How my heart sickens at looking back upon what I was!  Denied the sun, and all comfort:  all my visiters low-born, tip-toe attendants:  even those tip-toe slaves never approaching me but periodically, armed with gallipots, boluses, and cephalic draughts; delivering their orders to me in hated whispers; and answering other curtain-holding impertinents, inquiring how I was, and how I took their execrable potions, whisperingly too!  What a cursed still life was this!—­Nothing active in me, or about me, but the worm that never dies.

Again I hasten from the recollection of scenes, which will, at times, obtrude themselves upon me.

Adieu, Belford!

But return me my last letter—­and build nothing upon its contents.  I must, I will, I have already, overcome these fruitless gloominess.  Every hour my constitution rises stronger and stronger to befriend me; and, except a tributary sigh now-and-then to the memory of my heart’s beloved, it gives me hope that I shall quickly be what I was—­life, spirit, gaiety, and once more the plague of a sex that has been my plague, and will be every man’s plague at one time or other of his life.  I repeat my desire, however, that you will write to me as usual.  I hope you have good store of particulars by you to communicate, when I can better bear to hear of the dispositions that were made for all that was mortal of my beloved Clarissa.

But it will be the joy of my heart to be told that her implacable friends are plagued with remorse.  Such things as those you may now send me:  for company in misery is some relief; especially when a man can think those he hates as miserable as himself.

One more adieu, Jack!

LETTER XXXIX

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

I am preparing to leave this kingdom.  Mowbray and Tourville promise to give me their company in a month or two.

I’ll give thee my route.

I shall first to Paris; and, for some amusement and diversion sake, try to renew some of my old friendships:  thence to some of the German courts:  thence, perhaps, to Vienna:  thence descend through Bavaria and the Tyrol to Venice, where I shall keep the carnival:  thence to Florence and Turin:  thence again over Mount Cenis to France:  and, when I return again to Paris, shall expect to see my friend Belford, who, by that time, I doubt not, will be all crusted and bearded over with penitence, self-denial, and mortification; a very anchoret, only an itinerant one, journeying over in hope to cover a multitude of his own sins, by proselyting his old companions.

But let me tell thee, Jack, if stock rises on, as it has done since I wrote my last letter, I am afraid thou wilt find a difficult task in succeeding, should such be thy purpose.