Yes, I see it well: Eloisa is still happy in your love, the same fire that once sparkled in your eyes, glows throughout your last letter, and kindles all the ardour of mine. Yes, my friend, in vain doth fortune separate us; let our hearts press forward to each other, let us preserve by such a communication, their natural warmth against the chilling coldness of absence and despair; and let every thing that tends to loosen the ties of our affections, serve only to draw them closer and bind them fast.
You will smile at my simplicity, when I tell you, that since the receipt of your letter, I have experienced something of those charming effects therein mentioned, and that the jest of the talisman, although purely my own invention, is turned upon myself and become serious. I am seized a hundred times a day, when alone, with a fit of trembling, as if you were before me. I imagine you are gazing on my portrait, and am foolish enough to feel, in conceit, the warmth of those embraces, the impression of those kisses you bestow on it. Sweet illusion! charming effects of fancy; the last resources of the unhappy. Oh, if it be possible, be ye to us a pleasing reality! ye are yet something to those who are deprived of real happiness.
As to the manner in which I obtained the portrait, it was indeed the contrivance of love; but, believe me, if mine could work miracles, it would not have made choice of this. I will let you into the secret. We had here some time ago a miniature painter, on his return from Italy: he brought letters from Lord B——, who perhaps had some view in sending him. Mr. Orbe embraced this opportunity to have a portrait of my cousin; I was desirous of one also. In return, she and my mother would each have one of me, of which the painter at my request took secretly a second copy. Without troubling myself about the original, I chose of the three that which I thought the most perfect likeness, with a design to send it to you. I made but little scruple, I own, of this piece of deceit; for, as to the likeness of the portrait, a little more or less can make no great difference with my mother and cousin but the homage you might pay to any other resemblance than mine, would be a kind of infidelity, by so much the more dangerous, as my picture might be handsomer than me; and I would not, on any account, that you should nourish a passion for charms I do not possess. With respect to the drapery, I could have liked to have been not so negligently dressed; but I was not heard, and my father himself insisted on the portrait's being finished as it is. Except the head-dress, however, nothing of the habit was taken from mine, the painter having dressed the picture as he thought proper, and ornamented my person with the works of his own imagination.
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