Clarissa, Volume 9 | Page 6

to me. He will carry this to you in his way
back, and be your director. Hie away in a coach, or any how. Your
being with him may save either his or a servant's life. See the blessed
effects of triumphant libertinism! Sooner or later it comes home to us,
and all concludes in gall and bitterness!
Adieu. J. BELFORD.

LETTER IV
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
Curse upon the Colonel, and curse upon the writer of the last letter I
received, and upon all the world! Thou to pretend to be as much
interested in my Clarissa's fate as myself!--'Tis well for one of us that
this was not said to me, instead of written.--Living or dying, she is
mine--and only mine. Have I not earned her dearly?--Is not d----n----n
likely to be the purchase to me, though a happy eternity will be her's?
An eternal separation!--O God! O God!--How can I bear that
thought!--But yet there is life!--Yet, therefore, hope--enlarge my hope,
and thou shalt be my good genius, and I will forgive thee every thing.
For this last time--but it must not, shall not be the last--Let me hear, the
moment thou receivest this--what I am to be--for, at present, I am
The most miserable of Men.
ROSE, AT KNIGHTSBRIDGE, FIVE O'CLOCK.
My fellow tells me that thou art sending Mowbray and Tourville to
me:--I want them not--my soul's sick of them, and of all the world--but
most of myself. Yet, as they send me word they will come to me
immediately, I will wait for them, and for thy next. O Belford, let it not
be--But hasten it, be what it may!

LETTER V
MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ. SEVEN

O'CLOCK, THURSDAY EVENING, SEPT. 7.
I have only to say at present--Thou wilt do well to take a tour to Paris;
or wherever else thy destiny shall lead thee!----
JOHN BELFORD.

LETTER VI
MR. MOWBRAY, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. UXBRIDGE, SEPT. 7,
BETWEEN ELEVEN AND TWELVE AT NIGHT.
DEAR JACK,
I send by poor Lovelace's desire, for particulars of the fatal breviate
thou sentest him this night. He cannot bear to set pen to paper; yet
wants to know every minute passage of Miss Harlowe's departure. Yet
why he should, I cannot see: for if she is gone, she is gone; and who
can help it?
I never heard of such a woman in my life. What great matters has she
suffered, that grief should kill her thus?
I wish the poor fellow had never known her. From first to last, what
trouble she has cost him! The charming fellow had been half lost to us
ever since he pursued her. And what is there in one woman more than
another, for matter of that?
It was well we were with him when your note came. Your showed your
true friendship in your foresight. Why, Jack, the poor fellow was quite
beside himself--mad as any man ever was in Bedlam.
Will. brought him the letter just after we had joined him at the Bohemia
Head; where he had left word at the Rose at Knightsbridge he should be;
for he had been sauntering up and down, backwards and forwards,
expecting us, and his fellow. Will., as soon as he delivered it, got out of
his way; and, when he opened it, never was such a piece of scenery. He
trembled like a devil at receiving it: fumbled at the seal, his fingers in a
palsy, like Tom. Doleman's; his hand shake, shake, shake, that he tore
the letter in two, before he could come at the contents: and, when he
had read them, off went his hat to one corner of the room, his wig to the
other--D--n--n seize the world! and a whole volley of such-like
excratious wishes; running up and down the room, and throwing up the
sash, and pulling it down, and smiting his forehead with his double fist,
with such force as would have felled as ox, and stamping and tearing,
that the landlord ran in, and faster out again. And this was the

distraction scene for some time.
In vain was all Jemmy or I could say to him. I offered once to take hold
of his hands, because he was going to do himself a mischief, as I
believed, looking about for his pistols, which he had laid upon the table,
but which Will., unseen, had taken out with him, [a faithful, honest dog,
that Will.! I shall for ever love the fellow for it,] and he hit me a d--d
dowse of the chops, as made my nose bleed. 'Twas well 'twas he, for I
hardly knew how to take it.
Jemmy raved at him, and told him, how wicked it was in him, to