"'My son,' said I, 'listen to him who is your friend, who was the friend of
Virginia, and who, in the bloom of your hopes, endeavoured to fortify your
mind against the unforeseen accidents of life. What do you deplore with so
much bitterness? Your own misfortunes, or those of Virginia? Your own
misfortunes are indeed severe. You have lost the most amiable of women: she
who sacrificed her own interests to yours, who preferred you to all that
fortune could bestow, and considered you as the only recompense worthy of
her virtues. But might not this very object, from whom you expected the
purest happiness, have proved to you a source of the most cruel distress?
She had returned poor, disinherited; and all you could henceforth have
partaken with her was your labours: while rendered more delicate by her
education, and more courageous by her misfortunes, you would have beheld
her every day sinking beneath her efforts to share and soften your
fatigues. Had she brought you children, this would only have served to
increase her inquietudes and your own, from the difficulty of sustaining
your aged parents and your infant family. You will tell me, there would
have been reserved to you a happiness independent of fortune, that of
protecting a beloved object, which attaches itself to us in proportion to
its helplessness; that your pains and sufferings would have served to
endear you to each other, and that your passion would have gathered
strength from your mutual misfortunes.
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