Clarissa Harlowe - Samuel Richardson (reading cloud ebooks txt) 📗

down, Blessed Spirit, look down!⁠—And there stopped;⁠—his lips, however, moving.

At nine in the morning he was seized with convulsions, and fainted away; and it was a quarter of an hour before he came out of them.

His few last words I must not omit, as they show an ultimate composure; which may administer some consolation to his honourable friends.

Blessed⁠—said he, addressing himself no doubt to Heaven; for his dying eyes were lifted up⁠—a strong convulsion prevented him for a few moments saying more⁠—but recovering, he again, with great fervour, (lifting up his eyes, and his spread hands), pronounced the word blessed: Then, in a seeming ejaculation, he spoke inwardly, so as not to be understood: at last, he distinctly pronounced these three words,

“Let this expiate!”

And then, his head sinking on his pillow, he expired, at about half an hour after ten.

He little thought, poor gentleman! his end so near: so had given no direction about his body. I have caused it to be embowelled, and deposited in a vault, till I have orders from England.

This is a favour that was procured with difficulty; and would have been refused, had he not been an Englishman of rank: a nation with reason respected in every Austrian government⁠—for he had refused ghostly attendance, and the sacraments in the Catholic way.⁠—May his soul be happy, I pray God!

I have had some trouble also, on account of the manner of his death, from the magistracy here: who have taken the requisite informations in the affair. And it has cost some money. Of which, and of the dear chevalier’s effects, I will give you a faithful account in my next. And so, waiting at this place your commands, I am, Sir,

Your most faithful and obedient servant,

F. J. De La Tour.

Conclusion Supposed to Be Written by Mr. Belford

What remains to be mentioned for the satisfaction of such of the readers as may be presumed to have interested themselves in the fortunes of those other principals in the story, who survived Mr. Lovelace, will be found summarily related as follows:

The news of Mr. Lovelace’s unhappy end was received with as much grief by his own relations, as it was with exultation by the Harlowe family, and by Miss Howe. His own family were most to be pitied, because, being sincere admirers of the inimitable lady, they were greatly grieved for the injustice done her; and now had the additional mortification of losing the only male of it, by a violent death.

That his fate was deserved, was still a heightening of their calamity, as they had, for that very reason, and his unpreparedness for it, but too much ground for apprehension with regard to his future happiness. While the other family, from their unforgiving spirit, and even the noble young lady above mentioned, from her lively resentments, found his death some little, some temporary, alleviation of the heavy loss they had sustained, principally through his means.

Temporary alleviation, we repeat, as to the Harlowe family; for they were far from being happy or easy in their reflections upon their own conduct.⁠—And still the less, as the inconsolable mother rested not till she had procured, by means of Colonel Morden, large extracts from some of the letters that compose this history, which convinced them all that the very correspondence which Clarissa, while with them, renewed with Mr. Lovelace, was renewed for their sakes, more than for her own: that she had given him no encouragement contrary to her duty and to that prudence for which she was so early noted: that had they trusted to a discretion which they owned she had never brought into question, she would have extricated them and herself (as she once proposed429 to her mother) from all difficulties as to Lovelace: that she, if any woman ever could, would have given a glorious instance of a passion conquered, or at least kept under by reason and by piety; the man being too immoral to be implicitly beloved.

The unhappy parents and uncles, from the perusal of these extracts, too evidently for their peace, saw that it was entirely owing to the avarice, the ambition, the envy, of her implacable brother and sister, and to the senseless confederacy entered into by the whole family, to compel her to give her hand to a man she must despise, or she had not been a Clarissa, and to their consequent persecution of her, that she ever thought of quitting her father’s house: and that even when she first entertained such a thought, it was with intent, if possible, to procure for herself a private asylum with Mrs. Howe, or at some other place of safety, (but not with Mr. Lovelace, nor with any of the ladies of his family, though invited by the latter), from whence she might propose terms which ought to have been complied with, and which were entirely consistent with her duty⁠—that though she found herself disappointed of the hoped-for refuge and protection, she intended not, by meeting Mr. Lovelace, to put herself into his power; all that she aimed at by taking that step being to endeavour to pacify so fierce a spirit, lest he should (as he indeed was determined to do) pay a visit to her friends, which might have been attended with fatal consequences; but was spirited away by him in such a manner, as made her an object of pity rather than of blame.

These extracts further convinced them all that it was to her unaffected regret that she found that marriage was not in her power afterwards for a long time; and at last, but on one occasion, when their unnatural cruelty to her (on a new application she had made to her aunt Hervey, to procure mercy and pardon) rendered her incapable of receiving his proffered hand; and so obliged her to suspend the day: intending only to suspend it till recovered.

They saw with equal abhorrence of Lovelace, and of their own cruelty, and with the