LETTER LVI.
August 21.
My sensations change with the rapidity of lightning. Sometimes a
ray of joy seems to give me new life -- Alas! it disappears in a
moment. When I am thus lost in reveries, I cannot help {147}
saying to myself -- "If Albert was to die, I should be -- yes,
Charlotte would" -- and I pursue the chimera till it leads me to
the edge of a precipice, from which I start back and shudder.
When I go out at the same gate, when I take the same road which
conducted me for the first time towards Charlotte, my heart sinks
within me; and I feel with bitterness how different I then was,
from what I now am. Yes, all, all is vanished. Not a sentiment,
not a pulsation of my heart is the same; no traces of the past
remain. If the shade of a departed prince could return to visit
the superb palaces he had built in happy times, and left to a
beloved son; and if he found them overthrown and destroyed by a
more powerful neighbour, such would be his sensations.
