Your now not sorrowing or afflicted, but happy,
Clarissa Harlowe.

LETTER LXIII

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq. 
Wed. Morn.  Sept. 6, Half an hour after three.

I am not the savage which you and my worst enemies think me.  My soul is too much penetrated by the contents of the letter which you enclosed in your last, to say one word more to it, than that my heart has bled over it from every vein!—­I will fly from the subject—­but what other can I choose, that will not be as grievous, and lead into the same?

I could quarrel with all the world; with thee, as well as the rest; obliging as thou supposest thyself for writing to me hourly.  How darest thou, (though unknown to her,) to presume to take an apartment under the sane roof with her?—­I cannot bear to think that thou shouldest be seen, at all hours passing to and repassing from her apartments, while I, who have so much reason to call her mine, and one was preferred by her to all the world, am forced to keep aloof, and hardly dare to enter the city where she is!

If there be any thing in Brand’s letter that will divert me, hasten it to me.  But nothing now will ever divert me, will ever again give me joy or pleasure!  I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep.  I am sick of all the world.

Surely it will be better when all is over—­when I know the worst the Fates can do against me—­yet how shall I bear that worst?—­O Belford, Belford! write it not to me!—­But if it must happen, get somebody else to write; for I shall curse the pen, the hand, the head, and the heart, employed in communicating to me the fatal tidings.  But what is this saying, when already I curse the whole world except her—­myself most?

In fine, I am a most miserable being.  Life is a burden to me.  I would not bear it upon these terms for one week more, let what would be my lot; for already is there a hell begun in my own mind.  Never more mention it to me, let her, or who will say it, the prison—­I cannot bear it—­May d——­n——­n seize quick the cursed woman, who could set death upon taking that large stride, as the dear creature calls it!—­I had no hand in it!—­ But her relations, her implacable relations, have done the business.  All else would have been got over.  Never persuade me but it would.  The fire of youth, and the violence of passion, would have pleaded for me to good purpose, with an individual of a sex, which loves to be addressed with passionate ardour, even to tumult, had it not been for that cruelty and unforgivingness, which, (the object and the penitence considered,) have no example, and have aggravated the heinousness of my faults.

Unable to rest, though I went not to bed till two, I dispatch this ere the day dawn—­who knows what this night, this dismal night, may have produced!