Words came after a while, and by and by he began to write, but the writing when it was done had to be torn up, and the work begun again anew. Sheet after sheet was written and destroyed, and the scattered flakes gathered like snowdrifts about his chair. He wearied himself in abortive efforts, but at least he deadened the acuteness of his misery. The fantastic pains and throes of composition were an anodyne to the more real agonies of his mind. By dividing its action in the endeavour to express its workings, he reduced their intensity. As he grew weary, therefore, he began to grow calmer, and was able with some sort of coherence to say the thing he meant. It was no great achievement in the way of a love-letter, but under the circumstances a great achievement was impossible. He was too much under the direct influence of his emotion,--whatever of mental force he had was expended in the suffering, the jealousy, the hopelessness and the longing, and but a fraction could be abstracted to express his meaning. An emotion when it can be expressed is in a manner relegated from the present to the past,--from experience to memory; and we may be sure that the poets were pretty well cured of their woes, before they made the world resound with their harrowing despairs and their plaintive wailings. Goethe tells us he got quit of much perilous stuff in writing Werther, but one can scarcely doubt that he was convalescent before he undertook the task. Art is always fiction, though fiction is so seldom art, and its nearest approach to actual veracity is when the artist brings forth the ashes of bygone emotion from the sepulchre of memory, and galvanizes them into a second life before his attentive world. Such utterance as Roderick had been able to achieve had done him good. The beads of moisture stood on his brow, as he folded and addressed his letter; he directed that it should be given into Sophia's own hands, and then returning to his bed, he closed his eyes with a long sigh of relief, and fell into a peaceful sleep. The letter was as follows:-- 'My dear Sophia, 'For this once I must so address you, even if it be permitted me to do so never again. I am sick in bed, in consequence of yesterday's misadventure, so unable to come to you myself and speak, and it has come to my knowledge that an offer of marriage is already, or will shortly be made to you, therefore I write. 'I owe it to myself, that you should know before you have given an answer, that I too desire you to look on me as your suitor. 'I had meant to wait till after my ordination, but I cannot run the risk of letting another man speak while I remain silent.