I enclose a copy of my answer. I never knew before the difficulty of writing, when one wishes to use a language foreign to the heart: it is an oppressive burthen, from which I am at last relieved. Could you believe, that, during the hour which has past since my letter was dispatched, I have twenty times wished it were possible to recall it? I am afraid it is too disobliging – That it may afflict him. I have read his again with attention: it appears to me in a new light: those very expressions that excited my anger, now move my tenderest compassion: how affecting is that passage where he speaks of my letters! He pressed them to his lips, they were his only consolation – But what were then his sorrows? His exile! – If he had loved me – Ah! how could he have wedded another, if his heart – I can comprehend nothing – He says he is unhappy – I would not think he is indeed so – Alas! if he had suffered as I have done – had tasted that bitter cup, had felt such unutterable anguish! – how should I pity him! How easily would my pride yield to the sweetness of consoling him, of restoring joy to his soul! My tears begin to flow; they will not be restrained, I cannot support the idea of his grief, of those never-ceasing sorrows of which he speaks. Though reflection ought to convince me they have never in reality existed, they present themselves every moment to my imagination; and though reason rejects the pleasing delusion, my heart too easily gives it admittance.

To Lord Ossory.

I neither expected your complaints, my Lord, nor the request which accompanies them: the time in which an explanation of your conduct was interesting to me, has long been past: if it sometimes finds a place in my thoughts, it is like the remembrance of a painful dream, which the morning dissipates, and of which one only retains a melancholy and confused idea.