Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/164

1774] I have no news of you ; nor has the Chevalier d'Aguesseau ; and he has been to all the persons who might, perhaps, have had some. Ah ! mon Dieu! how little I knew myself ! how mistaken I was when I told you that my soul was forever closed to happiness, to pleasure; that it could now know nothing but dull misery, and that I had no longer anything to fear. Alas! I cannot breathe since Wednesday. I see you ill; T have an inward terror that alarms me. What a dreadful state of things you are making me endure! — these Wednesdays, these Saturdays, horrible days which have made the hope and the despair of my life for two consecutive years !

But can you be ill enough to have forgotten that you are loved with passion; and if you have remembered it why have you failed to write to me? Surely you knew it was delivering my soul to mortal agony to thus make me fear for you. Mon ami, if you could have spared me what I suffer, you are very guilty; and it seems to me that such a wrong ought now to cure me. But oh! my God! are we free ? Can I calm and chill myself according to my will, and according perhaps to yours? Ah! I can only love you and suffer ; that is the emotion, the sentiment of my heart; I can neither stop it nor excite it, but I long to die. I have thoughts which are an active poison; but it is not rapid enough. If I hear to-morrow that you are ill, but receive no letter, I shall have lived too long. No, it is impossible, you have surely thought of me; I wait therefore, but in trembling and with an impatience never felt except by a soul as impassioned as it is unhappy. Ah ! Diderot was right: none but the unhappy know how to love. But, mon ami, this will not soothe you if you suffer; and if you are calm you will not value it. Well! I love you, and I do not need your feeling for my heart to give itself, to abandon itself to you.