great, great way off!--A long journey!----How
often are the dearest of friends, at their country's call, thus parted--
with a certainty for years--with a probability for ever.

Love me still, however. But let it be with a weaning love. I am not what
I was, when we were inseparable lovers, as I may say.--Our views must now
be different--Resolve, my dear, to make a worthy man happy, because a
worthy man make you so.--And so, my dearest love, for the present adieu!
--adieu, my dearest love!--but I shall soon write again, I hope!

LETTER XXVI

MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
[IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXIII. OF THIS VOLUME.]
THURDAY, JULY 20.

I read that part of your conclusion to poor Belton, where you inquire
after him, and mention how merrily you and the reset pass your time at
M. Hall. He fetched a deep sigh: You are all very happy! were his words.
--I am sorry they were his words; for, poor fellow, he is going very
fast. Change of air, he hopes, will mend him, joined to the cheerful
company I have left him in. But nothing, I dare say, will.

A consuming malady, and a consuming mistress, to an indulgent keeper, are
dreadful things to struggle with both together: violence must be used to
get rid of the latter; and yet he has not spirit enough left him to exert
himself. His house is Thomasine's house; not his. He has not been
within his doors for a fortnight past. Vagabonding about from inn to
inn; entering each for a bait only; and staying two or three days without
power to remove; and hardly knowing which to go to next. His malady is
within him; and he cannot run away from it.

Her boys (once he thought them his) are sturdy enough to shoulder him in
his own house as they pass by him. Siding with the mother, they in a
manner expel him; and, in his absence, riot away on the remnant of his
broken fortunes. As to their mother, (who was once so tender, so
submissive, so studious to oblige, that we all pronounced him happy, and
his course of life the eligible,) she is now so termagant, so insolent,
that he cannot contend with her, without doing infinite prejudice to his
health. A broken-spirited defensive, hardly a defensive, therefore,
reduced to: and this to a heart, for so many years waging offensive war,
(not valuing whom the opponent,) what a reduction! now comparing himself
to the superannuated lion in the fable, kicked in the jaws, and laid
sprawling, by the spurning heel of an ignoble ass!