My attachment to my dear friend grows every day stronger; your absence becomes insupportable, and I have no relief but in my pen. Thus my love keeps pace with yours; for I judge of your passion by your real fear of offending: your former fears were only feigned, with an intent to advance your cause. It is an easy matter to distinguish the dictates of an afflicted heart from the phrenzy of a heated imagination, and I see a thousand times more affection in your present constraint than in your former delirium. I know also that your situation, confined as it is, is not entirely bereft of pleasure. A sincere lover must be very happy in making frequent sacrifices to a grateful mistress, when he is assured that not one of them will be forgotten, but that she will treasure the remembrance in her heart.
But who knows whether, presuming on my sensibility, this may not be a deeper, and therefore a more dangerous plot than the former? O, no! the supposition was unjust; you certainly cannot mean to deceive me. And yet prudence tells me to be more suspicious of compassion than even of love; for I find myself more affected by your respect than by all your transport: so that, as you are grown more honest, you are become in proportion more formidable.
In the overflowing of my heart I will tell you a truth, of which your own feelings cannot fail to convince you: it is, that in spite of fortune, parents, and of ourselves, our fates are united for ever, and we can be only happy or miserable together. Our souls, if I may use the expression, touch in all points, and we feel an entire coherence: correct me if I speak unphilosophically. Our destiny may part us, but cannot disunite us. Henceforward our pains and pleasures must be mutual; and, like the magnets, of which I have heard you speak, that have the same motion though in different places, we should have the same sensations at the two extremities of the world.
Banish, therefore, the vain hope, if you ever entertained it, of exclusive happiness to be purchased at the expense of mine. Do not flatter yourself with the idle prospect of felicity founded upon Eloisa's dishonour, or imagine that you could behold my ignominy and my tears, without horror. Believe me, my dear friend, I know your heart better than yourself. A passion so tender and so true, cannot possibly excite an impure wish; but we are so attached, that if we were on the brink of perdition it would be impossible for us to fall singly; of my ruin yours is the inevitable consequence.
I should be glad to convince you how necessary it is for us both that I should be entrusted with the care of our destiny. Can you doubt that you are as dear to me as myself, or that I can enjoy any happiness exclusive of yours? No, my dear friend, our interest is exactly the same, but I have rather more at stake, and have therefore more reason to be watchful. I own I am youngest; but did you never observe that if reason be generally weaker and sooner apt to decay in our sex, it also comes more early to maturity than in yours? as in vegetation the most feeble plants arrive at their perfection and dissolution in the least time. We find ourselves, from our first conception of things, instructed with so valuable a treasure, that our dread of consequences soon unfolds our judgment, and an early sense of our danger excites our vigilance.
In short, the more I reflect upon our situation, the more I am convinced that love and reason join in my request: suffer yourself then to be lead by the gentle deity; for though he is blind, he is not without a guide.
I am not quite certain that this language of my heart will be perfectly intelligible to yours, or that my letter will be read with the same emotion with which it was written: nor am I convinced that particular objects will ever appear to us in the same light; but certain I am, that the advice of either which tends least towards separate happiness, is that which we ought to follow.
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