Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/353

328 hear me ; I was forced, like Phèdre, to deprive myself of tears which would have troubled your last moments ; and thus I lost, without recovery, the moment of my life which would have been to me most precigus, — that of telling you, once more, how dear you were to me, how much I shared your woes, and how deeply I desired to end my own with you. I would give all the moments that remain to me to live for that one instant which I can never have again, that instant when by showing you all the tenderness of my heart, I might perhaps have recovered yours —

But you are gone ! you have descended into the grave con- vinced that my regrets do not follow you ! Ah ! if you had only expressed some grief at parting from me, with what de- light would I have followed you to that eternal haven which you now inhabit ! But I dare not even ask to be laid beside you when death has closed my eyes and stanched my tears ; I should fear lest your Shade would still repulse me and pro- long my anguish beyond this life.

Alas ! you have taken from me everything — the sweetness of life, the sweetness of even death. Cruel and unhappy friend ! it seems as if in charging me with the execution of your last wishes you wished to add still further to my pain. Why have the duties thus imposed upon me told me what I ought not to have known, and what I should have desired not to know ? Why did you not order me to burn unread that fatal manuscript [probably the Memoir of herself after her connection with M. de Mora], which I believed I could read without finding subjects of pain, but which revealed to me that for eight years at least I was not the first object of your heart, in spite of assurances you had so often given me ? What can assure me now, after that grievous discovery, that during the eight or ten other years when I believed myself so much beloved by you, you were not