Chevalier Danceny _to the_ Marchioness de Merteuil.
If I am to credit my almanack, my charming friend, you are absent only
two days; but my heart tells me it is an age. According to your own
doctrine then, the heart must always be believed. It is time you should
return: surely your affairs should be finished by this time. How can I
be any way concerned in the success of you law suit, as I must suffer
by your absence? I am now much inclined to scold; and it is really
hard, being so ripe for bad humour, I dare not give way to it.
Is it not a species of infidelity, to leave your friend, after having
accustomed him not to be able to exist out of your presence? Your
lawyers will even find it difficult to defend so bad a cause: besides,
those gentlemen generally make use of arguments which are not valid
answers to sentiments.
You have given me so many for this journey, that I am sick of them, and
will pay no farther attention to them, were they even to persuade me to
forget you. Yet that would not be so unreasonable, nor so difficult,
as you may imagine: it would be only laying aside the habit of always
thinking of you; for nothing here, I can assure you, would ever recall
you to my memory.
Our prettiest women, those even called the most amiable, are so
inferior to you, that they could give but a very faint idea indeed.
I even think, that, with all their practised looks, the more one
might at first think that they resembled you, the more striking the
difference would afterwards appear. In vain do they use their utmost
exertions; they always fail being you; and that precisely constitutes
the charm. Unfortunately, when the days are so long, and one is
unoccupied, reveries, ideal projects, and chimeras, fill the brain; the
mind acquires a degree of elevation. We are intent on ornamenting our
productions; we collect together every thing that can please; we arrive
at length at perfection; and when we are there, the portrait brings us
back to the original, and one is quite astonished to see that you were
the only object of all these turns of the mind. Even at this moment I
am the dupe of pretty much the same sort of error. You fancy, perhaps,
that it was in order to employ myself on your subject, that I resolved
to write to you—not at all: it was in order to direct my attention a
little from you. I have a hundred things to tell you, of which you were
not the object, and which, nevertheless, you very well know concern me
nearly; and yet it is from these things my attention is led away. Since
when, then, do the charms of Friendship dissipate those of Love? If I
considered it narrowly, perhaps I should have to reproach myself—but
hush! Let us forget that small fault, lest we relapse into it; and let
even my best female friend be in ignorance of it.
Why are you absent? Why not here to give me an answer? To recall me if
I should stray? To talk to me of my Cecilia? To add, if possible, to
the happiness I experience in loving her, by the additionally charming
idea that it is your friend I love? Yes, I avow the love she inspires
me, is become more precious. Since you have been kind enough to become
the confidant of it, I feel so great a pleasure in opening my heart to
you, in interesting yours in my sentiments, in depositing them there
without reserve! I think them the more dear to me in proportion as
you condescend to hear them; that I look at you, and say to myself,
It is in her that all my happiness is centered. I have nothing new to
inform you of as to my situation. The last letter I received from her
increases, and gives a degree of security to my hopes; though she still
brings a delay to them, yet her motives are so tender and honourable,
that I can neither blame her, nor complain of it. Perhaps this is
obscure to you; but why are you not here? Though we can say every
thing to a friend, every thing cannot be written. The secrets of love
especially, are so delicate, that one ought not to let them go in that
way, relying on honour. If they are sometimes permitted to go abroad,
they never should be permitted to go out of sight; they ought even to
be watched back to their new asylum. Return, then my adorable friend;
you see your return is necessary: forget, then, the _thousand reasons_
that detain you where you are, or teach me to live where you are not.