Part 12 (1/2)
”Besides looking at ht her: to ride in a coach, to look at a scarlet waistcoat, and hear loud music Yesterday at the fete she enjoyed the two latter; but, to honor J J Rousseau, I intend to give her a sash, the first she has ever had round her”
In a second, she writes:--
”I have been playing and laughing with the little girl so long, that I cannot take upher to my bosom, she looked so like you (_entre nous_, your best looks, for I do not admire your commercial face), every nerve seean to think that there was so one, for you see the beat ofme the sympathetic tears you excited”
And in still another, she exclai is indeed a sweet child; and I am sorry that you are not here to see her little mind unfold itself You talk of 'dalliance,' but certainly no lover was ever more attached to his mistress than she is to me Her eyes follow me everywhere, and by affection I have the most despotic power over her She is all vivacity or softness Yes; I love her ht I should
When I have been hurt at your stay, I have embraced her as hing like you; nay, I cannot, I find, long be angry with you, whilst I a you But there would be no end to these details
Fold us both to your heart”
As the devout go on pilgrie to places once sanctified by the presence of a departed saint, so she visited alone the haunts of the early days of their love, living over again the incidents which had ination,” she told him, ” chooses to ra to rapes With what pleasure do I recollect your looks and words, when I have been sitting on the , regarding the waving corn” She begged hi back his ”barrier face,” as she thus fondly recalled their interviews at the barrier She told hiht passed at Saint Gerloith these recollections, she warned hiht, she would fly from him to cherish remembrances which must be ever dear to her Occasionally a little hus in her letters Just as, according to Jean Paul, a ion when his faith is firm, so it was only when her confidence in Ihtly of her love To the reader of her life, who can see the snake lurking in the grass, her rief On the 26th of October, I now been absent for over a e of the tribunal, R, who, though I should not have thought it possible, has humanity, if not _beaucoup d'esprit_ But, let me tell you, if you do not make haste back, I shall be half in love with the author of the _Marseillaise_, who is a handsome man, a little too broad-faced or so, and plays sweetly on the violin
”What do you say to this threat?--why, _entre nous_, I like to give way to a sprightly vein riting to you 'The devil,' you know, is proverbially said to 'be in a good humor when he is pleased'”
Many of her old friends in the capital had been nu the children devoured by the insatiable monster A feever, were still left, and she seeone into Parisian society The condition of affairs was more conducive to social pleasures than it had been the year before Robespierre was dead There were others besides Mary who feared ”the last flap of the tail of the beast;” but, as a rule, the people, now the reaction had come, were over-confident, and the season was one offor the dead becaay Parisians, their arms tied with crape, danced to the n of Terror was over, but so was Mary's happiness Public order was partly restored, but her own short-lived peace was rudely interrupted Imlay in London became more absorbed in his immediate affairs, a fact which he could not conceal in his letters; and Mary realized that compared to business she was of little or no importance to him She expostulated earnestly with hi money cares and ambitions to preoccupy him She sincerely sympathized with him in his disappointness to sacrifice sentiment and affection to sordid cares ”It appears toto live” Not one of the least of her trials was that she was at this time often forced to see a man as Imlay's friend or partner in Paris, and who seems to have aided and abetted him in his speculations He tormented her with accounts of new enterprises, and she coes you to stay,” she wrote in one of her first letters of expostulation, ”and is continually branching out into new projects because he has the idle desire to ae fortune, rather, an i ht not to be led on by him; e meet ill discuss this subject” For a little while she tried to believe that her doubts had no substantial basis, but were the result of her solitude In the same letter she said:--
” I will only tell you that I long to see you, and, being at peace with you, I shall be hurt, rather thansuffered so much in life, do not be surprised if I soloomy and suppose that it was all a dream, and that my happiness is not to last I say happiness, because remembrance retrenches all the dark shades of the picture”
But by degrees the dark shades increased until they had coht made by the past Imlay's letters were fewer and shorter, ht she to endure his indifference, or ought she to separate from him forever? was the question which now tortured her She had tasted the higher pleasures, and the present pain was intense in proportion Her letters becaes
On the 30th of December she wrote:--
”Should you receive three or four of the letters at once which I have written lately, do not think of Sir John Brute, for I do not e of every occasion, that one out of three of my epistles may reach your hands, and inform you that I ary of the necessity of your staying two or three er I do not like this life of continual inquietude, and, _entre nous_, I am determined to try to earn some money here myself, in order to convince you that, if you choose to run about the world to get a fortune, it is for yourself; for the little girl and I will live without your assistance unless you are with us I may be termed proud; be it so, but I will never abandon certain principles of action
”The co that if they debauch their hearts and prostitute their persons, following perhaps a gust of inebriation, the wife, slave rather, whoht to receive the sultan whenever he deigns to return with open arh his have been polluted by half an hundred pro his absence
”I consider fidelity and constancy as two distinct things, yet the forree of respect do I think due toin its place, brings you back, never return! for if a wandering of the heart or even a caprice of the iination detains you, there is an end of all ive it if I would
”I have gotten into a eneral; you know that I think the in the world to overn desire When I a, fondly as I dote on her, is a girl I am sorry to have a tie to a world that for me is ever soith thorns
”You will call this an ill-huest proof of affection I can give to dread to lose you
---- has taken such pains to convince ht to stay, that it has inconceivably depressed my spirits You have always known my opinion I have ever declared that two people whoseparated If certain things are more necessary to you than me,--search for them Say but one word, and you shall never hear of le with poverty--with any evil but these continual inquietudes of business, which I have been told were to last but a few h every day the end appears more distant! This is the first letter in this strain that I have determined to forward to you; the rest lie by because I was unwilling to give you pain, and I should not norite if I did not think that there would be no conclusion to the schemes which demand, as I aht shone again On the 15th of January she received a kind letter froive those we love,” she said to him simply But it was followed by his usual hasty business notes or by complete silence, and henceforward she knew hope only by na fro point in his conduct Despair seized her soul Her own round, for she looked beneath the surface of current events She heard not the music of the ball-room, but that of the battle-field She saw not the dances of the heedless, but the tears of the motherless and the orphaned The luxury of the upper classes ht deceive some men, but it could not deafen her to the co their chance to proclaim to the new Constitution that they wanted not fine speeches, but bread Other discomforts contributed their share to her burden A severe cold had settled upon her lungs, and she is were not very convenient, but she had put up with the day by day for Imlay's return Weary of her life as Job was of his, she, like him, spoke out in the bitterness of her soul
Her letters from this time on are written from the very valley of the shadow of death On February 9 she wrote:--
”Theon my spirits, that ere parted forever; and the letters I received this day, by Mr ----, convince me that it was not without foundation You allude to some other letters, which I suppose have ot were only a few, hasty lines calculated to wound the tenderness that the sight of the superscriptions excited
”I gling for utterance, and agitating a heart aluish, that I find it very difficult to write with any degree of coherence
”You left h you have taken no notice of it; and thejourney I ever had contributed to continue it