ABSTRACT
I do not know whether I pity, love, or admire Leonora most. Just when her mind was deeply wounded by her husband’s neglect, and when her jealousy was worked to the highest pitch by his passion for her dangerous rival, the prince arrives here, and, struck by Leonora’s charms of mind and person, falls passionately in love with her. Probably his highness’s friend H— had given him a hint of the existing circumstances, and he thought a more propitious moment could scarcely be found for making an impression upon a female mind. He judged of Leonora by other women. And I, like a simpleton, judged of her by myself. With shame I confess to you, my dear Margaret, that notwithstanding all my past experience, I did expect that she would have done as I am afraid I should have done in her situation. I think that I could not have resisted the temptation of coquetting a little – a very little – just to revive the passion of the man whom I really loved. This expedient succeeds so often with that wise sex, who never rightly know the value of a heart, except when they have just won it, or at the moment when they are on the point of losing it. In Leonora’s place and in such an emergency, I should certainly have employed that frightful monster jealousy to waken sleeping love; since he, and only he, can do it expeditiously and effectually. This I have hinted to Leonora, talking always in generals; for, since my total overthrow, I have never dared to come to particulars: but by putting cases and confessing myself, / I contrived to make my thoughts understood. I then boasted of the extreme facility of the means I would adopt to recover a heart. Leonora answered in the words of a celebrated great man: – ‘C’est facile de se servir de pareils moyens; c’est difficile de s’y résoudre. 129
