Thus, like the _assymtotes_ of a hyperbola, without absolutely rushing into contact, we are, by a sweet impulsion, gradually approximating closer and closer towards each other.
Ah! my dear friend, this is the golden age of love; and I sometimes think, with the refined Weiland, in certain degree, with the first kiss--mine, therefore, is now in its climacteric.
The impetuosity with which I rush on every subject that touches her, often frustrates the intention with which I sit down to address you. I left this letter behind me unfinished, for the purpose of filling it up, on my return, with answers to those I expected to receive from you. The arguments which your friendly foresight and prudent solicitude have furnished you, are precisely such as the understanding cannot refute, nor the heart subscribe to.
You say my _wife_ she _cannot_ be--and my mistress! perish the thought! What! I repay the generosity of the father by the destruction of the child! I steal this angelic being from the peaceful security of her native shades, with all her ardent, tender feelings thick upon her: I,
‘“Crop this fair rose, and rifle all its sweetness!”
No; you do me but common justice when you say, that though you have sometimes known me _affect_ the character of a libertine, yet never, even for a moment, have you known me forfeit that of a man of honour. I would not be understood to speak in the mere commonplace worldly acceptation of the word, but literally, according to the text of moral and divine laws.
“Then, what,” you ask me, “is the aim, the object, in pursuing this _ignus fatuus_ of the heart and fancy?”
In a word, then, virtue is my object--felicity my aim; or, rather, I am lured towards the former through the medium of the latter. And whether the tie which binds me at once to moral and physical good, is a fragile texture and transient existence, or whether it will become “close twisted with the fibres of the heart, and breaking break it,” time only can determine--to time, therefore, I commit my fate; but while thus led by the hand of virtue, I inebriate at the living spring of bliss;
“While reeling through a wilderness of joy,” can you wonder that I fling off the goading chain of prudence, and, in daring to be _free_, at once be virtuous and happy.