What evil genius could inspire you to invite him to return; him, alas! who is now the cruel author of my disgrace? And am I indebted to his care for a life, which he has since made insupportable by his cruelty? Inhuman as he is, let him fly from me for ever, and deny himself the savage pleasure, of being an eye witness of my sorrows. But why do I rave thus? He is not to be blamed, I alone am guilty. I alone am the author of my own misfortunes, and should therefore be the only object of anger and resentment. But vice, new as it is to me, has already infected my very soul; and the first dismal effect of it is displayed in reviling the innocent.
No, no, he was ever incapable of being false to his vows. His virtuous soul disdains the low artifice of imposing upon credulity, or of injuring her he loves. Doubtless, he is much more experienced in the tender passions than I ever was, since he found no difficulty to overcome himself, and I alas fell a victim to my unruly desires. How often have I been a witness of his struggles and his victory, and when the violence of his transports seemed to get the better of his reason, he would stop on a sudden, as if awed and checked by virtue, when he might have led on to certain triumph. I indulged myself too much in beholding so dangerous an object. I was afflicted at his sighs, moved with his intreaties, and melted with his tears; I shared his anxieties when I thought I was only pitying them. I have seen him so affected, that he seemed ready to faint at my feet. Love alone might perhaps have been my security; but compassion, O my Clara! has fatally undone me.
Thus my unhappy passion assumed the form of humanity, the more easily to deprive me of the assistance of my virtue. That very day he had been particularly importunate and pressed me to elope with him. This proposal, connected as it was with the misery and distress of the best of parents, shocked my very soul; nor could I think with any patience, of thus imbittering their comforts. The impossibility of ever fulfilling our plighted troth, the necessity there was of concealing this impossibility from him, the regret which I felt at deceiving so tender and passionate a lover, after having flattered his expectations; all these were dreadful circumstances which lessened my resolution, increased my weakness, blinded and subdued my reason. I was then either to kill my parents, discard my lover, or ruin myself: without knowing what I did, I resolved on the latter; and forgetting every thing else, thought only of my love. Thus one unguarded minute has betrayed me to endless misery. I am fallen into the abyss of infamy from whence there is no return, and if I am to live, it is only to be wretched.
However, while I am here, sorrow shall be my only comfort. You, my dearest friend, are my only resource; oh do not, do not leave me! and since I am lost to the sweets of love, oh never take from me the delicacy of friendship. I have lost all pretensions, but my situation makes it requisite, my distresses now demand it. If you cannot esteem, you may at least pity so wretched a creature. Come then, my dear Clara, and open thy whole heart, that I may pour in my complaints, receive thy friend’s tears, and shield, oh shield me from myself! Convince me, by the kind continuance of your soothing friendship, that I am not so entirely forsaken.
Letter XXX. The Answer.
Oh my dear, dear friend, what have you done! you who were the praise of every parent, and the envy of every child! What a mortal blow has virtue itself received through your means, who were the very pattern of discretion! But what can I say to you in so dreadful a situation? Can I think of aggravating your sorrows, and wounding a heart already opprest with grief; or can I give you a comfort, which, alas! I want? Shall I reflect your image in all the dismal colours of your present distress, or shall I have recourse to artifice, and remind you, not of what you are, but of what you ought to be? Do thou, most holy and unspotted friendship, steal thy soft veil over all my awakened senses, and mercifully remove the sight of those disasters, thou wert unable to prevent!
You know I have long feared the misfortune you are bewailing. How often have I foretold it, and alas, how often been disregarded? Do you blame me then for having trusted you too much to your own heart? Oh doubt not but I would have betrayed you, if even that could have been made the means of your preservation; but I knew better than yourself your own tender sensations. I perceived but too plainly that death or ruin were the melancholy alternatives; and even when your apprehensions made you banish your lover, the only matter then in question, was whether you should despair, or he be recalled. You will easily believe how dreadfully I was alarmed, when I found you determined as it were against living, and just on the verge of death. Charge not then your lover, nor accuse yourself of a crime of which I alone am guilty, since I foresaw the fatal effects, and yet did not prevent them.
I left you indeed against my inclination, but I was cruelly forced to it. Oh could I have foreseen the near approach of your destruction, I would have put every thing to the hazard sooner than have complied. Though certain as to the event, I was mistaken as to the time of it. I thought your weakness and your distemper a sufficient security during so short an absence, and forgot indeed the sad dilemma you was so soon to experience. I never considered that the weakness of your body left your mind more defenceless in itself, and therefore more liable to be betrayed. Mistaken as I was, I can scarce be angry with myself, since this very error is the means of saving your life. I am not, Eloisa, of that hardy temper which can reconcile me to thy loss as thou wert to mine. Had I indeed lost you, my despair would have been endless; and, unfeeling as it may seem, I had rather you should live in sorrow, I had almost said in disgrace, than not live at all.
But my dear, my tender friend, why do you cruelly persist in your disquietude? Wherefore should your repentance exceed your very crime, and your contempt fall on the object which least of all deserves it, yourself? Shall the weakness of one unguarded moment be attended with so black a train of baleful consequences? And are not the very dangers you have been struggling with, a self-evident demonstration of the greatness of your virtue? You lose yourself so entirely in the thought of your defeat, that you have no leisure to consider the triumphs by which it was preceded. If your trials have been sharper, your conquests more numerous, and your resistance more frequent, than those who have escaped, have not you then, I would ask, done more for virtue than they? If you can find no circumstances to justify, dwell on those at least, which extenuate and excuse you. I myself am a tolerable proficient in the art of love, and though my own temper secures me against its violent emotions, if ere I could have felt such a passion as yours was, my struggles would have been much fainter, my surrender more easy, and more dishonourable. Freed as I have been from the temptation, it reflects no honour on my virtue. You are the chaster of the two, though perhaps the more unfortunate.
You may perchance be offended that I am so unreserved; but unhappily your situation makes it necessary. I wish from my soul, what I have said were not applicable to you; for I detest pernicious maxims, more than bad actions. [11] If the deed were not already done, and I could have been so base to write, and you to read and hear these axioms, we both of us must be numbered in the wretched class of the abandoned. But as matters stand at present, my duty as your friend requires this at my hands, and you must give me the hearing, or you are lost, lost for ever. For you still possess a thousand rare endowments which a proper esteem of yourself can alone cultivate and preserve. Your real worth will ever exceed your own opinion of it.
Forbear then giving way to a self disesteem more dangerous and destructive than any weakness of which you could be guilty. Does true love debase the soul? No: nor can any crime, which is the result of that love, ever rob you of that enthusiastic ardour for truth and honour, which so raised you above yourself? Are there not spots visible in the sun? How many amiable virtues do you still retain, notwithstanding one error, one relaxation in your conduct? Will it make you less gentle, less sincere, less modest, less benevolent? Or will you be less worthy of all our admiration, of all our praise? Will honour, humanity, friendship, and tender love, be less respected by you, or will you cease to revere even that virtue with which you are no longer adorned. No, my dear, my charming Eloisa, thy faithful Clara bewails and yet adores thee; she is convinced that you can never fail admiring what you may be unable to practise. Believe me, you have much yet to lose, before you can sink to a level with the generality of females.