Lawrence Sterne to Miss L.

Yes! I will steal from the world, and not a babbling tongue shall tell where I am. Echo shall not so much as whisper my hiding place. Suffer the imagination to permit it as a little sun-light cottage, on the side of a romantic hill. Dost thou think I will leave love and friendship behind me? No! They shall be my companions in solitude, for they will sit down and rise up with me in the amiable form of my L ... We will be as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Paradise, before the arch-fiend entered that indescribable scene.

The kindest affections will have room to shoot and expand in our retirement, and produce such fruit as madness and envy and ambition have always killed in the bud. Let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L... has seen a polyanthus blow in December ... me friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind. No planetary influence shall reach us but that which presides and cherishes the sweetest flowers. God preserve us! How delightful this prospect in idea! We will build and we will plant, in our own way ...simplicity shall not be tortured by art. We will learn of nature how to live ... she shall be our alchemist, to mingle all the good of life in one salubrious draught. The gloomy family of care and distrust shall be banished from our dwelling, guarded by the kind and tutelary deity. We will sing our choral songs of gratitude and rejoice to the end of our pilgrimage.

Adieu, my L ...

Return to one who languishes for your society.
[中文译文]

劳伦斯·斯特恩致L小姐

不错，我即将悄然离开这世界，任何饶舌鬼也说不出我在何处。即使那回声也说不出我的藏身之处。您爱怎么想就怎么想吧：或许你会把它说成是山间的小屋，那儿充满了浪漫的欢乐和金色的阳光。您以为我会把爱情和友谊抛弃吗?决不!它们是我孤独中的伴侣，因为无论我起坐行止我都会感受到我所爱的温馨。在撒旦介入那美妙的乐园生活之前，我们会像我们的祖先一样快乐和天真、无邪。

我们最美好的爱情还会有不断加深和发展的余地，如此的爱，疯狂、嫉妒和非凡之想都会扼杀在萌芽之中。让人间的暴风骤雨在远方肆虐吧，让孤独把那寂静隔离在远远的地平线上。我的L……看见过夜来香在十二月开放……正好有堵墙挡住了凛冽的寒风。这儿无尘世的干扰，只有甜蜜的花香欣赏。愿上帝保佑我们!意想中的前景是多么喜人!我们将自由自在地在这儿安家、耕种……朴实再不会受到奸诈的欺凌。我们将向大自然学会生活……她是我们的炼金术士，她把生活中一切美好的东西融为和谐的力量。我们居住的地方不再有忧虑和不信任的阴影笼罩，只有仁慈的守护神保卫我们。我们将同声歌唱，感谢神灵，欢欣鼓舞直到走完人生旅程。

再见了，我的L……

回到盼您的伴侣的身边来吧，他为了与您相处而熬得憔悴。

　

Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo

Oh! Think of me, my sweet beloved, so that I may feel it and so that your joy amid your delightful family, your kind friends and admirers may not be changed into bitterness and grief for me. Think of me. of whom you are the life and soul. Think of my love so profound, so pure, and so devoted, and wish I were with you. I am going to bed praying God for you and yours. I trust my prayers will not be fruitless, as I am asking for their happiness and yours, should it be at the cost of my own life. If you knew how I need to know that you are happy, my beloved, almost as much as to know I am loved by you! I love you, more than anything else in the world. Enjoy your success, this evening, my Victor, your beauty, your genius, and be happy with your delightful family. I will be proud and happy myself, provided amid all this you do not forget me. Above all I do not wish to importune or compromise you. I only want to love you to my last sight.
朱丽叶·德鲁埃致维克多·雨果

啊，您想我吧，我最爱的人，好让我感受到您的甜蜜，好让你与家人的欢乐、与朋友和爱慕您的人的欢乐不会变为对我嫉妒和令我伤心。您想我吧，因为您就是我的生命和灵魂。想想我对您的爱如此深沉、纯洁、专一吧，祝愿我能与您相聚在一起吧。我马上要就寝了，还在为您和您的亲人祈求上帝。我相信我的祈祷不会得不到回音，因为我不惜用生命换得您的亲人还有您自己的幸福。要是您知道我是如何祝福您，我的爱，那么您也会觉得您爱我的心一点也不亚于我想您知道我是多么爱您。我爱您，我对您的爱超过了人间世上的一切。今夜尽情地为您的成功而欢乐吧，我的维克多，尽情地赞美您的美丽，赞美您的天才吧，为能与欢乐的家人团聚而高兴吧!要是您在欢乐的时刻没有把我忘怀，我定当感到自豪和宰福。不管怎么样，最重要的是，我不想强求或委屈您，我只想受着您直到瞑目之时。
　

Shelley to Elizabeth Hitchhiker

Your letter of the 1st hath this moment reached me. I answer it according to our agreement, which shall be inviolable. Truly did you say that, at our arising in the morning, Nature assumes a different aspect. Who could have conjectured the circumstances of my last letter? Friend of my soul, this is terrible, dismaying: it makes one's heart sink, it withers vital energy... dear being, I am thine again; the happiness shall again predominate over this fleeting tribute to self-interest. Yet who would not feel now? Oh'twere as reckless a task to endeavor to annihilate perception while sense existed, as to blunt the sixth sense to such impressions as these! ... Forgive me, dearest friend? I pour out my whole soul to you. I write by fleeting intervals: my pen runs away with my senses. The impassionateness of my sensations grows upon me. Your letter, too, has much affected me. Never, with my consent, shall that intercourse cease which has been the day-dawn of my existence, the sun which has shed warmth on the cold drear length of the anticipated prospect of life. Prejudice might demand the sacrifice, but she is an idol to whom we bow not. The world might demand it; its opinion might require; but the cloud which flees over yon mountain were as important to our happiness, to our usefulness. This must never be, never whilst this existence continues; and when time has enrolled us in the list of the departed, surely this friendship will survive to bear our identity to heaven. What is love, or friendship? Is it something material ... a ball, an apple, a plaything ... which must be taken from one to be given to another? Is it capable of no extension, no communication? Lord Kaimes defines love to be a particularization of the general passion. But this is the love of sensation, of sentiment ... the absurdest of absurd vanities: it is the love of pleasure, not the love of happiness. The one is a love which is selfcentered, selfinterested: It desires its own interest; it is the parent of jealousy. Its object is the plaything which it desires to monopolize. Selfishness, monopoly, is its very soul, and to communicate to others part of this love were to destroy its essence, to annihilate this chain of straw. But love, the love which we worship , ... virtue, heaven, disinterestedness ... in a word, Friendship ... which has as much to do with the senses as with yonder mountains; that which seeks the good of all ... the good of its object first, not because that object is a minister to its Pleasures, not merely because it even contributes to its happiness, but because it is really worthy, because it has powers, sensibilities, is capable of abstracting itself, and loving virtue's own loveliness ... desiring the happiness of others not from the obligation of fearing the happiness of others not from the obligation of fearing hell or desiring heaven: but for pure, simple, unsophisticated virtue. You will soon hear again. Adieu, my dearest friend. Continue to believe that when I am insensible to your excellence, I shall cease to exist.

[中文译文]

雪莱致伊丽莎白·西琴勒

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