***

I will soon quit this kingdom.  For now my Clarissa is no more, what is there in it (in the world indeed) worth living for?—­But shall I not first, by some masterly mischief, avenge her and myself upon her cursed family?

The accursed woman, they tell me, has broken her leg.  Why was it not her neck?—­All, all, but what is owing to her relations, is the fault of that woman, and of her hell-born nymphs.  The greater the virtue, the nobler the triumph, was a sentence for ever in their mouths.—­I have had it several times in my head to set fire to the execrable house; and to watch at the doors and windows, that not a devil in it escape the consuming flames.  Had the house stood by itself, I had certainly done it.

But, it seems, the old wretch is in the way to be rewarded, without my help.  A shocking letter is received of somebody’s in relation to her—­ your’s, I suppose—­too shocking for me, they say, to see at present.*

* See Letter xxv. of this volume.

They govern me as a child in strings; yet did I suffer so much in my fever, that I am willing to bear with them, till I can get tolerably well.

At present I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep.  Yet are my disorders nothing to what they were; for, Jack, my brain was on fire day and night; and had it not been of the asbestos kind, it had all been consumed.

I had no distinct ideas, but of dark and confused misery; it was all remorse and horror indeed!—­Thoughts of hanging, drowning, shooting—­then rage, violence, mischief, and despair, took their turns with me.  My lucid intervals still worse, giving me to reflect upon what I was the hour before, and what I was likely to be the next, and perhaps for life—­ the sport of enemies!—­the laughter of fools!—­and the hanging-sleeved, go-carted property of hired slaves; who were, perhaps, to find their account in manacling, and (abhorred thought!) in personally abusing me by blows and stripes!

Who can bear such reflections as these?  To be made to fear only, to such a one as me, and to fear such wretches too?—­What a thing was this, but remotely to apprehend!  And yet for a man to be in such a state as to render it necessary for his dearest friends to suffer this to be done for his own sake, and in order to prevent further mischief!—­There is no thinking of these things!

I will not think of them, therefore; but will either get a train of cheerful ideas, or hang myself by to-morrow morning.

      ——­To be a dog, and dead,
      Were paradise, to such a life as mine.

LETTER XXXVIII

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq. 
Wednesday, Sept. 20.

I write to demand back again my last letter.  I own it was my mind at the different times I wrote it; and, whatever ailed me, I could not help writing it.  Such a gloomy impulse came upon me, and increased as I wrote, that, for my soul, I could not forbear running into the miserable.