Selected Works of Eliza Haywood

Love in Excess - Part 3.

Success can then alone your vows attend,
When worth's the motive, constancy the end.
— Epilogue to The Spartan Dame.

Though Count D'Elmont never had any great tenderness for Alovisa, and her extravagance of rage and jealousy, joined to his passion for Melliora had every day abated it, yet the manner of her death was too great a shock to the sweetness of his disposition to be easily worn off; he could not remember her uneasiness, without reflecting that it sprung only from her too violent affection for him; and though there was no possibility of living happily with her, when he considered that she died, not only for him, but by his hand, his compassion for the cause, and horror for the unwished, as well as undesigned event, drew lamentations from him, more sincere, perhaps, then some of those husbands, who call themselves very loving ones, would make.

To alleviate the troubles of his mind, he had endeavoured all he could, to persuade Melliora to continue in his house; but that afflicted lady was not to be prevailed upon, she looked on herself, as, in a manner, accessory to Alovisa's death, and thought the least she owed to her reputation was to see the Count no more, and though in the forming this resolution, she felt torments unconceivable, yet the strength of her virtue enabled her to keep it, and she returned to the monastery, where she had been educated, carrying with her nothing of that peace of mind with which she left it.

Not many days passed between her departure, and the Count's; he took his way towards Italy, by the persuasions of his brother, who, since he found him bent to travel, hoped that garden of the world might produce something to divert his sorrows; he took but two servants with him, and those rather for conveniency than state. Ambition, once his darling passion, was now wholly extinguished in him by these misfortunes, and he no longer thought of making a figure in the world; but his love nothing could abate, and 'tis to be believed that the violence of that would have driven him to the use of some fatal remedy, if the Chevalier Brillian, to whom he left the care of Melliora's and her brother's fortune as well as his own, had not, though with much difficulty, obtained a promise from her of conversing with him by letters.

This was all he had to keep hope alive, and indeed it was no inconsiderable consolation, for she that allows a correspondence of that kind with a man that has any interest in her heart, can never persuade herself, while she does so, to make him become indifferent to her. When we give ourselves the liberty of even talking of the person we have once loved, and find the least pleasure in that discourse, 'tis ridiculous to imagine we are free from that passion, without which, the mention of it would be but insipid to our ears, and the remembrance to our minds; though our words are never so cold, they are the effects of a secret fire, which burns not with less strength for not being dilated. The Count had too much experience of all the walks and turns of passion to be ignorant of this, if Melliora had endeavoured to disguise her sentiments, but she went not so far, she thought it a sufficient vindication of her virtue to withhold the rewarding of his love, without feigning a coldness to which she was a stranger, and he had the satisfaction to observe a tenderness in her style, which assured him that her heart was unalterably his, and very much strengthened his hopes that one day her person might be so too, when time had a little effaced the memory of those circumstances, which had obliged her to put this constraint on her inclinations!

He wrote to her from every post—town, and waited till he received her answer; by this means his journey was extremely tedious, but no adventures of any moment, falling in his way till he came to Rome, I shall not trouble my readers with a recital of particulars which could be no way entertaining.