William Godwin

“ You are under the protection of the most generous of men, and the best of friends. I owe to the marquis of Pescara, a thousand obligations that can never be compensated. Let it be thy care thou better half of myself to receive him with that attention and politeness, which is due to the worth of his character, and the immensity of his friendship. There is something too sweet and enchanting in the mild benevolence of Matilda, not to contribute largely to his happiness. It is in your power, best of women, by the slightest exertions, to pay him more than I could do by a life of labour. ”

“ I am afraid indeed he has gone farther than this, and that he has not scrupled to ruin innocence, and practise all the arts of seduction.
There is, my dear Rinaldo, a species of careless and youthful vice, that assumes the appearance of gentleness, and wears the garb of generosity. It even pretends to the name of virtue. But it casts down all the sacred barriers of religion. It laughs to scorn that suspicious vigilance, that trembling sensibility, that is the very characteristic of virtue. It represents those faults of which a man may be guilty without malignity, as innocent. ”

“ 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! ”

“ If my breast glows with any noble sentiments, it is to your friendship I ascribe them. If I have avoided any of the rocks upon which heedless youth is apt to split, yours is all the honour, though mine be the advantage. More than one instance do I recollect with unfeigned gratitude, in which I had passed the threshold of error, in which I had already set my foot upon the edge of the precipice, and was reclaimed by your care. But what temptations could the simple Palermo offer, compared with the rich, the luxurious, and dissipated court of Naples? ”

“ And is it possible that I can leave my Matilda without a guardian to protect her from unforeseen distress, without a monitor to whisper to her in every future scene the constancy of her St. Julian? No, my Hippolito, the objection would be insuperable. But thanks, eternal thanks to propitious heaven! I have a friend in whom I can confide as my own soul, whose happiness is dearer to me than my own. Yes, my Rinaldo, whatever may be my destiny, in whatever scenes I may be hereafter placed, I will recollect that my Matilda is under thy protection, and be satisfied. ”

“ I should no longer please myself with pouring the accents of my sorrow into his unconscious ear. Obdurate, unfeeling, relentless, unnatural mother! These would be the epithets by which I should best be known. These would be the sentiments of every heart. This would be the unbought voice, even of those vulgar souls, in which penury had most narrowed the conceptions, and repressed the enthusiasm of virtue. It is true, my lord, Matilda is sunk very low. The finger of scorn has pointed at her, and the whisper of unfeeling curiosity respecting her, has run from man to man. ”

“ I still trust that I shall call my Matilda mine. I still trust to have long successive years of happiness. And can a mortal blessed as I, dare to complain? Can I give way to lamentation and sorrow? Yes, my Rinaldo. The cloud will quickly vanish, but such is the fate of mortals. The events, which, when sunk in the distant past, affect us only with a calm regret, in the moment in which they overtake us, overwhelm us with sorrow.
I mentioned in my last, that the disorder of the duke of Benevento was succeeded by a feebleness and languor that did not at first greatly alarm us. ”

“ And during all this time he dwells upon the luxurious idea, he riots in the misery he hopes to create. He will tell you he loves. Yes, he loves, as the hawk loves the harmless dove, as the tyger loves the trembling kid. And is this the man in whose favour I should ever have been weak enough to entertain a partiality? I would tear him from my bosom like an adder. I would crush him like a serpent.
But your case has not the same aggravations. Here is no father who prizes the honour of his family more than life, and whose heart is bound up in the virtue of his only child. ”

“ Julian as one of the most amiable of mankind. I have looked up to him as a model of virtue, and I have exulted that I had the honour to be of the same species with so fair a fame, and so true a heart. I would willingly lighten to a man so excellent the load of calamity. Why is it, that heaven in the mysteriousness of its providence, so often visits with superior affliction, the noblest of her sons? I should be truly sorry, that my friend should act in a manner unworthy of the tenor of his conduct, and the exaltation of his character. You are now, my lord at a distance. ”

“ Is it possible then that every expectation, and the whole colour of my future life, can be so completely altered? Instead of despair, felicity. Instead of one dark, unvaried scene, a prospect of still increasing pleasure. Instead of standing alone, a monument of misfortune, an object to awaken compassion in the most obdurate, shall I stand alone, the happiest of mortals? Yes, I will never hereafter complain that nature denied me a father, I have found a more than father. I will never complain of calamity and affliction, in my Matilda I receive an over-balance for them all. ”

“ You have employed without scruple all those advantages it put into your hands. You have undermined me at your ease. I left you to protect my life's blood, my heart of heart, from every attack, to preserve the singleness of her affections, and the constancy of her attachment. It was yours to have breathed into her ear the sighs of St. Julian. It was yours ambitiously to expatiate upon his amiable qualities. You were every day to have added fuel to the flame. You were to have presented Matilda to my arms, more beautiful, more tender, more kind, than she had ever appeared. ”

“ Had it not been for the tenfold obligation in which I am bound to the best of friends, I had long, very long ere this, deserted the kingdom of Spain for ever. The concerns of no man upon earth, but those of my Rinaldo, could have detained me. Had they related to myself alone, I had not wasted a thought on them. And yet here I am at a greater distance from the centre of my solicitude than ever.
You, my friend, know not the exquisite and inexpressible anguish of a mind, in doubt about that in which he is most interested. ”

“ Never was solitude so grateful to me. I indulged in a thousand reveries. Gay hope exhibited all her airy visions to my fancy. I formed innumerable prospects of felicity, and each more ravishing than the last. The joys painted by my imagination were surely too pure, too tranquil to last for ever. Oh how sweet is an untasted happiness! But ours, Matilda, shall be great, beyond what expectation can suggest. Ours shall teem with ever fresh delights, refined by sentiment, sanctified by virtue. Nothing but inevitable fate shall change it. ”

“ Matilda, the virtuous Matilda, could not be separated from the couch of her father. She hung over him with the most anxious affection. She watched every symptom of his disorder, and every variation of his countenance.
I am convinced, my dear Rinaldo, that there is no object so beautiful and engaging as this. A woman in all the pride of grace, and fulness of her charms, tending with unwearied care a feeble and decrepid parent; all her features informed with melting anxiety and filial tenderness, yet suppressing the emotions of her heart and the wilder expressions of sorrow ”

“ The marquis himself is much disinclined to the voyage, and though he had too much delicacy in his own temper, and attachment to my interest, to propose it himself, I can perceive that he is not a little pleased at my having voluntarily undertaken it.
My disposition is by nature that of an insatiable curiosity. I was not born to be confined within the narrow limits of one island, or one petty kingdom. My heart is large and capacious. It rises above local prejudices; it forms to itself a philosophy equally suited to all the climates of the earth; it embraces the whole human race. ”

“ Rank does not soften, frequently aggravates the calamity. A tragedy had just been acted, that rendered the name of Matilda the butt of common fame, the subject of universal discussion. How painful and humiliating must this situation have been to that anxious and trembling mind; a mind whose highest ambition coveted only the tranquility that reigns in the shade of retreat, the silence and obscurity that the wisest of philosophers have asserted to be the most valuable reputation of her sex? Such was the affliction, in which I might then have known that the mistress of my heart was involved. ”

“ There can be no mistake more destitute of foundation, than that which supposes man exempt from frailty.
Had not my Rinaldo, trusting too much to his own strength, laid himself open to dangerous associates, he would now have contemplated those actions he has been taught to excuse, with disgust and horror. His own heart would never have taught him that commodious morality he has been induced to patronize. But he feared them not. He felt, as he assured me, that firmness of resolution, and ardour of virtue, that might set these temptations at defiance. ”

“ Even the victim herself has never learned the beauty of virgin purity, and does not know the value of that she is about to lose.
And yet, my Rinaldo, after all these deductions, there is something in the story of this uninstructed little innocent, even as stated by him who is ready to destroy her, that greatly interests my wishes in her favour. She does not know it seems all the calamity of the fate that is impending over her. She is blindfolded for destruction. She plays with her ruin, and views with a thoughtless and a partial eye the murderer of her virtue and her happiness. ”

“ Julian, the exertion of that fortitude with which nature has so richly endowed you, was never so completely called for in any other instance. This is the crisis of your life. This is the very tide, which accordingly as it is improved or neglected, will give a colour to all your future story. Let not that amiable man, who has found the art of introducing heroism into common life, and dignifying the most trivial circumstances by the sublimity and refinedness of his sentiments, now, in the most important affair, sink below the common level. ”

“ When every prospect vanished, when all hopes were at an end, it burst every barrier, it would no longer be concealed. My temper was in the utmost degree unsuitable to a state of dependence, but it was this thought that made it additionally harsh and dreadful to my mind. I loved my country with the sincerest affection, but it was this that made banishment worse than ten thousand deaths. The world appeared to me a frightful solitude, with not one object that could interest all my attention, and fill up all the wishes of my heart. ”

“ Stupidity, thou must be my happiness! Torpor, I will bestow upon thee all the endearing names, that common mortals give to rapture!
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. ”

“ Heaven has blessed you with an understanding solid, judicious, and penetrating. You cannot long be made the dupe of artifice, you are not to be misled by the sophistry of vice. But you have received from the hands of the munificent creator a much more valuable gift than even this, a manly and a generous mind. I have been witness to many such benevolent acts of my Rinaldo as have made my fond heart overflow with rapture. I have traced his goodness to its hiding place. I have discovered instances of his tenderness and charity, that were intended to be invisible to every human eye. ”

“ There are innumerable lovers, filled with the most ardent passion, aiming at the purest gratifications, whose happiness is traversed by the cold dictates of artificial prudence, by the impotent distinctions of rank and family. Unfeeling parents rise to thwart their wishes. The despotic hand of authority tears asunder hearts united by the softest ties, and sacrifices the prospect of felicity to ridiculous and unmeaning prejudices. Let us, my Matilda, pity those whose fate is thus unpropitious, but let us not voluntarily subject ourselves to their misfortune. ”

“ The breast of my Rinaldo swells with a thousand virtuous sentiments. I am conscious of this, and I will not disgrace the confidence I ought to place in you. But your friend cannot but be also sensible, that you are full of the ardour of youth, that you are generous and unsuspecting, and that the happy gaiety of your disposition sometimes engages you with associates, that would abuse your confidence and betray your honour.
Remember, my dear lord, that you have the reputation of a long list of ancestors to sustain. Your house has been the support of the throne, and the boast of Italy. ”