Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His SisterBehn, Aphra
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Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
Behn, Aphra
Epistolary fiction, English
both, I swear--I swear, _Philander_, charming lovely youth! Thou art
the first e’er kindled soft desires about my soul, thou art the first
that ever did inform me that there was such a sort of wish about me.
I thought the vanity of being beloved made up the greatest part of the
satisfaction; it was joy to see my lovers sigh about me, adore and
praise me, and increase my pride by every look, by every word and
action; and him I fancied best I favoured most, and he past for the
happy fortune; him I have suffered too to kiss and press me, to tell
me all his tale of love, and sigh, which I would listen to with pride
and pleasure, permitted it, and smiled him kind returns; nay, by my
life, then thought I loved him too, thought I could have been content
to have passed my life at this gay rate, with this fond hoping lover,
and thought no farther than of being great, having rich coaches,
shewing equipage, to pass my hours in dressing, in going to the operas
and the tower, make visits where I list, be seen at balls; and having
still the vanity to think the men would gaze and languish where I
came, and all the women envy me; I thought no farther on--but thou,
_Philander_, hast made me take new measures, I now can think
of nothing but of thee, I loathe the sound of love from any other
voice, and conversation makes my soul impatient, and does not only
dull me into melancholy, but perplexes me out of all humour, out of
all patient sufferance, and I am never so well pleased when from
_Philander_, as when I am retired, and curse my character and figure
in the world, because it permits me not to prevent being visited; one
thought of thee is worth the world’s enjoyment, I hate to dress, I
hate to be agreeable to any eyes but thine; I hate the noise of
equipage and crowds, and would be more content to live with thee in
some lone shaded cottage, than be a queen, and hindered by that
grandeur one moment’s conversation with _Philander_: may’st thou
despise and loathe me, a curse the greatest that I can invent, if this
be any thing but real honest truth. No, no, _Philander_, I find I
never lov’d till now, I understood it not, nor knew what those sighs
and pressings meant which others gave me; yet every speaking glance
thy eyes put on, inform my soul what it is they plead and languish
for: if you but touch my hand, my breath grows faint and short, my
blood glows in my face, and runs with an unusual warmth through every
vein, and tells my heart what it is _Philander_ ails, when he falls
sighing on my bosom; oh then, I fear, I answer every look, and every
sigh and touch, in the same silent but intelligible language, and
understood, I fear, too well by thee: till now I never feared love as
a criminal. Oh tell me not, mistaken foolish maids, true love is
innocent, ye cold, ye dull, ye unconsidering lovers; though I have
often heard it from the grave and wise, and preached myself that
doctrine: I now renounce it all, it is false, by heaven! it is false,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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