Your lieutenant has just told me that a storm has forced you to put into port in the Algarve.[27] I am afraid you have suffered much on the sea, and so much has this fear absorbed me that I have thought no more on all my troubles. Do you think, perchance, that your lieutenant takes more interest in what happens to you than I do? If not, why then is he better informed of it? And then, why have you not written to me? I am unlucky indeed if you have found no time for writing since you left, and still more so if you could have written and would not. Your injustice and ingratitude are too great; but I should be in despair if they were to cause you any harm. I had rather you should remain unpunished than that they should avenge me. I withstand all the appearances which ought to persuade me that you do not love me at all, and I feel much more disposed to yield myself blindly to my passion than to the reasons you give me to complain of your neglect. What mortification you would have spared me, if, in the days when I first saw you, your conduct had been as cold as it has seemed to me for some time now! But who would not have been deceived by such ardour as you then showed, and who would not have thought it sincere? How hard it is to make up one’s mind to doubt for any time the sincerity of those one loves! I see clearly that the least excuse is good enough for you; and, without your troubling to make it to me, my love for you serves you so faithfully that I cannot consent to find you guilty, except for the sake of enjoying the infinite pleasure of declaring you guiltless myself. You overcame me by your assiduities, you kindled my passions with your transports, your tenderness fascinated me, your vows persuaded me, but it was the violence of my own love which led me away; and this beginning at once so sweet and so happy, has left nothing behind it but tears, sighs, and a wretched death, without the possibility of my ministering any relief to myself. It is true that in loving you I enjoyed a pleasure unthought of before, but this very pleasure is now costing me a sorrow, which once I knew nothing of. All the emotions which you cause me run to extremes. If I had shown obstinacy in resisting your love, if I had given you any motive for anger or jealousy in order to draw you on the more, if you had detected any artifice in my conduct, if, in a word, I had wished to oppose my reason to the natural inclination I felt for you, and which you soon made me perceive (though doubtless my efforts would have been useless), you might then have punished me severely and used your power over me with some show of justice. But you seemed to me worthy of my love before you had told me that you loved me: you gave evidence of a great passion for me: I was overjoyed at it, and I gave myself up to love you to distraction. You were not blinded as I was. Why then did you let me fall into the state in which I now am? What did you