Eloisa · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Letter CLVII. Answer.
From Eloisa! a letter from her after seven years silence! yes it is her writing. I see, I feel it: can my eyes be a stranger to characters which my heart can never forget? and do you still remember my name? do you still know how to write it? does not your hand tremble as your pen forms the letters? Ah Eloisa! whither have you hurried my wandering thoughts? the form, the fold, the seal, the superscription of your letter call to my mind those very different epistles which love used to dictate. In this the heart and hand seem to be in opposition to each other. Ought the same hand writing to be employed in committing to paper sentiments so very different? You will be apt to judge that my thinking so much of your former letters, too evidently confirms what you have suggested in your last. But you are mistaken. I plainly perceive that I am changed, and that you are no longer the same; and what proves it to me the most is that except your beauty and goodness, every thing I see in you now is a new subject of admiration. This remark may anticipate your assurance. I rely not on my own strength, but on the sentiment which makes it unnecessary. Inspired with every thing which I ought to honour in her whom I have ceased to adore, I know into what degree of respect my former homage ought to be converted. Penetrated with the most lively gratitude, it is true, I love you as much as ever; but I esteem and honour you most for the recovery of my reason.
Ever since the discerning and judicious Wolmar has discovered my real sentiments, I have acquired a better knowledge of myself, and am less alarmed at my weakness. Let it deceive my imagination as it will, the delusion will be still agreeable; it is sufficient that it can no longer offend you, and that my ideal errors serve in the end to preserve me from real danger. Believe me, Eloisa, there are impressions which neither time, circumstance, nor reason can efface. The wound may heal, but the scar will remain, an honorable mark that preserves the heart from any other wound. Love and inconstancy are incompatible; when a lover is fickle he ceases to be a lover. For my part, I am no longer a lover; but, in ceasing to adore you as such, I remain under your protection. I am no longer apprehensive of danger from you, but then you prevent my apprehensions from others. No, respectable Eloisa, you shall never see in me any other than a friend to your person and a lover only of your virtues: but our love, our first, our matchless love shall never be rooted out of my heart. The remembrance of the flower of my age shall never be thus tarnished: for, were I to live whole centuries, those happy hours of my youth will never return, nor be banished from my memory. We may, it is true, be no longer the same; but I shall never forget what we have been.
Let us come now to your cousin. I cannot help confessing, my dear friend, that since I have no longer dared to contemplate your charms, I have become more sensible to hers. What eyes could be perpetually straying from beauty to beauty without fixing their admiration on either? mine have lately gazed on hers perhaps with too much pleasure; and I must own that her charms, before imprinted on my heart, have during my absence made a deeper impression. The sanctuary of my heart is shut up; but her image is in the temple. I gradually become to her what I might have been at first, had I never beheld you; and it was in your power only to make me sensible of the difference between what I feel for her and the love I had for you. My senses, released from that terrible passion, embrace the delightful sentiments of friendship. But must love be the result of this union? Ah Eloisa! what difference! where is the enthusiasm? the adoration? where are those divine transports, those distractions, a hundred times more sublime, more delightful, more forcible than reason itself? a slight warmth, a momentary delirium, seize me, affect me a while and then vanish. In your cousin and me I see two friends who have a tender regard for each other and confess it. But have lovers a _regard_ for each other? no, _you_, and _I_ are two words prohibited in the lover’s language. Two lovers are not two persons, but one.
Is my heart then really at ease? how can it be so? she is charming, she is both your friend and mine: I am attached to her by gratitude, and think of her in the most delightful moments of reflection. How many obligations are hence conferred on a susceptible mind, and how is it possible to separate the tenderest sentiments from those to which she has such an undoubted right! Alas! it is decreed that between you and her, my heart will never enjoy one peaceful moment! O women, women! dear and fatal objects! whom nature has made beautiful for our torment, who punish us when we brave your power, who pursue when we dread your charms; whose love and hate are equally destructive; and whom we can neither approach nor fly with impunity! beauty, charm, sympathy! inconceivable Being, or chimera! source of pain and pleasure! beauty more terrible to mortals than the element to which the birth of your Goddess is ascribed: it is you who create those tempests which are so destructive to mankind. How, dearly, Eloisa! how dearly, Clara! do I purchase your cruel friendship! I have lived in a tempest and it is you who have always raised it: but how different are the agitations which you separately excite! different as the waves of the lake of Geneva from those of the main ocean. The first are short and quick, and by their constant agitation are often fatal to the small barks that ride without making way on their surface: but on the ocean, calm and mild in appearance, we find ourselves mounted aloft and softly borne forward to a vast distance on waves, whose motions are slow and almost imperceptible. We think we scarce move from the place, and arrive at the farthest parts of the earth.
Such is in fact the difference between the effects which your charms and hers have on my heart. That first unequalled passion, which determined the destiny of my life, and which nothing could conquer but itself, had its birth before I was sensible of its generation; it hurried me on before I knew where I was, and involved me in irrevocable ruin before I believed myself led astray. While the wind was fair, my labouring bark was every moment alternately roaring into the clouds and plunging into the deep: but I am now becalmed and know no longer where I am. On the contrary, I see, I feel too well how much her presence affects me, and conceive my danger greater than it really is. I experience some slight raptures, which are no sooner felt than gone. I am one moment transported with passion and the next peaceful and calm: in vain is the vessel beaten about by the waves, while there is no wind to fill its sails: my heart, contented with her real charms, does not exaggerate them: she appears more beautiful to my eyes than to my imagination; and I am more afraid of her when present than absent. Your charms have, on the contrary, had always a very different effect; but at Clarens I alternately experience both.
Since I left it, indeed, the image of our cousin presents itself sometimes more powerfully to my imagination. Unhappily, however, it never appears alone: it affects me not with love, but with disquietude. These are in reality my sentiments with regard both to the one and the other. All the rest of your sex are nothing to me; the pangs I have so long suffered have banished them entirely from my remembrance; _E fornito ’l mio tempo a mezzo gli anni._ Adversity has supplied the place of fortitude, to enable me to conquer nature and triumph over temptation. People in distress have few desires, you have taught me to vanquish by resisting them. An unhappy passion is an instrument of wisdom. My heart is become, if I may so express myself, the organ of all my wants, for when that is at ease I want nothing. Let not you or your cousin disturb its tranquillity, and it will for the future be always at ease.
In this situation, what have I to fear from my self? and by what cruel precaution would you rob me of happiness, in order to prevent my being exposed to lose it? how capricious is it to have made me fight and conquer, to rob me afterwards of the reward of my victory? do you not condemn those who brave unnecessary danger? why then did you recall me at so great a hazard, to run so many risks? or, why would you banish me when I am so worthy to remain? Ought you to have permitted your husband to take the trouble he has done for nothing? why did you not prevent his taking the pains which you were determined to render fruitless? why did you not say to him, _leave the poor Wretch at the other end of the world, or I shall certainly transport him again?_ alas! the more afraid you are of me the sooner you ought to recall me home. It is not in your presence I am in danger, but in your absence; and I dread the power of your charms only where you are not. When the formidable Eloisa pursues me, I fly for refuge to Mrs. Wolmar, and I am secure.
Whither shall I fly if you deprive me of the asylum I find in her? all times and places are dangerous while she is absent; for in every place I find either Clara or Eloisa. In reflecting on the time past, in meditating on the present, the one and the other alternately agitate my heart, and thus my restless imagination becomes tranquil only in your presence, and it is with you only I find security against myself. How shall I explain to you the change I perceive in approaching you? you have always exerted the same sovereign power; but its effects are now different from what they were: in suppressing the transports you once inspired, your empire is more noble and sublime; a peaceful serenity has succeeded to the storm of the passions: my heart, modelled by yours, loves in the same manner and becomes tranquil by your example. But in this transitory repose I enjoy only a short truce with the passions; and, though I am exalted to the perfection of angels in your presence, I no sooner forsake you than I fall into my native meanness. Yes, Eloisa, I am apt sometimes to think I have two souls, and that the good one is deposited in your hands. Ah! why do you seek to separate me from it?
But you are fearful of the consequences of youthful desires, extinguished only by trouble and adversity. You are afraid for the young women who are in your house and under your protection. You are afraid of that which the prudent Wolmar was not afraid of. How mortifying to me are such apprehensions! do you then esteem your friend less than the meanest of your servants? I can, however, forgive your thinking ill of me; but never your not paying yourself that respect which is so justly your due. No, Eloisa, the flame with which I once burnt has purified my heart; and I am no longer actuated like other men. After what I have been, should I so debase myself though but for a moment, I would hide myself in the remotest corner of the earth, and should never think myself too far removed from Eloisa. What! could I disturb that peaceful order and domestic tranquillity, in which I take so much pleasure? could I sully that sweet retreat of innocence and peace, wherein I have dwelt with so much honour? could I be so base as----no, the most debauched, the most abandoned, of men would be affected with so charming a picture. He could not fail of being enamoured with virtue in this asylum. So far from carrying thither his licentious manners, he would betake himself thither to cast them off. Could I then, Eloisa, be capable of what you insinuate? and that under your own eyes? no, my dear friend, open your doors to me without scruple; your mansion is to me the temple of virtue; its sacred image strikes me in every part of it, and binds me to its service. I am not indeed an angel; but I shall dwell in the habitation of angels, and will imitate their example. Those who would not wish to resemble them, will never seek their company.
You see it is with difficulty I come to the chief object of your last letter; that which I should have first and most maturely considered, and which only should now engage my thoughts, if I could pretend to the happiness proposed to me. O Eloisa, benevolent and incomparable friend! in offering me thus your other half, the most valuable present in the universe next to yourself, you do more for me if possible than ever you have done before. A blind ungovernable passion might have prevailed on you to give me yourself; but to give me your friend is the sincerest proof of your esteem. From this moment I begin to think myself, indeed, a man of real merit, since I am thus distinguished. But how cruel, at the same time, is this proof of it. In accepting your offer I should bely my heart, and to deserve must refuse it. You know me, and may judge.
It is not enough that your charming cousin should engage my affections; I know she should be loved as you are. But will it, can it be? or does it depend on me to do her that justice, in this particular, which is her due? alas! if you intended ever to unite me to her, why did you not leave me a heart to give her; a heart which she might have inspired with new sentiments, and which in turn might have offered her the first fruits of love! I ought to have a heart at ease and at liberty, such as was that of the prudent and worthy Orbe, to love her only as he did. I ought to be as deserving as he was, in order to succeed him: otherwise the comparison between her former and present situation will only serve to render the latter less supportable, the cold and divided love of a second husband, so far from consoling her for the loss of the first, will but make her regret him the more. By her union with me, she will only convert a tender grateful friend into a common husband. What will she gain by such an exchange? She will be doubly a loser by it; her susceptible mind will severely feel its loss; and how shall I support a continual sadness, of which I am the cause, and which I cannot remove? in such a situation alas! her grief would be first fatal to me. No, Eloisa, I can never be happy at the expense of her ease. I love her too well to marry her.
Be happy! no, can I be happy without making her so? can either of the parties be separately happy or miserable in marriage? are not their pleasures and pains, common to both? and does not the chagrin which one gives to the other always rebound on the person who caused it? I should be made miserable by her afflictions, without being made happy by her goodness. Beauty, fortune, merit, love, all might conspire to ensure my felicity! but my heart, my froward heart, would counterwork them all; would poison the source of my delights, and make me miserable in the very midst of happiness. In my present situation, I take pleasure in her company: but if I attempt to augment that pleasure by a closer union, I shall deprive myself of the most agreeable moments of my life. Her turn for humour and gaiety may give an amorous cast to her friendship, but this is only whilst there are witnesses to her favours. I may also feel too lively an emotion for her; but it is only when by your presence you have banished every tender sentiment for Eloisa. When she and I are by ourselves, it is you only who render our conversation agreeable. The more our attachment increases, the more we think on the source from which it sprung; the ties of friendship are drawn closer, and we love each other but to talk of you. Hence arise a thousand pleasing reflections, pleasing to Clara and more so to me, all which a closer union would infallibly destroy. Will not such reflections, in that case too delightful, be a kind of infidelity to her? and with what face can I make a beloved and respectable wife the confident of those infidelities of which my heart, in spite of me, would be guilty? this heart could no longer transfuse itself into hers. No longer daring to talk of you, I should soon forbear to speak at all. Honour and duty imposing on me a new reserve, would thus estrange from me the wife of my bosom, and I should have no longer a guide or a counsellor to direct my steps or correct my errors. Is this the homage she has a right to expect from me? is this that tribute of gratitude and tenderness which I ought to pay to her? is it thus that I am to make her and myself happy?
Is it possible that Eloisa, can have forgotten our mutual vows? for my part, I never can forget them. I have lost all, except my sincerity, and that I will preserve inviolate to my last hour. As I could not live for you, I will die unmarried. Nay, had I not already made such a promise to myself, I would do it now. For though it be a duty to marry, it is yet a more indispensable one not to make any person unhappy; and all the sentiments such a contract would now excite in me, would be mixed with the constant regret of that which I once vainly hoped for: a regret which would at once be my torment, and that of her who should be unfortunate enough to be my wife. I should require of her those days of bliss which I expected with you. How should I support the comparison! what woman in the world could bear that? ah, no, I could never endure the thoughts of being at once deprived of you, and destined to be the husband of another.
Seek not then, my dear friend, to shake those resolutions on which depends the repose of my life: seek not to recall me out of that state of annihilation into which I am fallen; lest, in bringing me back to a sense of my existence, my wounds should bleed afresh, and I should again sink under a load of misfortunes. Since my return I perceived how deeply I became interested in whatever concerned your charming friend; but I was not alarmed at it, as I knew the situation of my heart would never permit me to be too solicitous. Indeed I was not displeased with an emotion, which, while it added softness to the attachment I always had for Clara, would assist in diverting my thoughts from a more dangerous object, and enable me to support your presence with greater confidence. This emotion has something in it of the pleasure of love without any of its pains. The calm delight I take in seeing her is not disturbed by the restless desire of possessing her: contented to pass my whole life in the manner I passed the last winter, I find between you both that peaceful and agreeable situation, [98] which tempers the austerity of virtue and renders its lessons amiable.
If a vain transport affects me for a moment, every thing conspires to suppress it; and I have too effectually vanquished those infinitely more impetuous and dangerous emotions to fear any that can assail me now. I honour your friend no less than I love her, and that is saying every thing. But should I consult only my own interest, the rights of the tenderest friendship are too valuable, to risk their loss, by endeavouring to extend them; and I need not even think of the respect which is her due to prevent my ever saying a single word in private conversation which would require interpretation, or which she ought not to understand. She may perhaps have sometimes remarked a little too much solicitude in my behaviour towards her but she has surely never observed in my heart any desire to express it. Such as I was for six months past, such would I be with regard to her, as long as I live. I know none who approach you, so perfect as she is; but were she even more perfect than yourself, I feel that after having been your lover I should never have become hers.
But before I conclude this letter, I must give you my opinion of yours. Yes, Eloisa, with all your prudence and virtue, I can discover in it the scruples of a timorous mind, which thinks it a duty to frighten itself; and conceives its security lies in being afraid. This extreme timidity is as dangerous as excessive confidence. In constantly representing to us imaginary monsters, it wastes our strength in combating chimeras; and by terrifying us without cause, makes us less on our guard against, as well as less capable of discerning, real dangers. Read over again, now and then, the letter which Lord B----, wrote to you last year, on the subject of your husband; you will find in it some good advice that may be of service to you in many respects. I do not discommend your devotion, it is affecting, amiable, and like yourself; it is such as even your husband should be pleased with. But take care lest timidity and precaution lead you to quietism, and lest by representing to yourself danger on every side, you are induced at length to confide in nothing. Don’t you know, my dear friend, that a state of virtue is a state of warfare.
Let us employ our thoughts less on the dangers which threaten us, than on ourselves; that we may be always prepared to withstand temptation. If to run in the way of temptation is to deserve to fall, to shun it with too much solicitude is often to fly from the opportunities of discharging the noblest duties; it is not good to be always thinking of temptations, even with a view to avoid them. I shall never seek temptation: but, in whatever situation Providence may place me for the future, the eight months I passed at Clarens will be my security; nor shall I be afraid that any one will rob me of the prize you taught me to deserve. I shall never be weaker than I have been, nor shall ever have greater temptations to resist. I have left the bitterness of remorse and I have tasted the sweets of victory, after all which I need not hesitate a moment in making my choice; every circumstance of my past life, even my errors, being a security for my future behaviour.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.