How much time has passed, my dear Aza! since I last enjoyed the artificial happiness of believing my soul held converse with yours; since that time the sun has run half his course. How much courage was necessary to support it! I looked forward only to futurity, and the present time did not seem worthy to be computed. My thoughts were nothing but desires, my reflections only so many projects, and my sentiments a series of hopes. I have scarce learned to form these figures, and yet will I now endeavour to make them the interpreters of my passion.

I feel new life from this tender employ: Restored to myself, I exist anew. Aza, how dear are you to my soul, and what delight do I take in telling you so, in painting these sentiments, and giving them every means of existence! I would trace them upon the hardest metal, upon the walls of my chamber, on my clothes, upon every thing that surrounds me, and express them in all languages.

Alas! how fatal has the knowlege of the language which I now use been to me! How deceitful were the hopes that prevailed on me to learn it! Scarcely was I acquainted with it, but a new world opened before me; each object took a different form, and every light I gained, shewed me a fresh misfortune.

My eyes, my heart, my soul, even the Sun himself, has deceived me. For I have been fatally convinced that he enlightens the whole world, of which your empire, and the various kingdoms that acknowledge your supremacy, are only a small portion. Do not think, my dear Aza, that I am imposed upon in these things; incredible as they may appear, they are indeed but too well proved.

Far from being amongst people subject to your dominion, I am not only under a foreign power, but so prodigiously remote from your empire, that our nation had still been unknown here, if the avarice of the Spaniards had not made them surmount the greatest dangers to come at us.