And yet, Matilda, if I retain any of that acute sensibility to virtue and to truth, in which I once prided myself, there can be no conduct more proper to the heir of the illustrious house of Colonna, than that which my heart demands. You have been misguided into folly. What is more natural to an ingenuous heart, than to cast back the following scandal upon the foul and detested authors, with whom the wrong originated. You have done that, which if all your passions had been hushed into silence, and the whole merits of the cause had lain before you, you would never have done. What reparation, Matilda, does a clear and generous spirit dictate, but that of honestly and fearlessly acknowledging the mistake, treading back with readiness and haste the fatal path, and embracing that line of conduct which a deliberate judgment, and an informed understanding would always have dictated?

Is it not true,—tell me, thou mistress of my soul,—that upon your determination in this one instance all your future reputation is suspended? Accept the hand of him that adores you, and the truth will shine forth in all its native splendour, and none but the blind can mistake it. Refuse him, and vulgar souls will for ever confound you with the unfortunate Rinaldo, and his detested seducer. Fame, beloved charmer, is not an object that virtuous souls despise. To brave the tongue of slander cannot be natural to the gentle and timid spirit of Matilda.

But, oh, I dare not depend upon the precision of logic, and the frigidity of argumentation. Let me endeavour to awaken the compassion and humanity of your temper. Recollect all the innocent and ecstatic endearments with which erewhile our hours were winged. Never was sublunary happiness so pure and unmingled. It was tempered with the mildest and most unbounded sympathy, it was refined and elevated with all the sublimity of virtue. These happy, thrice happy days, you, and only you, can recall. Speak but the word, and time shall reverse his course, and a new order of things shall commence. Think how much virtue depends upon your fiat. Satisfied with felicity ourselves, our hearts will overflow with benevolence for the world. Never will misery pass us unrelieved, never shall we remit the delightful task of seeking out the modest and the oppressed in their obscure retreat. We will set mankind an example of integrity and goodness. We will retrieve the original honours of the wedded state. Methinks, I could rouze the most lethargic and unanimated with my warning voice! Methinks, I could breathe a spirit into the dead! Oh, Matilda, let me inspire ambition into your breast! Let me teach that tender and right gentle heart, to glow with a mutual enthusiasm!

Letter XXII

The Answer

Cosenza

My lord, It is now three weeks since I received that letter, in which you renew the generous offer of your hand. Believe me, I am truly sensible of the obligation, and it shall for ever live in my grateful heart. I am not now the same Matilda you originally addressed. I have acted towards you in an inexcusable manner. I have forfeited that spotless character which was once my own. All this you knew, and all this did not deter you. My lord, for this generosity and oblivion, once again, and from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

But it is not only in these respects, that the marchioness of Pescara differs from the daughter of the duke of Benevento. Those poor charms, my lord, which were once ascribed to me, have long been no more. The hand of grief is much more speedy and operative in its progress than the icy hand of age. Its wrinkles are already visible in my brow. The floods of tears I have shed have already furrowed my cheeks. But oh, my lord, it is not grief; that is not the appellation it claims. They are the pangs of remorse, they are the cries of never dying reproach with which I am agitated. Think how this tarnishes the heart and blunts the imagination. Think how this subdues all the aspirations of innocence, and unnerves all the exertions of virtue. Perhaps I was, flattery and friendship had at least taught me to think myself, something above the common level. But indeed, my lord, I am now a gross and a vulgar soul. All the nicer touches are fretted and worn away. All those little distinctions, those minuter delicacies I might once possess are obliterated. My heart is coarse and callous. Others, of the same standard that I am now, may have the same confidence in themselves, the same unconsciousness of a superior, as nature's most favoured children. But I am continually humbled by the sense of what I was.

These things, my lord, I mention as considerations that have some weight with me, and ought perfectly to reconcile you to my unalterable determination. But these, I will ingenuously confess, are not the considerations that absolutely decide me. You cannot but sufficiently recollect the title I bear, and the situation in which I am placed. The duties of the marchioness of Pescara are very different from those by which I was formerly bound. Does it become a woman of rank and condition to fling dishonour upon the memory of him to whom she gave her hand, or, as you have expressed it, to cast back the scandal to which she may be exposed upon the author with whom it originated? No, my lord: I must remember the family into which I have entered, and I will never give them cause to curse the day upon which Matilda della Colonna was numbered among them. What, a wife, a widow, to proclaim with her own mouth her husband for a villain? You cannot think it. It were almost enough to call forth the mouldering ashes from the cincture of the tomb.

My lord, it would not become me to cast upon a name so virtuous and venerable as yours, the whisper of a blame. I will not pretend to argue with you the impropriety and offence of a Gothic revenge. But it is necessary upon a subject so important as that which now employs my pen, to be honest and explicit. It is not a time for compliment, it is not a moment for disguise and fluctuation. Whatever were the merits of the contest, I cannot forget that your hand is deformed with the blood of my husband. My lord, you have my sincerest good wishes. I bear you none of that ill will and covert revenge, that are equally the disgrace of reason and Christianity. But you have placed an unsuperable barrier between us. You have sunk a gulph, fathomless and immeasurable. For us to meet, would not be more contrary to the factitious dignity of rank, than shocking to the simple and unadulterated feelings of our nature. The world, the general voice would cry shame upon it. Propriety, decency, unchanged and eternal truth forbid it.

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