ami, it is you who taught me to grieve and torture that which I love. Ah! I have been cruelly punished for it! and if heaven reserves for me,. . Ah ! my blood freezes, I will sooner die. That thought is more dreadful than the most violent death could ever be. You say you wish never to wake, and it is to me that you confide your disgust of life. How different were the words that he wrote me when dying: "I was about to see you again, and I must die ! what a dreadful fate! but you have loved me, and you fill me still with tender feeling, I die for you ..."

Mon ami, I cannot transcribe those words without bursting into tears; the feeling that dictated them was the tenderest and most impassioned that ever was; misfortune, absence, illness, nothing could shake or chill that soul of fire. Ah! I thought to die yesterday on reading a letter from M. de Fuentès [M. de Mora's father]. He tells me that his sorrow has not allowed him as yet to look at anything that was dear to his son; that he will always preserve for me the warmest and tenderest gratitude for the proofs of affection which I have at all times given to M. de Mora; that I have supported him under his affliction, and that he would gladly return at the cost of his life all that his son owed to me.