How often have I taken up, and flung down, my pen! I hesitate in the first period; I know not how, I know not where, to begin. And yet it is to Eloisa I would write. To what a situation am I reduced? That time is, alas! no more, when a thousand pleasing ideas crowded on my mind, and flowed inexhaustibly from my pen. Those delightful moments of mutual confidence, and sweet effusion of souls, are gone and fled. We live no longer for each other. We are no more the same persons, and I no longer know to whom I am writing. Will you deign to receive, to read, my letters? Will you think them sufficiently cautious and reserved? Shall I preserve the stile of our former intimacy? May I venture to speak of a passion extinguished or despised? and am I not to make as defiant approaches to Eloisa, as on the first day I presumed to write? Good heavens! how different are the tedious hours of my present wretchedness from those happy, those delightful days I have passed! I but begin to exist, and am sunk into nothing. The hopes of life that warmed my heart are fled, and the gloomy prospect of death is all before me. Three revolving years have circumscribed the happiness of my days. Would to God I had ended them, ere I had known the misery of thus surviving myself! Oh that I had obeyed the foreboding dictates of my heart, when once those rapid moments of delight were passed, and life presented nothing to my view for which I could wish to live! Better, doubtless, had it been that I had breathed no longer, or that those three years of life and love I enjoyed could be extracted from the number of my days. Happier is it never to taste of felicity than to have it snatched from our enjoyment. Had I been exempted from that fatal interval of happiness; had I escaped the first enchanting look, that animated me to a new life, I might still have preserved my reason, have still been fit to discharge the common offices of life, and have displayed perhaps some virtues in the duration of an insipid existence. One moment of delusion hath changed the scene. I have ventured to contemplate with rapture an object I should not have dared to look on. This presumption has produced its necessary effect, and led me insensibly to ruin; I am become a frantic, delirious wretch, a servile dispirited being, that drags along his chain in ignominy and despair.
How idle are the dreams of a distracted mind! How flattering, how deceitful the wishes of the wandering heart, that disclaims them as soon as suggested! To what end do we seek, against real evils, imaginary remedies, that are no sooner thought of than rejected? Who, that hath seen and felt the power of love, can think it possible there should be a happiness which I would purchase at the price of the supreme felicity of my first transports. No, it is impossible——Let heaven deny me all other blessings; let me be wretched, but I will indulge myself in the remembrance of pleasures past. Better is it to enjoy the recollection of my past happiness, though imbittered with present sorrow, than to be for ever happy without Eloisa. Come then, dear image of my love, thou idol of my soul! come, and take possession of a heart that beats only for thee; live in exile, alleviate my sorrows, rekindle my extinguished hopes, and prevent me from falling into despair. This unfortunate breast shall ever be thy inviolable sanctuary, whence neither the powers of heaven nor earth shall ever expel thee. If I am lost to happiness, I am not to love, which renders me worthy of it; a love irresistible as the charms that gave it birth. Raised on the immoveable foundations of merit and virtue, it can never cease to exist in a mind that is immortal: it needs no future hope for its support, the remembrance of what is past will sustain it for ever.
But how is it with my Eloisa? With her, who was once so sensible of love? Can that sacred flame be extinguished in her pure and susceptible breast? Can she have lost her taste for those celestial raptures, which she alone could feel or inspire?——She drives me from her presence without pity, banishes me with shame, gives me up to despair, and sees not, through the error which misleads her, that, in making me miserable, she robs herself of happiness. Believe me, my Eloisa, you will in vain seek another heart akin to yours. A thousand will doubtless adore you, but mine only is capable of returning your love.
Tell me, tell me, sincerely, thou deceived or deceiving girl! What is become of those projects we formed together in secret? Where are fled those vain hopes, with which you so often flattered my credulous simplicity? What say you now to that sacred union my heart panted after, the secret cause of so many ardent sighs, and with which your lips and your pen have so often indulged my hopes? I presumed alas! on your promises, to aspire to the sacred name of husband, and thought myself already the most fortunate of men. Say, cruel Eloisa, did you not flatter me thus only to render my disappointment the more mortifying, my affliction the more severe? Have I incurred this misfortune by my own crimes? Have I been wanting in obedience, in tractability, in discretion? Have you ever seen me so weak and absurd in my desires, as to deserve to be thus rejected? or have I ever preferred their gratification to your absolute commands? I have done, I have studied, every thing to please you, and yet you renounce me. You undertook to make me happy, and you make me miserable. Ungrateful woman! account with me for the trust I deposited in your hands; account with me for my heart, after having reduced it by a supreme felicity that raised me to an equality with angels. I envied not their lot; I was the happiest of beings; though now alas! I am the most miserable! A single moment has deprived me of every thing, and I am fallen instantaneously from the pinnacle of happiness to the lowest gulph of misery. I touch even yet the felicity that escapes me. I have still hold of, it, and lose it for ever——Ah, could I but believe!——if the remains of false hope did not flatter——Why, why, ye rocks of Meillerie, whose precipices my wandering eye so often measured, why did you not assist my despair! I had then less regretted life, ere enjoyment had taught me its value.
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