You must change your tone, believe me, if you would have Eloisa survive her present distress: it is too much for her to support her own grief and your displeasure. Learn for once to sooth her too susceptible heart: you owe her the most tender consolation; and ought to be afraid lest you should aggravate your misfortune, by lamenting it. At least, if you must complain, vent your complaints against me; who am the only cause of your separation. Yes, my friend, you guessed right: I suggested to her the part her honour and security required her to take; or rather I obliged her to take it, by exaggerating her danger: I prevailed also on you to depart, and we all have but done our duty. I did more, however, than this. I prevented her from accepting the offers of Lord B----; I have prevented your being happy; but the happiness of Eloisa is dearer to me than yours; I knew she could not be happy after leaving her parents to shame and despair; and I can hardly comprehend, with regard to yourself, what kind of happiness you can taste at the expense of hers. Be that what it will, such has been my conduct and offence; and since you delight in quarrelling with those you love, you see the occasion you have to begin with me alone: if in this you do not cease to be ungrateful, you will at least cease to be unjust. For my part, in whatever manner you behave to me, I shall always behave the same towards you: so long as Eloisa loves you, you will be dear to me, and more I cannot say. I am not sorry that I never opposed or favoured your passion. The disinterested friendship which always actuated me in that affair, justifies me equally in what I have done for and against you; and if at any time I interested myself in your passion, more perhaps than became me, my heart sufficiently excused me. I shall never blush for the services I was able to do my friend, nor shall reproach myself because they were useless. I have not forgot what you formerly taught me, of the fortitude of the wise man under misfortunes; and fancy I could remind you of several maxims to that purpose: but I have learned, by the example of Eloisa, that a girl of my age is, to a philosopher, a bad preceptor, and a dangerous pupil.
Volume II
Letter LXXIV. From Lord B---- To Eloisa.
Now, charming Eloisa, we gain our point: a lucky mistake of our friend hath brought him to reason. The shame of finding himself a moment in the wrong has dissipated his phrenzy, and rendered him so tractable that we may manage him for the future as we please. It is with pleasure I see the fault with which he reproaches himself, attended rather with contrition than anger; and I know how highly he esteems me, from that humility and confusion he seems to feel when I am present; but without affection or constraint. His sensibility of the injury he has done me disarms my resentment. When the offender thus acknowledges his crime, he reaps more honour by such a reparation of his fault, than the offended in bestowing him a pardon. I have taken the advantage of this change, and the effect it has produced, to enter into some necessary measures with him before my departure, which I now cannot defer much longer. As I purpose to return the approaching summer, we have agreed that he shall go to wait for me at Paris, from whence we shall proceed together to England.
London is the most extensive theatre in the world for the display of great talents. [16] Those of our friend are in many respects of the first rank; and I despair not of seeing him, with some little assistance, soon strike out something in his way to fortune, worthy of his merit. I will be more explicit as to my intentions when I see you; in the mean time, you will readily conceive the importance of his success may encourage him to surmount many difficulties, and that there are various modes of distinction which may compensate for inferiority of birth, even in the opinion of your father. This appears to me the only expedient that remains to be tried, in order to effect your mutual happiness, since prejudice and fortune have deprived you of all others.
I have written for Regianino to come post hither, and to remain with me during the eight or ten days I shall yet stay with our friend. He is too deeply afflicted to admit of much conversation: music will serve to fill up the vacant hours of silence, indulge his reveries, and sooth his grief by degrees into a peaceful melancholy. I wait only to see him in such a temper of mind to leave him to himself; and before that, I dare not trust him. As for Regianino, I will leave him with you as I pass by, and shall not take him from you again till I return from Italy; by which time, I imagine, from the progress you have both already made, his assistance will be unnecessary. Just at present he is certainly useless to Eloisa, and I deprive her of nothing by detaining him here for a few days.
Letter LXXV. To Clara.
Ah, why do I live to open my eyes on my own unworthiness! O that I had for ever closed them, rather than thus to look on the disgrace into which I am fallen; rather than to find myself the most abject, after having been the most fortunate of men! generous and amiable friend, to whose care I have been so often obliged, still let me pour my complaints into your compassionate heart; still let me implore your assistance, sensible and ashamed as I am of my own demerits: abandoned by myself, it is to you I fly for consolation. Heavens! how can it be that a man so contemptible should ever be beloved by her; or that a passion for so divine an object should not have refined my soul: let her now blush at her choice, she whose name I am no longer worthy to repeat. Let her sigh to see her image profan’d by dwelling in a heart so abject and mean. What hatred and disdain doth she not owe a wretch, that, inspired by love, could be yet servile and base! you shall know, my charming [17] cousin, the cause of my disgrace: you shall know my crime and penitence. Be you my judge, and let me perish by your sentence; or be my advocate, and let the adorable object on whom depended the past, conduct my future fortune.
I will say nothing of the effect which so unexpected a separation had on me: I will say nothing of the excess of my grief, or the extravagance of my despair; you will judge of them too well from the unaccountable behaviour into which they betrayed me. The more sensible I grew of the misery of my situation, the less I conceived it possible for me voluntarily to give up Eloisa; and the bitterness of this reflection, joined to the amazing generosity of Lord B----, awaked suspicions, on which I shall never reflect without horror, and which I can never forget without ingratitude to the friend whose generosity could forgive them.
Revolving in my phrenzy the several circumstances attending my departure, I imagined I discovered it to be a premeditated scheme, which I rashly attributed to the most virtuous of mortals. That dreadful suspicion no sooner suggested itself than every circumstance appeared to confirm it. My lord’s conversation with the Baron D’Etange, and his peremptory manner, which I took to be affected, the quarrel which ensued. Eloisa’s being forbid to see me, and their resolution to send me away, the diligence and secrecy of the preparations made for my departure, his lordship’s discourse with me the preceding evening; in short, the rapidity with which I was rather forced than conducted hither: all these circumstances seemed to prove that my lord had formed a scheme to separate me from Eloisa; and lastly, his intended return assured me that I had discovered his designs. I resolved, however, to get more particular information before I broke with him; and with this design set myself to examine the matter with attention. But every thing conspired to increase my ridiculous suspicions; all his generous and humane actions in my favour, were converted by my jealousy into so many instances of his perfidy. I knew that he wrote to Eloisa from Besançon, without communicating to me the contents of his letter, or giving me the least hint. I thought myself therefore sufficiently assured of the truth of what I suspected, and waited only for his receiving answer to his letter, which, I hoped, might be disagreeable, to come to the explanation I meditated.
Last night we returned home pretty late, and I knew he had received a packet from Switzerland, of which however he took no notice when we retired. I let him have time to open it, and heard him from my apartment reading in a low voice; I listened attentively and overheard him thus exclaim to himself, in broken sentences, Alas, Eloisa! I strove to render you happy----honoured your virtues,----but I grieve at your delusion.----At these and other similar exclamations, which I distinctly heard, I was no longer master of myself; I snatched up my sword, and taking it under my arm, forced open the door, and rushed like a madman into his chamber; but I will not soil my paper, nor offend your delicacy with the injurious expressions my rage dictated, to urge him to fight me on the spot.