Upon my word, my dear, you have read me a charming lecture! you keep it up to a miracle! you seem to depend, however, too much on the salutary effect of your sermons. Without pretending to judge whether they would formerly have lull'd your preceptor to sleep, I can assure you they do not put me to sleep at present; on the contrary, that which you sent me yesterday was so far from affecting me with drowsiness that it kept me awake all night. I bar, however, the remarks of that Argus your husband, if he should see the letter. But I will write in some order, and I protest to you, you had better burn your fingers, than shew it him.
If I should be very methodical, and recapitulate with you article for article, I should usurp your privilege; I had better, therefore, set them down as they come into my head; to affect a little modesty also, and not give you too much fair-play, I will not begin with our travellers, or the courier from Italy. At the worst, if it should so happen, I shall only have my letter to write over again, and to reverse it, by putting the beginning at the latter end. I am determined however to begin with the supposed Lady B——. I can assure you, I am offended at the very title; nor shall I ever forgive St. Preux for permitting her to take it, Lord B—— for conferring it on her, or you for acknowledging it. Shall Eloisa Wolmar receive Lauretta Pisana into her house! permit her to live with her! think of it, child, again. Would not such a condescension in you be the most cruel mortification to her? can you be ignorant that the air you breathe is fatal to infamy? will the poor unfortunate dare to mix her breath with yours? will she dare to approach you? She would be as much affected by your presence as a creature possessed would be at the sacred relics in the hand of the exorcist: your looks would make her sink into the earth; the very sight of you would kill her.
Not that I despise the unhappy Laura; God forbid! on the contrary, I admire and respect her, the more as her reformation is heroic and extraordinary. But is it sufficient to authorise those mean comparisons by which you debase yourself; as if in the indulgence of the greatest weakness, there was not something in true love that is a constant security to our person, and which made us tenacious of our honour? but I comprehend and excuse you. You have but a confused view of low and distant objects: you look down from your sublime and elevated station upon the earth, and see no inequalities on its surface. Your devout humility knows how to take an advantage even of your virtue.
But what end will all this serve? will our natural sensations make the less impression? will our self-love be less active? in spite of your arguments you feel a repugnance at this match: you tax your sensations with pride; you would strive against them and attribute them to prejudice. But tell me, my dear, how long has the scandal attendant on vice consisted in mere opinion? what friendship do you think can possibly subsist between you and a woman, before whom, one cannot mention chastity, or virtue, without making her burst into tears of shame, without renewing her sorrows, without even insulting her penitence? believe me, my dear, we may respect Laura, but we ought not to see her; to avoid her is the regard which modest women owe to her merit: it would be cruel to make her suffer in our company.
I will go farther, you say your heart tells you, this marriage ought not to take place. Is not this as much as to tell you it will not. Your friend says nothing about it in his letter! in the letter which he wrote to me! and yet you say that letter is a very long one——and then comes the discourse between you and your husband——that husband of yours is a slyboots, and ye are a couple of cheats thus to trick me out of the news ye have heard. But then your husband's sentiments!——methinks his sentiments were not so necessary; particularly for you who have seen the letter, nor indeed were they for me, who have not seen it: for I am more certain of the conduct of your friend from my own sentiments, than from all the wisdom of philosophy.
See there now!——did I not tell you so? that intruder will be thrusting himself in, no body knows how. For fear he should come again, however, as we are now got into his chapter, let us go through it, that it may be over, and we may have nothing to do with him again.
Let us not bewilder ourselves with conjectures, had you not been Eloisa, had not your friend been your lover, I know not what business he would now have had with you, nor what I should have had to do with him. All I know is, that, if my ill fears had so ordered it that he had first made love to me, it had been all over with his poor head; for, whether I am a fool or not, I should certainly have made him one. But what signifies what I might have been? let us come to what I am. Attached by inclination to you, from our earliest infancy, my heart has been in a manner absorbed by yours; affectionate and susceptible as I was, I of myself was incapable of love or sensibility. All my sentiments came from you; you alone stood in the place of the whole world, and I lived only to be your friend. Chaillot saw all this, and founded on it the judgment she passed on me. In what particular, my dear, have you found her mistaken?
You know I looked upon your friend as a brother: as the son of my mother was the lover of my friend. Neither was it my reason, but my heart that gave him this preference. I should have been even more susceptible than I am, had I never experienced any other love. I caressed you, in caressing the dearest part of yourself, and the chearfulness which attended my embraces was a proof of their purity. For doth a modest woman ever behave so to the man she loves? did you behave thus to him? no, Eloisa, love in a female heart is cautious and timid; reserve and modesty are all its advances; it discloses by endeavouring to hide itself, and whenever it confers the favour of its caresses, it well knows how to set a value upon them. Friendship is prodigal, but love is avaricious and sparing.
I confess indeed, that too intimate connections at his age and mine, are dangerous; but, with both our hearts engaged by the same object, we were so accustomed to place it between us, that, without annihilating you at least, it was impossible for us to come together. Even that familiarity, so dangerous on every other occasion, was then my security. Our sentiments depend on our ideas, and when these have once taken a certain turn, they are not easily perverted. We had talked together too much in one strain, to begin upon another; we had advanced too far to return back the way we came: love is jealous of its prerogative, and will make its own progress; it does not chuse that friendship should meet it half way. In short, I am still of the same opinion, that criminal caresses never take place between those that have been long used to the endearing embraces of innocence. In aid of my sentiments, came the man destined by heaven to constitute the momentary happiness of my life. You know, cousin, he was young, well made, honest, complaisant and solicitous to please; it is true, he was not so great a master in love as your friend; but it was me that he loved: and, when the heart is free, the passion which is addressed to ourselves, hath always in it something contagious. I returned his affections therefore, with all that remained of mine, and his share was such as left him no room to complain of his choice. With all this, what had I to apprehend. I will even go so far as to confess that the prerogatives of the husband, joined to the duties of a wife, relaxed for a moment the ties of friendship; and that, after my change of condition, giving myself up to the duties of my new station, I became a more affectionate wife than I was a friend: but, in returning to you, I have brought back two hearts instead of one, and have not since forgot that I alone am charged with that double obligation.
What, my dear friend, shall I say farther? at the return of our old preceptor, I had, as it were, a new acquaintance to cultivate: methought I looked upon him with very different eyes; my heart fluttered as he saluted me, in a manner I had never felt before; and the more pleasure that emotion gave me, the more it made me afraid. I was alarmed at a sentiment which seemed criminal, and which perhaps would not have existed had it not been innocent. I too plainly perceived that he was not, nor could be any longer your lover; I was too sensible that his heart was disengaged, and that mine was so too. You know the rest, my dear cousin; my fears, my scruples were, I see, as well known to you as to myself. My unexperienced heart, was so intimidated by sensations so new to it, that I even reproached myself for the earnest desire I felt to rejoin you; as if that desire had not been the same before the return of our friend. I was uneasy that he should be in the very place where I myself most inclined to be, and believe I should not have been so much displeased to find myself less desirous of it, as at conceiving that it was not entirely on your account. At length, however, I returned to you, and began to recover my confidence. I was less ashamed of my weakness after having confessed it to you. I was even less ashamed of it in your company: I thought myself protected in turn, and ceased to be afraid of myself. I resolved, agreeable to your advice, not to change my conduct towards him. Certainly a greater reserve would have been a kind of declaration, and I was but too likely to let slip involuntary ones, to induce me to make any directly. I continued, therefore, to trifle with him through bashfulness, and to treat him familiarly through modesty: but perhaps all this, not being so natural as formerly, was not attended with the same propriety, nor exerted to the same degree. From being a trifler, I turned a downright fool; and what perhaps increased my assurance was, I found I could be so with impunity. Whether it was your example that inspired me, or whether it be that Eloisa refines every thing that approaches her, I found myself perfectly tranquil, while nothing remained of my first emotions, but the most pleasing, yet peaceful sensations, which required nothing more than the tranquillity I possessed.
Yes, my dear friend, I am as susceptible and affectionate as you; but I am so in a different manner. Perhaps, with more lively passions, I am less able to govern them; and that very chearfulness, which has been so fatal to the innocence of others has preserved mine. Not that it has been always easy, I confess; any more than it is to remain a widow at my years, and not be sometimes sensible that the daytime constitutes but one half of our lives. Nay, notwithstanding the grave face you put on the matter, I imagine your case does not differ in that greatly from mine. Mirth and pleasantry may then afford no unseasonable relief; and perhaps be a better preservative than graver lessons. How many times, in the stillness of the night, when the heart is all open to itself, have I driven impertinent thoughts out of my mind, by studying tricks for the next day! how many times have I not averted the danger of a private conversation by an extravagant fancy! there is always, my dear, when one is weak, a time wherein gaiety becomes serious; but that time will not come to me.
These are at least my sentiments of the matter, and what I am not ashamed to confess in answer to you. I readily confirm all that I said in the elysium, as to the growing passion I perceived, and the happiness I had enjoyed during the winter. I indulged myself freely in the pleasing reflections of being always in company with the person I loved, while I desired nothing farther; and, if that opportunity had still subsisted, I should have coveted no other. My chearfulness was the effect of contentment, and not of artifice. I turned the pleasure of conversing with him into drollery, and perceived that, in contenting myself with laughing, I was not paving the way for future sorrow.
I could not indeed help thinking sometimes, that my continual playing upon him gave him less real displeasure than he affected. The cunning creature was not angry at being offended, and if he was a long time before he could be brought to temper, it was only, that he might enjoy the pleasure of being intreated. Again, I in my turn have frequently laid hold of such occasions to express a real tenderness for him, appearing all the while to make a jest of him: so that you would have been puzzled to say which was the most of a child. One day, I remember that you was absent, he was playing at chess with your husband, while I and the little Frenchwoman were diverting ourselves at shuttlecock in the same room; I gave her the signal, and kept my eye on our philosopher; who, I found by the boldness of his looks and the readiness of his moves, had the best of the game. As the table was small, the chessboard hung over its edge, I watched my opportunity, therefore, and without seeming to design it, gave the board a knock with a back stroke of my racquet, and overturned the whole game on the floor. You never in your life law a man in such a passion: he was even so enraged that, when I gave him his choice of a kiss, or a box in the ear by way of penance, he sullenly turned away from me as I presented him my cheek. I asked pardon, but to no purpose: he was inflexible, and I doubt not that he would lave left me on my knees, had I condescended to kneel for it. I put an end to his resentment, however, by another offence which made him forget the former, and we were better friends than ever.
I could never have extricated myself so well by any other means; and I once perceived that, if our play had become serious, it might have proved too much so. This was one evening when he played with us that simple and affecting duo of Leo'sVado a morir ben mio. You sung indeed with indifference enough: but I did not; for just as we came to the most pathetic part of the song, he leaned forward, and as my hand lay upon the harpsichord, imprinted on it a kiss, whose impression I felt at my heart. I am not very well acquainted with the ardent kisses of love; but this I can say, that mere friendship, not even ours, ever gave or received any thing like that. After such moments, what is the consequence of reflecting on them in solitude, and of bearing him constantly in memory? for my part, I was so much affected at the time, that I sung out of tune and put the music out. We went to dancing, I made the philosopher dance; we eat little or nothing; sat up very late; and, though I went to bed weary, I only dosed till morning.
I have therefore very good reason for not laying any restraint on my humour, or changing my manners. The time that will make such an alteration necessary is so near, that it is not worth while to anticipate. The time to be prudish and reserved will come but too soon. While I am in my twenties, therefore, I shall make use of my privilege; for when once turned of thirty, people are no longer wild without being ridiculous; and your find-fault of a husband hath assurance enough to tell me already that I shall be allowed but six months longer to dress a salad with my fingers. Patience! to retort his sarcasm, however, I tell him I will dress it for him in that manner for these six years to come, and if I do, I protest to you he shall eat it;——but to return from my ramble. If we have not the absolute command over our sentiments, we have at least some over our conduct. I could, without doubt, have requested of heaven a heart more at ease; but may I be able to my last hour to plead at its dread tribunal, a life as innocent as that which I passed this winter! in fact, I have nothing in the least to reproach myself with, respecting the only man in whose power it might be to make me criminal. It is not quite the same, my dear, since his departure: being accustomed to think for him in his absence, I think of him every hour in the day, and, to confess the truth, find him more dangerous in idea than in person. When he is absent, I am over head and ears in love; when present, I am only whimsical. Let him return, and I shall be cured of all my fears. The chagrin his absence gives me, however, is not a little aggravated by my uneasiness at his dream. If you have placed all to the account of love, therefore you are mistaken; friendship has had part in my uneasiness. After the departure of our friends your looks were pale and changed; I expected you every moment to fall sick. Not that I am credulous: I am only fearful. I know very well that a bad dream does not necessarily produce a sinister event; but I am always afraid lest such an event should succeed it. Not one night's rest could I get for that unlucky dream, till I saw you recover your former bloom. Could I have suspected the effects his anxiety would have had on me, without knowing any thing of it, I would certainly have given every thing I had in the world that he should have shewn himself when he came back so much like a fool from Villeneuve.
At length, however, my fears vanished with your suspicious looks. Your health and appetite having a greater effect on me than your pleasantries. The arguments these sustained at table, against my apprehensions, in time dissipated them. To increase our happiness our friend is on his return, and I am in every respect delighted. His return, so far from alarming me, gives me confidence; and as soon as we see him again, I shall fear nothing for your life, nor my repose. In the mean time be careful, dear cousin, of my friend; and be under no apprehensions for yours; she will take care of herself, I will engage for her. And yet I have still a pain at my heart——I feel an oppression which I cannot account for. Ah my dear! to think that we may one day part for ever! that one may survive the other! how unhappy will she be on whom that lot shall fall! She will either remain little worthy to live, or lifeless before her death.
You will ask me, to what purpose is all this vain lamentation? you will say, fie on these ridiculous terrors! instead of talking of death let us chuse a more entertaining topic, and talk about your marriage. Your husband has indeed long entertained such a notion, and perhaps if he had never spoken of it to me, it would never have come into my head. I have since thought of it now and then, but always with disdain. It would be absolutely making an old woman of me; for, if I should have any children by a second marriage, I should certainly conceit myself the grandmother of those of the first. You are certainly very good to take upon yourself so readily to spare the blushes of your friend, and to look upon your taking that trouble as an instance of your charitable benevolence. For my own part, nevertheless, I can see very well that all the reasons, founded on your obliging solicitude, are not equal to the least of mine against a second marriage.
To be serious, I am not mean-spirited enough to number among those reasons any reluctance I should have to break an engagement rashly made with myself, nor the fear of being censured for doing my duty, nor an inequality in point of fortune in a circumstance where that person reaps the greatest honour to whom the other would be obliged for his: but, without repeating what I have so often told you concerning my case of independency and natural aversion to the marriage yoke, I will abide by only one objection, and this I draw from those sacred dictates which nobody in the world pays a greater regard to than yourself. Remove this obstacle, cousin, and I give up the point. Amidst all those airs of mirth and drollery, which give you so much alarm, my conscience is perfectly easy. The remembrance of my husband excites not a blush; I even take pleasure to think him a witness of my innocence; for why should I be afraid to do that, now he is dead, which I used to do when he was living? but will this be the case, Eloisa, if I should violate those sacred engagements which united us; if I should swear to another that everlasting love, which I have so often swore to him; if my divided heart should rob his memory of what it bestowed on his successor, and be incapable without offending one to discharge the obligations it owes the other? will not that form, now so pleasing to my imagination, fill me with horror and affright? will it not be ever present to poison my delight? and will not his remembrance, which now constitutes the happiness of my life, be my future torment? with what face can you advise me to take a second husband, after having vowed never to do the like yourself, as if the same reasons which you give me were not as applicable to yourself in the same circumstances? they were friends, you say and loved each other. So much the worse. With what indignation will not his shade behold a man who was dear to him, usurp his rights, and seduce his wife from her fidelity? in short, though it were true that I owed no obligation to the deceased, should I owe none to the dear pledge of his love? and can I believe he would ever have chosen me, had he foreseen that I should ever have exposed his only child to see herself undistinguished among the children of another? another word, and I have done: who told you, pray, that all the obstacles between us arise from me? In answering for him, have you not rather consulted your will than your power? Or, were you certain of his consent, do you make no scruple to offer me a heart exhausted by a former passion? do you think that mine ought to be content with it, and that I might be happy with a man I could not make so? think better of it, my dear cousin. Not requiring a greater return of love than I feel, I should not be satisfied with less, and I am too virtuous a woman to think the pleasing my husband a matter of indifference. What security have you then for the completion of your hopes? Is the pleasure he may take in my company, which may be only the effect of friendship; is that transitory delight, which at his age may arise only from the difference of sex; Is this, I say, a sufficient foundation? If such pleasure had produced any lasting sentiment, is it to be thought he would have been so profoundly silent, not only to me, but to you, and even to your husband; by whom an eclairissement of that nature could not fail of being favourably received.
Has he ever opened his lips on this head to any one? in all the private conversations I have had with him, he talked of no body but you. In those which you have had, did he ever say anything of me? how can I imagine that, if he had concealed a secret of this kind in his breast, I should not have perceived him to be under some constraint, or that it would not, by some indiscretion or other, have escaped him? nay, since his departure, which of us does he most frequently mention in his letters? which of us is the subject of his dreams? I admire that you should think me so tender and susceptible, and should not at the same time suppose my heart would suggest all this. But I see through your device, my sweet friend; it is only to authorise your pretensions to reprisals, that you charge me with having formerly saved my heart at the expense of yours. But I am not so to be made the dupe of your subtlety. And so here is an end of my confession; which I have made, not to contradict, but to set you right; having nothing farther to say on this head, than to acquaint you with my resolution. You now know my heart as well, if not better, than myself. My honour, my happiness are equally dear to you as to myself; and, in the present tranquillity of your passions, you will be the best able to judge of the means to secure both the one and the other. Take my conduct therefore under your direction. I submit it entirely to you. Let us return to our natural state, and reciprocally change our employment; we shall both do the better for it: do you govern, and you shall find me tractable: let it be your place to direct what I should do, and it shall be mine to follow your directions.
Take my heart, and inclose it up in yours; what business have inseparables for two? but to return to our travellers; though, to say truth, I have already said so much about one, that I hardly dare speak a word about the other, for fear you should remark too great a difference in my stile, and that even my friendship for the generous Englishman should betray too much regard for the amiable Swiss. Besides, what can I say about letters I have not seen? you ought at least to send me that of Lord B——. But you durst not send it without the other. 'Tis very well. You might however have done better. Well, recommend me to your duennas of twenty: they are infinitely more tractable than those of thirty.
I must revenge myself, however, by informing you of the effect of your fine reserve. It has only made me imagine the letter in question, that letter which breathes such a——only a hundred times more tender than it really is. Out of spite, I take pleasure in conceiving it filled with soft expressions which cannot be in it; so that if I am not passionately admired, I shall make you suffer for it. After all, I cannot see with what face you can talk to me of the Italian post. You prove in your letter that I was not in the wrong to wait for it, but for not having waited long enough. Had I stayed but one poor quarter of an hour longer, I should have met the packet, have laid hold of it first, and read it at my ease. It had then been my turn to make a merit of giving it you. But, since the grapes are too sour, you may keep the letters. I have two others which I would not change for them were they better worth reading than I imagine they are. There is that of Harriot, I can assure you, even exceeds your own; nor have either you or I, in all our lives, ever wrote any thing so pretty. And yet you give yourself airs forsooth of treating this prodigy as a little impertinent. Upon my word I suspect that to arise from mere envy; and, since I have discovered in her this new talent, I purpose, before you spoil her writing as you have done her speech, to establish between her apartment and mine an Italian post, from whence I will have no pilfering of packets.
Farewell, my dear friend, you will find inclosed the answers to your letters, which will give you no mean idea of my interest here. I would write to you something about this country and its inhabitants; but it is high time to put an end to this volume of a letter. You have besides quite perplexed me with your strange fancies. As we have five or six days longer to stay here, and I shall have time to give another look at what I have already seen, you will be no loser by the delay; and you may depend on my transmitting you another volume as big as this, before my departure.
This book is provided by FunNovel Novel Book | Fan Fiction Novel [Beautiful Free Novel Book]