In fine, I found that the philosophical inflexibility of his nation had no influence over the natural humanity of this honest Englishman; but that his heart was really interested in our difficulties. If wealth and credit can be useful to us, I believe we have some reason to depend on his service. But alas! how shall credit or riches operate to make us happy?
This interview, in which we did not count the hours, lasted till dinner time; I ordered a pullet for dinner, after which we continued our discourse. Among other topics, we fell upon the step his lordship had taken, with regard to myself in the morning; on which I could not help expressing my surprize at a procedure so solemn and uncommon. But, repeating the reasons he had already given me, he added, that to give a partial satisfaction was unworthy a man of courage: that he ought to make a compleat one or none at all; lest he should only debase himself without making any reparation; and lest a concession made involuntarily, and with an ill grace, should be attributed to fear. Besides, continued he, my reputation is established; I can do you justice without incurring the suspicion of cowardice; but you, who are young and just beginning the world, ought to clear yourself so well of the first affair you are engaged in as to tempt no one to involve you in a second. The world is full of those artful cowards, who are upon the catch, as one may say, to taste their man; that is, to find out some greater coward than themselves to shew their valour upon. I would save a man of honour, like you, the trouble of chastising such scoundrels; I had rather, if they want a lesson, that they should take it of me than you: for one quarrel, more or less, on the hands of a man, who has already had many, signifies nothing; whereas it is a kind of disgrace to have had but one, and the lover of Eloisa should be exempt from it.
This is, in abstract, my long conversation with Lord B----; of which I thought proper to give you an account, that you might prescribe the manner in which I ought to behave to him.
As you ought now to be composed, chase from your mind, I conjure you, those dreadful apprehensions which have found a place there for some days past. Think of the care you should take in the uncertainty of your present condition. O should you soon give me life in a third being! Should a charming pledge----Too flattering hope! Dost thou come again to deceive me? I wish! I fear! I am lost in perplexity! Oh! Thou dearest charmer of my heart, let us live but to love, and let heaven dispose of us, as it may?
P. S. I forgot to tell you that my Lord offered me your letter, and that I made no difficulty of taking it; thinking it improper that it should remain in the hands of a third person. I will return it you the first time I see you: for, as to myself, I have no occasion for it; it is deeply engraven in my heart.
Letter LXI. From Eloisa.
Bring my Lord B---- hither to-morrow, that I may throw myself at his feet, as he has done at yours. What greatness of mind! What generosity! Oh how little, do we seem, compared to him! Preserve so inestimable a friend as you would the apple of your eye. Perhaps he would be less valuable, were he of a more even temper; was there ever a man without some vices who had great virtues?
A thousand distresses of various kinds had sunk my spirits to the lowest ebb; but your letter has rekindled my extinguished hopes. In dissipating my fears, it has rendered my anxiety the more supportable. I feel now I have strength enough to bear up under it. You live, you love me; neither your own nor the blood of your friend has been spilt, and your honour is secured; I am not then compleatly miserable.
Fail not to meet me to-morrow. I never had so much reason for seeing you, nor so little hope of having that pleasure long. Farewell, my dear friend, instead of saying let us live but to love, you should have said alas! let us love that we may live.
Letter LXII. From Clara.
Must I be always, my dear cousin, under the necessity of performing the most disagreeable offices of friendship? Must I always, in the bitterness of my own heart, be giving affliction to yours, by cruel intelligence? Our sentiments, alas! are the same, and you are sensible I can give no new uneasiness to you which I have not first experienced myself. O that I could but conceal your misfortune without increasing it! or that a friendship like ours were not as binding as love! How readily might I throw off that chagrin I am now obliged to communicate. Last night, when the concert was over, and your mother and you were gone home, in company with your friend and Mr. Orbe, our two fathers and my Lord B---- were left to talk politics together; the disagreeableness of the subject, of which indeed I am quite surfeited, soon made me retire to my own chamber. In about half an hour, I heard the name of your friend repeated with some vehemence; on which I found the conversation had changed its subject, and therefore listened to it with some attention; when I gathered, by what followed, that his lordship had ventured to propose a match between you and your friend, whom he frankly called his, and on whom, as such, he offered to make a suitable settlement. Your father rejected the proposal with disdain, and upon that the conversation began to grow warm. “I must tell you sir, said my lord, that, notwithstanding your prejudices, he is of all men the most worthy of her, and perhaps the most likely to make her happy. He has received from nature every gift that is independent of the world; and has embellished them by all those talents, which depended on himself. He is young, tall, well-made, and ingenious: he has the advantages of education, sense, manners, and courage; he has a fine genius and a sound mind; what then does he require to make him worthy of your daughter? Is it a fortune? He shall have one. A third part of my own will make him the richest man of this country; nay, I will give him, if it be necessary, the half. Does he want a title? Ridiculous prerogative, in a country where nobility is more troublesome than useful! But, doubt it not, he is noble: not that his nobility is made out in writing upon an old parchment, but it is engraven in indelible characters on his heart. In a word if you prefer the dictates of reason and sense to groundless prejudices, and if you love your daughter better than empty titles, you will give her to him.”
On this your father expressed himself in a violent passion: he treated the proposal as absurd and ridiculous. How! my lord! said he, is it possible a man of honour, as you are, can entertain such a thought, that the last surviving branch of an illustrious family should go to lose and degrade its name, in that of nobody knows who; a fellow without home, and reduced to subsist upon charity. Hold, sir, interrupted my lord, you are speaking of my friend; consider that I must take upon myself every injury done him in my company, and that such language as is injurious to a man of honour, is more so to him who makes use of it. Such _fellows_ are more respectable than all the country squires in Europe; and I defy you to point out a more honourable way to fortune, than by excepting the debts of esteem, and the gifts of friendship. If my friend does not trace his descent, as you do, from a long and doubtful succession of ancestors, he will lay the foundation, and be the honour of his own house, as the first of your ancestors did that of yours. Can you think yourself dishonoured by your alliance to the head of your family, without falling under the contempt you have for him? How many great families would sink again into oblivion, if we respected only those which descended from truly respectable originals? Judge of the past by the present; for two or three honest citizens ennobled by virtuous means, a thousand knaves find every day the way to aggrandize themselves and families. But to what end serves that nobility, of which their descendants are so proud, unless it be to prove the injustice and infamy of their ancestors? [12] There are, I must confess, a great number of bad men among the common people; but the odds are always twenty to one against a gentleman, that he is descended from a rascal. Let us, if you will, set aside descent, and compare only merit and utility. You have borne arms in the service and pay of a foreign prince; his father fought without pay in the service of his country. If you have well served, you have been well paid; and, whatever honour you may have acquired by arms, a hundred plebeians may have acquired still more.
In what consists the honour then, continued my lord, of that nobility of which you are so tenacious? How does it affect the glory of one’s country or the good of mankind? A mortal enemy to liberty and the laws, what did it ever produce in most of those countries where it has flourished, but the rod of tyranny and the oppression of the people? Will you presume to boast, in a republic, of a rank that is destructive to virtue and humanity? Of a rank that makes its boast of slavery, and wherein men blush to be men? Read the annals of your own country; what have any of the nobility merited of her? Were any of her deliverers nobles? The _Fursts_, the _Tills_, the _Stauffachers_, were they gentlemen? What then is that absurd honour, about which you make so much noise?