Languid, sunk, and overwhelmed, I crawled with feeble steps to my Sibella.--What a change! her vigour awakened mine; and as though hope, perseverance and courage had resigned themselves to her guidance, she commanded them to possess me wholly--commanded me to receive the noble inmates, and to vow I would be bravely independent, though a bed of straw were my portion and crumbs my fare. I write this letter at my first resting place since I quitted Valmont castle; and the benignancy of my lovely Sibella has even chased my resentment towards you, but should an hour of lassitude perchance creep on me in my banishment, I may be tempted to enquire narrowly into the nature of your very mysterious epistles. CLEMENT MONTGOMERY LETTER IV FROM SIBELLA VALMONT TO CAROLINE ASHBURN Clement--my Clement is gone! All is silence around me. The trees have dropped their leafy ornaments; the wind sweeps through them in mournful cadence. Their foliage no longer intercepts my eye when it would extend itself around the vast horizon. I, now seated on the ivy-covered ruins of the hermitage, view this space; and tell myself it contains not one being to whom Sibella is the object of esteem, tenderness, or concern. Oh Caroline, Caroline! I am weary of this solitude. My mind bursts the bounds prescribed to my person, and impels itself forward to share the advantages of society. Compelled to return to its prison, it is disgusted with its own conceptions, and sinks into languor and dissatisfaction. Could it be my parents who doomed me to this slavery? Did they deem the benefits of intercourse a blessing too great for their innocent offspring? No: it must be Mr. Valmont's own plan; 'tis he alone who could wish to rob me of the faculties of my soul; and, finding I dare think, dare aim to extend them, dare seek to be happy, he shuns me with aversion or loads me with reproach. Why, if he meant me to degenerate into the mere brute, did he not chain me in a cave, shut out the light of the glorious sun, forbid me to converse with intelligent nature? Then I might have expressed my wants in a savage way; have ravenously satisfied the calls of hunger or thirst; and, lying down to enjoy the sleep of apathy, have thought, if I could have thought at all, that this was to be happy. A being superior to this only in a little craft, did Mr. Valmont design to make me: a timid, docile slave, whose thoughts, will, passions, wishes, should have no standard of their own, but rise, change or die as the will of a master should require! Such is the height of virtues I have heard Mr. Valmont describe as my zenith of perfection.