. . . . .O my beloved Susan, ’tis a refractory heart I have to
deal with!—­it struggles so hard to be sad—­and silent—­and fly
from you entirely, since it cannot fly entirely to you.   I do all
I can to conquer it, to content it, to give it a taste and
enjoyment for what is still attainable:  but at times I cannot
manage
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it, and it seems absolutely indispensable to my peace to occupy myself in anything rather than in writing to the person most dear to me upon earth! . . .  If to you alone I show myself in these dark colours, can you blame the plan that I have intentionally been forming, namely, to wean myself from myself—­to lessen all my affections—­to curb all my wishes—­to deaden all my sensations?  This design, my Susan, I formed so long ago as the first day my dear father accepted my offered appointment:  I thought that what demanded a complete new system of life, required, if attainable, a new set of feelings for all enjoyment of new prospects, and for lessening regrets at what were quitted, or lost.  Such being my primitive idea, merely from my grief of separation, imagine but how it was strengthened and confirmed when the interior of my position became known to me!—­when I saw myself expected by Mrs. Schwellenberg, not to be her colleague, but her dependent deputy! not to be her visitor at my own option, but her companion, her humble companion, at her own command!  This has given so new a character to the place I had accepted under such different auspices, that nothing but my horror of disappointing, perhaps displeasing, my dearest father, has deterred me,from the moment that I made this mortifying discovery, from soliciting his leave to resign.

But oh my Susan,—­kind, good, indulgent as he is to me, I have not the heart so cruelly to thwart his hopes—­his views—­his happiness, in the honours he conceived awaiting my so unsolicited appointment.  The queen, too, is all sweetness, encouragement, and gracious goodness to me, and I cannot endure to complain to her of her old servant.  You see, then, my situation; here I must remain!—­The die is cast, and that struggle is no more.—­To keep off every other, to support the loss of the dearest friends, and best society, and bear, in exchange, the tyranny, the exigeance, the ennui, and attempted indignities of their greatest contrast,- -this must be my constant endeavour.

Amongst my sources of unhappiness in this extraordinary case is, the very favour that, in any other, might counteract it—­namely, that of the queen:  for while, in a manner the most attractive, she seems inviting my confidence, and deigning to wish my happiness, she redoubles my conflicts never to shock her with murmurs against one who, however to me noxious and persecuting, is to her a faithful and truly devoted old servant.  This will prevent my ever having my distress and dis-405

turbance redressed ; for they can never be disclosed.  Could I have, as my dear father conceived, all the time to myself, my friends, my leisure, or my own occupations, that is not devoted to my official duties, how different would be my feelings, how far more easily accommodated to my privations and sacrifices!  Little does the queen know the slavery I must either resist or endure.  And so frightful is hostility, that I know not which part is hardest to perform.