in short, lest your heart should impose upon itself, and render you less difficult about the means of acquiring importance than you would be, if our union were not to be the consequence. I only caution you, my friend, against the danger; your own discretion must do the rest: a foresight of accidental evils, however, is no small step towards their prevention. I will add but one reflection more, which, in my opinion, disproves the false arguments of vice, exposes the mistaken conceits of folly, and ought alone to direct a wise man to pursue his sovereign good. This is, that the source of true happiness is not confined to the desired object, nor to the heart which possesses it, but consists in a certain relation between the one and the other: that every object of our desires will not produce the happiness sought in its possession, nor is the heart at all times in a disposition to receive it. If the utmost refinement of intellectual pleasure is not sufficient alone to constitute our felicity, surely all the voluptuous pleasures on earth cannot make the depraved man happy. There is on both sides a necessary preparative, a certain combination of causes, from which results that delightful sensation so earnestly sought after by every sensible being, and for ever unexperienced by the pretended philosopher, who coldly nips his pleasures in the bud, for want of knowing how to conduct them to lasting felicity. What helps it, then, to obtain one advantage at the expense of another? to gain _without_ what we lose from _within_; to procure the means of happiness, and lose the art of employing them. Is it not better also, if we can but enjoy one of these advantages, to sacrifice what the power of fortune may restore, to that which once lost can never be recovered? none should know better than I, who have imbittered all the sweets of my life, by thinking to increase them. Let the vicious and profligate then, who display their good fortune but keep their hearts a secret, let them advance what they will; be assured that if there be one instance of happiness upon earth it must be found in the breast of the virtuous. Heaven hath bestowed on you an happy inclination for what is virtuous and good: listen then only to your own desires, follow only your own inclinations, and think above all on the growth of our infant affections. So long as the remembrance of those delightful moments of innocence shall remain, it will be impossible that you should cease to love that which rendered them so endearing; it will be impossible the charms of moral excellence should ever be effaced from your mind, or that you should wish to obtain Eloisa by means unworthy of yourself.
Can anyone enjoy a pleasure for which he has lost the taste? no, to be able to possess that which one loves, it is necessary the heart that loved it should be still the same.
I come now to my second point: you see I have not forgot my logic; it is possible, my friend, without love to have the sublime sentiments of a great mind; but a love like ours supplies its flame, which being once extinguished, the soul becomes languid; and a heart once exhausted is good for nothing. Tell me, what should we be if we ceased to love? is it not better to lose our existence than our sensibility?
or could you resolve to endure the life of an ordinary being, after having tasted every delight that can ravish the heart of man? you are going to visit populous cities, where your age and figure, rather than your merit, will lay a thousand snares for your fidelity. Insinuating coquetry will affect the language of tenderness, and please without deceiving you. You will not seek love, but enjoyment; you will taste it without love, and not know it for the same pleasure. I know not whether you will find in another the heart of Eloisa; but of this I am certain, you will never experience with another those ecstasies you have tasted with her. The vacancy of your exhausted mind will forebode the destiny I predict. Sadness and care will overwhelm you in the midst of frivolous amusements. The remembrance of our first transports will pursue you in spite of yourself; my image, an hundred times more beautiful than I ever was, will overtake you. In a moment the veil of disgust will be thrown over all your delights, and a thousand bitter reflections rush into your mind. My best beloved, my amiable friend, Oh, should you ever forget me----Alas! I can but die; but you, you, shall live base and unhappy, and my death will be but too severely revenged.
Forget not then that Eloisa, who lived for you, and whose heart can never be another’s. I can say nothing more regarding that dependence in which Providence hath placed me: but, after having recommended fidelity to you, it is but just to give you the only pledge of mine that is in my power. I have consulted, not my duty, my distracted mind knows that no longer, but I have examined my heart, the last guide of those who can follow no other; and behold the result of its examination: I am determined never to be your wife without the consent of my father, but I will never marry another without your consent; of this I give you my word, which, whatever happens, I will keep sacred, nor is there a power on earth can make me break my promise. Be not, therefore, disquieted at what may befall me in your absence. Go, my dear friend, pursue, under the auspices of the most tender love, a destiny worthy to crown your merit: mine is in your hands, as much as it is in my power to commit it, and never shall it be altered but with your consent.
Letter LXXVII. To Eloisa.
_O qual fiamma di gloria d’onore, Scorrer sento per tutte le sene, Alma grande parlando conto!_ O Eloisa, let me breathe a moment,----you make me shudder, my blood boils, my heart pants; your letter glows with that sacred love of virtue that fires your breast, and communicates its celestial flame to the inmost recesses of mine. But why so many exhortations, where you should have laid on me your commands? do you think I can so far forget myself as to want arguments to excite me to act justly? at least, can I want to have them urged by you, whose injunctions alone I should fly to obey. Can you be ignorant that I ever will be what you please to have me? and that I could even act unjustly before I could disobey you? yes, I could set another capitol in flames if you enjoined me, for nothing can be so dear to me as you are. But, do you know, my incomparable Eloisa, why you are thus dear? it is because you can desire nothing but what is virtuous, and that my admiration of your virtues exceeds even the love inspired by your charms. I go, encouraged by the engagement into which you have entered, the latter part of which, however, you might have omitted; for to promise not to be another’s without my consent, is it not to promise to be none but mine? for my own part, I speak more freely, and pledge with you the faith of a man of honour, ever to remain sacred and inviolable: I am ignorant to what destiny fortune will lead me in the career I am going, for your satisfaction, to enter upon; but never shall the ties of love or marriage unite me to any other than Eloisa D’Etange. I live, I exist, but for her, and shall either die married to her, or not married at all. Adieu! I am pressed for time, and am going to depart this instant.
Letter LXXVIII. To Eloisa.
I arrived last night at Paris, and he, who once could not live two streets length removed from you, is now at the distance of more than an hundred leagues. Pity, Eloisa, pity your unhappy friend: had the blood gushing from my veins, dy’d with its streams, my long, long route, my spirits could not have failed me more; I could not have found myself more languid than at present. O that I knew as well when we shall meet again, as I know the distance that divides us! the progress of time should then compensate for the length of space. I would count every day, every hour of my life, my steps, towards Eloisa. But that dismal career is hid in the gloom of futurity; its bounds are concealed from my feeble sight. How painful, how terrible is suspense! my restless heart is ever seeking, but finds you not. The sun rises, but gives me no hopes of seeing you; it sets without granting me that blessing. My days are void of pleasure, and pass away as one long continued night. In vain I endeavour to rekindle my extinguished hopes, they offer me nothing but uncertainty and groundless consolations. Alas, my gentle friend! what evils have I not to expect if they are to be a counterpoise to my past happiness!
But, I conjure you, let not my complaints alarm you; they are only the cursory effects of solitude, and the disagreeable reflections of my journey. Fear not the return of my former weakness; my heart is in your hands, Eloisa, and while you are its support it cannot debase itself. One of the comfortable fruits of your last letter is, that since I find myself sustained by a double share of spirits; and though love should annihilate what is properly mine, I should still be a gainer; the resolution with which you have inspired me being able to support me better than I could otherwise have supported myself. I am convinced it is not good for man to be alone. Human minds must be united to exert their greatest strength, and the united force of friendly souls, like that of the collateral bars of an artificial magnet, is incomparably greater than the sum of their separate forces.
This is thy triumph, celestial friendship! but what is even friendship itself, compared to that perfect union of souls, which connects the most perfect, the most harmonious amity, with ties an hundred times more sacred? where are the men whose ideas, gross as their appetites, represent the passion of love only as a fever in the blood, the effect of brutal instinct? let them come to me, let them observe, let them feel, what passes in my breast; let them view an unhappy lover separated from his beloved object, doubtful whether ever he shall see her more, and hopeless of retrieving his lost happiness; animated, however, by the never dying flame, which, kindled by your beauties, has been nourished by your mental charms, they will see him ready to brave the rigours of adversity; to be deprived even of your lovely self, and to cherish all those virtues that you have inspired, and which embellish that adorable image that shall never be erazed from my soul. O, my Eloisa, what should I be without you? informed indeed by dispassionate reason, a cold admirer of virtue, I might have respected it in any one. I shall now do more, I shall now be enabled to put it zealously in practice, and, penetrated by your example, shall excite those who have known us to exclaim:----“what happy creatures should we be, if all the women in the world were Eloisa’s, and all the men had hearts susceptible of their charms!”
As I was meditating during my journey, on your last letter, I formed a resolution of collecting together all those you have written to me; as I no longer can attend to your delightful counsel from your own mouth.
For, though there is not one which I have not learnt by heart, I love to read them continually, and to contemplate the characters of that lovely hand, which alone can make me happy: but the paper wears out by degrees, and therefore, before they fall quite in pieces, I design to copy each letter in a book, which I have already prepared for that purpose. It is pretty large, but I provide for the time to come, and even hope to live long enough to fill more than one volume. I set apart my evenings for the delightful employment, and proceed but slowly, in order to prolong so agreeable a task. This inestimable volume I will never part with; it shall be the manual of my devotions, my companion through the world which I am going to enter; it shall be my antidote against the pernicious maxims of society; it shall comfort me under my afflictions; it shall prevent or amend my errors; it shall afford me instruction in my youth, and yield me edification in age: the first love-letters, Eloisa, that perhaps ever were put to such an use! With respect to your last epistle, which I have before me, excellent as it appears to me, I find however one thing you should have omitted. You may think it strange; but it is much more so, that this very article should particularly regard yourself, and that I blame you even for writing it at all. Why do you talk to me of fidelity and constancy? you once were better acquainted both with my passion and your own power. Ah, Eloisa, do you entertain such changeable sentiments? what, though I had promised you nothing, should I the sooner cease to be yours? Oh, no, it was at the first glance you directed to me, at the first word you spoke, at the first motion of my heart, that a flame was kindled in my soul which can never be extinguished. Had I never seen you since that first moment, it had been enough, it had been afterwards too late to have ever forgotten you. And is it possible for me to forget you now? now, that, intoxicated with my past felicity, the very remembrance of it makes me still happy? now, that the soul, which once animated me, is fled, and I live only by that which Eloisa hath inspired? now, that I despise myself for expressing so coldly what I so sensibly feel? should all the beauties in the universe display their charms to seduce me, is there one amongst them could eclipse thine? let them all combine to captivate my heart; let them pierce, let them wound it, let them break to pieces, this faithful mirror of my Eloisa, her unsullied image will not cease to be reflected from its smallest fragments, for nothing is able to drive it thence. No, not omnipotence itself can go thus far; it may annihilate my soul, but it cannot leave its existence and make it cease to love Eloisa.
Lord B---- has undertaken to give you an account of my affairs, and what he has projected in my favour: but I am afraid he will not strictly fulfil his promise with respect to his present plan. For you are to know that he has abused the right his beneficence has given him over me, in extending it beyond the bounds of generosity. The pension he has settled on me, and which he has made independent, has put me in a condition to make an appearance here much above my rank, and perhaps even that which I shall have occasion to make in London. While I am here, as I have nothing to do, I live just as I please, and shall have no temptation to throw away the savings of my income in idle expenses.
You, Eloisa, have taught me that our principal, at least our most pressing wants, are those of a benevolent mind; and, as long as one individual is deprived of the necessaries of life, what virtuous man will riot in its superfluities?
Letter LXXIX. To Eloisa. [20] I enter with a secret horror on this vast desert, the world; whose confused prospect appears to me only as a frightful scene of solitude and silence. In vain my soul endeavours to shake off the universal restraint it lies under. It was the saying of a celebrated ancient, that he was never less alone than when he was by himself: for my part, I am never alone but when I mix with the crowd, and am neither with you nor with any body else. My heart would speak, but it feels there is none to hear: it is ready to answer, but no one speaks any thing that regards it. I understand not the language of the country, and no body here understands mine. Yet I own that I am greatly caressed, and that all the obliging offices of friendship and civility are readily offered to me: this is the very thing of which I complain. The officious zeal of thousands is ever on the wing to oblige me, but I know not how to entertain immediately a friendship for men I have never seen before. The honest feelings of humanity, the plain and affecting openness of a frank heart, are expressed in a different manner from those false appearances of politeness, and that external flattery, which the customs of the world require. I am not a little afraid that he, who treats me at first sight, as if I was a friend of twenty years standing, if at the end of twenty years I should want his assistance, will treat me as a stranger; and, when I see men, lost in dissipation, pretend to take so tender a part in the concerns of every one, I readily presume they are interested for no body but themselves.
There is, however, some truth in all this profession: the French are naturally good-natured, open, hospitable, and generous. But they have a thousand modes of expression, which are not to be too strictly understood. A thousand apparent offers of kindness which they make only to be refused; they are no more than the snares of politeness laid for rustic simplicity. I never before heard such profusion of promises: _you may depend on my serving you, command my credit, my purse, my house, my equipage._----But, if all this were sincere, and literally taken, there would not be a people upon earth less attached to property. The community of possessions would be in a manner already established; the rich always making offers, and the poor accepting them, both would naturally soon come upon a level, and not the citizens of Sparta itself could ever have been more upon an equality than would be the people of Paris. On the contrary, there is not a place, perhaps, in the world, where the fortunes of men are so unequal, where are displayed at once the most sumptuous opulence and the most deplorable poverty. This is surely sufficient to prove the insignificance of that apparent commiseration, which every one here affects to have for the wants and sufferings of others, and that tenderness of heart, which in a moment contracts eternal friendship.
But if, instead of attending to professions so justly to be suspected, and assurances so liable to deceive, I desire information, and would see knowledge; here is its most agreeable source. One is immediately charmed with the good sense which is to be met with in company of the French, not only among the learned, but with men of all ranks, and even among the women: the turn of conversation is always easy and natural, it is neither dull nor frivolous, but learned without pedantry, gay without noise, polite without affectation, gallant without being fulsome, and jocose without immodesty. Their discourse is neither made up of dissertations nor epigrams; they reason without argumentation, and are witty without punning: they artfully unite reason and vivacity, maxims and rhapsodies; and mix the most pointed satire and refined flattery with strictness of morals. They talk about every thing, because every one has something to say; they examine nothing to the bottom, for fear of being tedious, but propose matters in a cursory manner, and treat them with rapidity: every one gives his opinion, and supports it in few words; no one attacks with virulence that of another, nor obstinately defends his own; they discuss the point only for the sake of improvement, and stop before it comes to a dispute: every one improves, every one amuses himself, and they part all satisfied with each other; even the philosopher himself carrying away something worthy his private meditation.
But, after all, what kind of knowledge do you think is to be gained from such agreeable conversation? to form a just judgment of life and manners; to make a right use of society; to know, at least, the people with whom we converse; there is nothing, Eloisa, of all this: all they teach is to plead artfully the cause of falsehood, to confound, by their philosophy, all the principles of virtue; to throw a false colour, by the help of sophistry, on the passions and prejudices of mankind; and to give a certain turn to error, agreeable to the fashionable mode of thinking. It is not necessary to know the characters of men, but their interests, to guess their sentiments on any occasion. When a man talks on any subject, he rather expresses the opinions of his garb or his fraternity, than his own, and will charge them as often as he changes his situation and circumstances.
Dress him up, for instance, by turns, in the robe of a judge, a peer, and a divine, and you shall hear him successively stand up, with the same zeal, for the rights of the people, the despotism of the prince, and the authority of the inquisition. There is one kind of reason for the lawyer, another for the officer of the revenue, and a third for the soldier. Each of them can demonstrate the other two to be knaves; a conclusion not very difficult to be drawn by all three. [21] Thus men do not speak their own sentiments but those they would instill into others, and the zeal which they affect is only the mask of interest. You may imagine, however, that such persons as are unconnected and independent, have at least a personal character and an opinion of their own. Not at all: they are only different machines, which never think for themselves, but are set a going by springs.
You need only inform yourself of their company, their clubs, their friends, the women they visit, the authors they are acquainted with; and you may immediately tell what will be their opinion of the next book that is published, the next play that is acted, the works of this or that writer they know nothing of, or this or that system of which they have not one idea. As ordinary clocks, also, are wound up to go but four and twenty hours, so are these people under the necessity of going every evening into company, to know what they are to think the next day.
Hence it is, that there is but a small number of both sexes, who think for all the rest, and for whom all the rest talk and act. As every one considers his own particular interest, and none of them that of the public, and as the interests of individuals are always opposed, there is amongst them a perpetual clashing of parties and cabals, a continual ebb and flow of prepossessions and contrary opinions; amidst which the most violent tempers, agitated only by the rest, seldom understand a word of the matter in dispute. Every club has its rules, its opinions, its principles, which are no where else admitted. An honest man at one house is a knave at the next door. The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, truth, and even virtue itself, have all only a limited and local existence. Whoever chuses a general acquaintance, therefore, and goes into different societies, should be more pliable than Alcibiades; he should change his principles with his company, new-model his sentiments in a manner at every step, and lay down his maxims by the rod. He ought at every visit to leave his conscience, if he has one, at the door, and take up with that belonging to the house as a new servant, on his entrance, puts on its livery, which he leaves behind him when turned out, and if he chuses it, again takes up his own, which serves him till he gets a new suit with a new place. But what is still more extraordinary, is, that every one here is perpetually contradicting himself, without being concerned at all about it. They have one set of principles for conversation, and another for their actions; nor is any body scandalized at their inconsistency, it being generally agreed they should be very different. It is not required of an author, particularly of a moral writer, that he should maintain in conversation what he advances in his works; nor that he should put in practice what he inculcates. His writings, conversation, and conduct, are three things essentially different, which he is not at all obliged to reconcile to each other.
In a word, every thing is absurd, and yet nothing offends, because absurdity is the fashion. Nay, there is attached to this incongruity of principles and manners, a fashionable air of which they are proud, and which is frequently affected. In fact, although every one zealously preaches up the maxims of his profession, he piques himself on the carriage and manners of another. The attorney, for instance, assumes the martial air of a soldier, and a petty clerk of the customs, the supercilious deportment of a lord; the bishop affects the gallantry of a fine gentleman; the courtier the precision of a philosopher; and the statesman the repartee and raillery of a wit.
Even the plain mechanic, who knows not how to put on the airs of any other profession, dresses himself up in a suit of black on Sundays, in order to pass for a practitioner in the law. The military gentlemen alone, despising every other profession, preserve, without affectation, the manners of their own, which, to say the truth, are insufferable. Not that M. de Muralt was in the wrong, when he gave the preference to the conversation of a soldier; but, what might be true in his time, is no longer so now. The progress of literature has since improved conversation in general; and, as the gentlemen of the army despised such improvement in theirs, that which used to be the best, is at length become the worst. [22] Hence it is, that the persons we talk to are not those with whom we converse; their sentiments do not come from the heart; their knowledge is not the acquisition of their own genius; their conversation does not discover their thoughts; and one perceives nothing of them but their figure. Thus, a man in company here, is nearly in the same situation as if he were spectator of a moving picture, where he himself is the only figure capable of self-motion.
Such are the notions I have formed of great societies, by that which I have seen at Paris. They may, nevertheless, be rather adapted to my own particular situation than to the true state of things; and will doubtless improve as I become more acquainted with the manners of the world. Besides this, I have hitherto kept no other company than that into which I have been introduced by the friends of Lord B----, and am sensible it is necessary to descend to persons of different ranks, to know the peculiar manners of a country; those of the opulent being almost every where the same. I shall endeavour to inform myself better hereafter; in the mean time, I leave you to judge whether I had not sufficient reason to call this crowded scene a desert, and to be terrified by a solitude, where I find only an empty appearance of sentiments and of sincerity, that falsifies itself in the instant of expression; and where I perceive only the mere apparitions of men, phantoms that strike the eye for a moment, but are insensible to the touch? Hitherto I have seen a great number of masks; when shall I behold the faces of mankind?
Letter LXXX. From Eloisa.
Yes, my friend, we shall continue to be united, notwithstanding our separation; we shall be happy in spite of fortune. It is the union of minds which constitutes their true felicity; the mutual attraction of hearts does not follow the _ratio_ of their distance, and ours would be in contact, were they distant as the poles asunder. I am sensible with you that true lovers have a thousand expedients to sooth the pains of absence, and to fly to each other’s arms in a moment. Hence have they more frequent interviews even in absence, than when they see each other every day; for, no sooner is either alone, than they are both together. If you, my friend, can taste that pleasure every evening, I feast on it a hundred times a day. I am more alone, and am surrounded by objects I cannot look on without calling you to mind, without finding you ever near me.
_Qui canto dolcemente e qui s’assise Qiu si revolve, e qui ritenne il passo Qui co ’begli occhi me trafise il core Qui disse una parola, e qui sorrise._ But is it so with you? can you thus alleviate the pains of absence?
can you experience the sweets of a peaceful and tender passion, that speaks to the heart without inflaming the senses? Are your griefs at present more prudent than were formerly your desires? the violence of your first letter still makes me tremble. I dread those deceitful transports, by so much the more dangerous as the imagination which excites them, is the less subject to controul; and, I fear, lest even your excess of love should prove injurious to the object of it. Alas!
you know not, your sensations are too indelicate to perceive how offensive to love is an irrational homage. You do not consider that your life is mine, nor that self-preservation leads us frequently to destruction. Sensual man! will you never learn to love? call to mind those peaceful, those tender sensations you once felt, and so affectingly described. If such be the highest pleasures which even happy lovers can taste, they are the only ones wherein those who pine in absence are permitted to indulge themselves; and those who once have felt them, though but for a moment, should never regret the loss of any other. I remember the reflections we made in reading your Plutarch, on the sensuality and depravity of taste, which debase our nature. Were such wretched pleasures attended only with the circumstance of their not being mutual, it were enough, we said, to render them insipid and contemptible. Let us apply the same conclusion to the sallies of an extravagant imagination, to which it is no less applicable. What can the wretch enjoy whose pleasures are confined to himself alone? his pleasures are lifeless, but thine, O love! are animated and generous delights. It is the union of souls: we receive more pleasure from that which we excite, than from our own enjoyment.
But, pray, tell me, my friend, in what language, or rather, in what jargon, is the description you give me in your last letter? did you not make use of it as an occasional display of your wit? if you intend to repeat it in your letters to me, it will be necessary to send me a dictionary. What is it you mean by the opinions of a garb? by a conscience that is to be put off and on, like a livery? by laying down maxims by the rod? how would you have a poor, simple Swiss comprehend those sublime tropes and figures? have you not already borrowed some of the tinsel understanding of the people you describe? take care, my good friend, how you proceed. Do you not think the metaphors of the chevalier Marini, which you have so often laughed at, bear some resemblance to your own? if a garment may be said to think, in a letter, why not that fire may sweat in a sonnet? [23] To observe in the space of three weeks all the different company that is kept in a great city; to pass judgment on their conversation; to distinguish precisely the false from the true, the real from the affected; the difference between their thoughts and words: this is the very thing for which the French are frequently censured by people of other countries; but this nation especially deserves to be studied more at leisure. I as little approve also of persons speaking ill of a country where they reside and are well received: they had better, in my judgment, submit to be deceived by appearances, than to moralize at the expense of their hosts. In short, I always suspect the candour of those observers, who set up for wits. I am always apprehensive lest they should insensibly sacrifice the real state of things to the arts of description, and affect a brilliancy of stile at the expense of truth.
You know, my friend, the saying of Muralt, that wit is the epidemical madness of the French: I am mistaken if I do not discover some marks of your being yourself infected with this phrenzy. There is this difference, however, that while it is agreeable enough in the French, the Swiss are of all people in the world those it becomes the least.
There is something very quaint and far-fetched in many passages of your letter. I do not speak of the lively turn or animated expressions, which are dictated by any peculiar strength of sentiments, but of that affected prettiness of stile, which being unnatural in itself, can be natural to no people whatever, but betrays the absurd pretensions of the person who uses it. Pretensions, with those we love, good God! ought not all our pretensions to be confined to the object beloved? It may be permitted to enliven an indifferent conversation with such rhetorical flourishes, and they may pass off as fine strokes of wit; but this is not the language adapted to the intercourse of lovers; the florid jargon of gallantry comes less from the heart than the most rude and simple of all dialects. I appeal to yourself: did wit ever find an opportunity to intrude into our private parties? if those fond, those endearing conversations had a charm to dispel and keep wit at a distance, how ill-suited are its embellishments to the letters of absence, always clouded in some measure with sorrow; and in which the heart expresses itself with peculiar tenderness? but, though every passion truly great should be serious, excess of joy sooner calling forth our tears than our smiles, I would not have love be always sad; its chearfulness should, nevertheless, be simple and unaffected, without art, without embellishment, and undissembled as the passion itself. In a word, I would have love appear in its native graces, and not in the false ornaments of wit.
My _constant companion_, in whose apartment I write this letter, pretends, that in the beginning of it I had just that pleasantry of disposition which love inspires; but I know not what is become of it.
In proportion as I proceed, a languor invades my heart, and hardly leaves me spirits to write the reproaches she would have me make you.
For you are to know the above hypercriticisms are rather hers than my own. It was she that dictated in particular the first article, laughing like an idiot, and insisting on my not altering a single syllable. She says, it is to teach you to respect Marini, whom she patronizes and you have the presumption to ridicule.
But can you guess the cause of our good humour? it is her approaching marriage. The contract was signed last night, and the day is fixed for Monday sevennight. If ever love was a chearful passion, it is surely so with her: surely no girl was ever so droll upon the like occasion.
The good Mr. Orbe, whose head is also a little turned, was highly delighted with the comical manner in which he was received. Less difficult to be pleased than you were, he takes great pleasure in adding to the pleasantry of courtship, and looks upon the art of diverting his mistress as a master-piece in making love. For her part, we may talk to her as we please of decorum, tell her as much as we will of the grave and serious turn she ought to assume on the point of matrimony, and of doing honour to the virgin state she is going to quit; she laughs at all we can say, as ridiculous grimace, and tells Mr. Orbe to his face, that on the wedding day she shall be in the best humour in the world; and that one cannot go too chearfully to be married. But the little dissembler does not tell all; I surprized her this morning wiping her eyes, which were red with crying, and I would lay a wager, the tears of the night equal the smiles of the day. She is going to bind herself in new chains, that will relax the gentle ties of friendship: she is entering on a manner of life very different