Eloisa · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Letter LXXI. Eloisa to Lord B----.
Your lordship’s last letter has affected me in the highest degree with admiration and gratitude; nor will my friend, who is honoured with your protection, be less so, when he knows the obligations you would have conferred on us. The unhappy, alas! only know the value of benevolent minds. We had before but too many reasons to acknowledge that of yours, whose heroic virtue will never be forgotten, tho’ after this it cannot again surprize us. How fortunate should I think myself to live under the auspices of so generous a friend, and to reap from your benevolence that happiness which fortune has denied me. But I see, my Lord, I see, with despair, your good designs will be frustrated; my cruel destiny will counteract your friendship; and the delightful prospect of the blessings you offer to my acceptance, serves only to render their loss more sensible. You offer a secure and agreeable retreat to two persecuted lovers; you would render their passion legitimate, their union sacred; and I know that, under your protection, I could easily elude the pursuits of my irritated relations. This would compleat our love, but would it insure our felicity? Ah! no: if you would have Eloisa contented and happy, give her an asylum yet more secure, an asylum from shame and repentance. You anticipate our wants; and by an unparalleled generosity, deprive yourself of your own fortune to bestow it on us. More wealthy, more honoured by your benevolence than my own patrimony, I may recover every thing I have lost, and you will condescend to supply the place of a father. Ah, my Lord, shall I be worthy of another father when I abandon him whom nature gave me?
This is the source of the reproaches my wounded conscience makes me, and of those secret pangs that rend my heart. I do not inquire whether I have a right to dispose of myself contrary to the will of those who gave me birth; but whether I can do it without involving them in a mortal affliction; whether I can abandon them without bringing them to despair; whether alas! I have a right to take away their life who gave me mine? How long has the virtuous mind taken upon itself thus to balance the rights of consanguinity and laws of nature? Since when has the feeling heart presumed thus nicely to distinguish the bounds of filial gratitude? Is it not a crime to proceed in questioning our duty to its very utmost limits? Will any one so scrupulously enquire into its extent, unless they are tempted to go beyond it? Shall I cruelly abandon those by whom I live and breathe, those who so tenderly preserve the life and being they gave me; those who have no hope, no pleasure, but in me? A father near sixty years of age! A mother weak and languishing? I their only child! Shall I leave them without help in the solitude and troubles of old age; at a time when I should exercise towards them that tender solicitude they have lavished on me? Shall I involve their latter days in shame and sorrow?
Will not my troubled conscience incessantly upbraid me, and represent my despairing parents breathing out their last in curses on the ungrateful daughter that forsook and dishonoured them? No, my Lord, virtue, whose paths I have forsaken, may in turn abandon me, and no longer actuate my heart, but this horrible idea will supply its dictates; will follow, will torment me, every hour of my life, and make me miserable, in the midst of happiness. In a word, if I am doomed to be unhappy the rest of my days, I will run the risque of every other remorse; but this is too horrible for me to support. I confess, I cannot invalidate your arguments. I have but too great an inclination to think them just: but my Lord, you are unmarried, don’t you think a man ought to be a father himself to advise the children of others? As to me, I am determined what to do: my parents will make me unhappy, I know they will: but it will be less hard for me to support my own misery than the thought of having been the cause of theirs; for which reason I will never forsake my father’s house. Be gone then, ye sweet and flattering illusions! Ideas of so desirable a felicity!
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.