Letter XV. The Count de St. Julian to the Marquis of Pescara, Livorno

My lord,

I hoped before this time to have presented before you the form of that injured friend, which, if your heart is not yet callous to every impression, must be more blasting to your sight, than all the chimeras that can be conjured up by a terrified imagination, or a guilty conscience. I no sooner received the accursed intelligence at Zamora, than I flew with the speed of lightning. I permitted no consideration upon earth to delay me till I arrived at Alicant. But the sea was less favorable to the impatience of my spirit. I set sail in a boisterous and unpromising season. I have been long tossed about at the mercy of the ocean. I thank God, after having a thousand times despaired of it, that I have at length set foot in a port of Italy. It is distant indeed, but the ardor of my purpose were sufficient to cut short all intermission.

My lord, I trusted you as my own soul. No consideration could have moved me to entertain a moment’s suspicion of your fidelity. I placed in your hand the most important pledge it ever was my fortune to possess. I employed no guard. I opened to you an unsuspecting bosom, and you have stung me to the heart. I gave you the widest opportunity, and it is through my weak and groundless confidence that you have reached me. You have employed without scruple all those advantages it put into your hands. You have undermined me at your ease. I left you to protect my life’s blood, my heart of heart, from every attack, to preserve the singleness of her affections, and the constancy of her attachment. It was yours to have breathed into her ear the sighs of St. Julian. It was yours ambitiously to expatiate upon his amiable qualities. You were every day to have added fuel to the flame. You were to have presented Matilda to my arms, more beautiful, more tender, more kind, than she had ever appeared. From this moment then, let the name of trust be a by-word for the profligate to scoff at! Let the epithet of friend be a mildew to the chaste and uncorrupted ear! Let mutual confidence be banished from the earth, and men, more savage than the brute, devour each other!

Was it possible, my lord, that you should dream, that the benefits you had formerly conferred upon me, could deprive my resentment of all its sting under the present provocation! If you did, believe me, you were most egregiously mistaken. It is true I owed you much, and heaven has not cursed me with a heart of steel. What bounds did I set to my gratitude? I left my natal shore, I braved all the dangers of the ocean, I fought in foreign climes the power of requital. I fondly imagined that I could never discharge so vast obligations. But the invention of your lordship is more fertile than mine. You have found the means to blot them in a moment. Yes, my lord, from henceforth all contract between us is canceled. You have set us right upon our first foundations. Friendship, affection, pity, I give you to the winds! Come to my bosom, unmixed malignity, black-boiling revenge! You are now the only inmates welcome to my heart.

Oh, Rinaldo, that character once so dear to me, that youth over whose opening inclinations I watched with so unremitting care, is it you that are the author of so severe a misfortune? I held you to my breast. I poured upon your head all that magazine of affection and tenderness, with which heaven had dowered me. Never did one man so ardently love another. Never did one man interest himself so much in another’s truth and virtue, in another’s peace and happiness. I formed you for heroism. I cultivated those features in your character which might have made you an ornament to your country and mankind. I strewed your path with flowers, I made the couch beneath you violets and roses. Hear me, yet hear me! Learn to perceive all the magnitude of your crime. You have murdered your friend. You have wounded him in the tenderest part. You have seduced the purest innocence and the most unexampled truth. For is it possible that Matilda, erewhile the pattern of every spotless excellence, could have been a party in the black design?

But it is no longer time for the mildness of censure and the sobriety of reproach. I would utter myself in the fierce and unqualified language of invective. You have sinned beyond redemption. I would speak daggers. I would wring blood from your heart at every word. But no; I will not waste myself in angry words. I will not indulge to the bitterness of opprobrium. Nothing but the anguish of my soul should have wrung from me these solitary lines. Nothing but the fear of not surviving to my revenge, should have prevented me from forestalling them in person.—I will meet thee at Cerenzo.