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MADAM,
I Have clearlie forgotten all I should have said to — to whom you would have me reconciled; and yet I must needs tell you, it is not that I have slept since. I am displeased with my self, that I have had no more respect for a person, who
had been recommended to me from so good hands, and that not being able to afford her any roome in my inclinations, she hath found so little in my memorie. That is a certain part of my Soul where I might justlie have allowed her a place, for that is it which is the most opposite to judgement, and hath the charge onelie of things past. But if I tell her any thing that favours of obligation this afternoone, she shall have no cause to complain that I speak to her onelie by heart; for I finde mine at such a distance from whatever I have to say to her, that if I have not your immediate assistance, you will finde I shall be as far to seek as you, both as to words and time. But, were it Heavens plea∣sure you knew not that of your departure, and that you were not able to give me any account of it at least for this day. For, to deal truelie with you, I have not courage enough, to endure the verie imagination of it, nay that verie thought st••fles in me all other. When I consider that to morrow you will not be to be found here, I think it strange I should be in the World to day: nay I am almost in an humour to acknowledge with you that there is some fiction in the love I pretend to, when it comes into my mind that I am still alive, and that this affliction does not absolutelie make an end of me. Others have become speech∣lesse, and confined themselves to the deserts of Thebais upon lesse discontents then mine. But if I tell you, that I cannot go so far from you to bemoane my misfortune, I am, methinks, the more to be excused, that I go not to endure an hermitage in the wildernesses of Aegypt, since I hope to finde a place in that you are going to build. This hope is all that flaies me in this World, my life hangs altogether on this consideration. I know not whether all I have said here be within the limits of a pas∣sionate friendship; and yet you cannot affirm that I speak to you too clearlie, since you have ever had a priviledge to give my words several interpretations: nor complain that I write not to you in such termes as you desire, since I could never yet meet with the man that should teach me how to do it. While my failings are connived at, and the discoverie of my resent∣ments allowed, I professe to you, with the same affection as I did yesterdaie, that the onelie extravagance the World shall know me guiltie of, shall be, ever to be enamoured of what was ever amiable, and encurre your displeasure from the hour that you are assured of my friendship.