Good-bye. It costs me more to finish this letter than it cost you to quit me, perhaps for ever. Good-bye. I do not dare give you a thousand names of love, nor abandon myself to all my feelings without restraint. I love you a thousand times more than my life, and a thousand times more than I think for. How dear you are to me, and yet how cruel! You do not write to me. I could not help saying this to you again. But I am beginning afresh, and the officer will be gone. What matters it? Let him go. ’Tis not so much for your sake that I write as for my own. I only seek some solace. Besides, the very length of my letter will frighten you, and you will not read it. What have I done to be so unhappy? And why have you poisoned my life? Why was I not born in some other country? Good-bye, and forgive me. I dare not now pray you to love me. See to what my fate has brought me. Good-bye! THIRD LETTER ... Que este pequeno penhor de meus longos suspiros vá ante os seus olhos. Muitas outras cousas desejo, mas esta me seria assaz.’--BERNARDIM RIBEIRO, _Saudades_, cap. i. What will become of me, and what would you have me do? How far I am now from all that I had looked forward to! I hoped that you would write me from every place you passed through, and that your letters would be very long ones,--that you would feed my love by the hope of seeing you again, that full trust in your fidelity would give me some sort of rest, and that I should then remain in a state bearable enough, and without the extremes of sorrow. I had even thought of some poor plans of endeavouring, as far as possible, my own cure, in case I could but once assure myself that you had entirely forgotten me. The distance which you are at, certain impulses of devotion, the fear of entirely destroying the remainder of my health by so many wakeful nights and so many cares, the improbability of your return, the coldness of your love, and your last good-byes, your departure based on such cruel pretexts, and a thousand other reasons which are only too good and too useless, seemed to offer me a safe refuge if I needed one. Having indeed only myself to reckon with, I could never have been on my guard against all my weaknesses, nor foresee all that I now suffer. Ah! how pitiful it is for me,--I that am not able to share with you my sorrows, and must be all alone in my grief! This thought is killing me, and I almost die of horror when I think that you were never really affected by all the bliss that we shared. Yes, I understand now the untruth of all your transports. You betrayed me every time you told me that your supreme delight was to be alone with me. It is to my importunities alone that I owe your warmth and passion. Deliberately and in cold blood you formed a design to kindle my love; you only regarded my passion as your triumph, and your heart was never deeply touched. Are you not very wretched? and have you so little delicacy that you made no other use of my love but this?