The promise given by the lovers not to correspond was, as all parties must have foreseen, soon violated; and the letters Lord Byron addressed to the lady, at this time, though written in a language not his own, are rendered frequently even eloquent by the mere force of the feeling that governed him--a feeling which could not have owed its fuel to fancy alone, since now that reality had been so long substituted, it still burned on. From one of these letters, dated November 25th, I shall so far presume upon the discretionary power vested in me, as to lay a short extract or two before the reader--not merely as matters of curiosity, but on account of the strong evidence they afford of the struggle between passion and a sense of right that now agitated him. "You are," he says, "and ever will be, my first thought. But, at this moment, I am in a state most dreadful, not knowing which way to decide;--on the one hand, fearing that I should compromise you for ever, by my return to Ravenna and the consequences of such a step, and, on the other, dreading that I shall lose both you and myself, and all that I have ever known or tasted of happiness, by never seeing you more. I pray of you, I implore you to be comforted, and to believe that I cannot cease to love you but with my life." [61] In another part he says, "I go to save you, and leave a country insupportable to me without you. Your letters to F * * and myself do wrong to my motives--but you will yet see your injustice. It is not enough that I must leave you--from motives of which ere long you will be convinced--it is not enough that I must fly from Italy, with a heart deeply wounded, after having passed all my days in solitude since your departure, sick both in body and mind--but I must also have to endure your reproaches without answering and without deserving them. Farewell! in that one word is comprised the death of my happiness." [62]