Persuasion

Commencé le 28/01, fini le 03/03

Edition: Houghton Muffin (1994). Captain Wentworth and Ann Elliot. P. 235: If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs all talk of woman’s fickleness. But, perhaps, you will say, these were all written by men. » « Perhaps I shall. Yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything. » P.238: « I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in « F. W. « I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never. »