Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/354

1776] even then betraying my tenderness ? Alas ! have I not reason to think it, when I found that among the vast mul- titude of letters which you charged me to burn, you had not kept a single one of mine ? By what ill fate for me had they become so indifferent to you, in spite of the expressions of sensibility, self-abandonment, devotion with which they were filled ? Why, in your will, of which you made me the unhappy executor, did you leave to another what would have been to me so dear, — those manuscripts in which there were many things, written by my hand as well as yours, which would have brought you back to me incessantly ? What can have chilled you to that degree towards the unfortunate man to whom you said, ten years ago, that your feeling for him made you so happy that it frightened you ? . ..

But why reproach you now, when you cannot justify your- self if you do not deserve it ? Why trouble your ashes with my regrets when you can no longer solace them ? Adieu, adieu forever ! my dear and unfortunate Julie ! Those two titles affect me far more than your faults towards me can offend me. Enjoy at last, and, to my sorrow, enjoy without me, that repose which my love and my cares were unable to procure for you during life. Alas ! why were you unable to love or to be loved in peace ? You said to me so many times, and you owned it, sighing, a few months before you died, that, of all the feelings you had inspired, mine for you, and yours for me were the only ones that had not made you unhappy. Why did not that feeling satisfy you? Why was it that love, made to soften all the other ills of life, should have been the torture and the despair of yours ? Why, when I gave you my portrait a year ago with the words, —

"And tell yourself sometimes, in looking at me : ’Of all those who love me who loves me as he ? ' " —