Dear Friend,I ought to have written to you before;but since I received your letter,I have been in a sort of purgatory,and what is worse,I see no prospect of getting out of it.I would put an end to my torments at once;but I am as great a coward as I have been a dupe.Do you know I have not had a word of answer from her since!What can be the reason?
Is she offended at my letting you know she wrote to me,or is it some new affair?I wrote to her in the tenderest,most respectful manner,poured my soul at her feet,and this is the return she makes me!Can you account for it,except on the admission of my worst doubts concerning her?Oh God!can I bear after all to think of her so,or that I am scorned and made a sport of by the creature to whom I had given my whole heart?Thus has it been with me all my life;and so will it be to the end of it!--If you should learn anything,good or bad,tell me,I conjure you:I can bear anything but this cruel suspense.If I knew she was a mere abandoned creature,I should try to forget her;but till I do know this,nothing can tear me from her,I have drank in poison from her lips too long--alas!mine do not poison again.I sit and indulge my grief by the hour together;my weakness grows upon me;and I have no hope left,unless I could lose my senses quite.Do you know I think I should like this?To forget,ah!to forget--there would be something in that--to change to an idiot for some few years,and then to wake up a poor wretched old man,to recollect my misery as past,and die!Yet,oh!with her,only a little while ago,I had different hopes,forfeited for nothing that I know of!If you can give me any consolation on the subject of my tormentor,pray do.The pain I suffer wears me out daily.I write this on the supposition that Mrs.-----may still come here,and that I may be detained some weeks longer.Direct to me at the Post-office;and if I return to town directly as I fear,I will leave word for them to forward the letter to me in London--not at my old lodgings.I will not go back there:yet how can I breathe away from her?Her hatred of me must be great,since my love of her could not overcome it!I have finished the book of my conversations with her,which I told you of:if I am not mistaken,you will think it very nice reading.
Yours ever.
Have you read Sardanapalus?How like the little Greek slave,Myrrha,is to HER!
