Sintaxis

Do you, my Cousin, mean to spend your life mourning that poor Chaillot, and must the dead cause you to forget the living? Your grief is just, and I share it, but must it be eternal? Since you lost your mother, she had raised you with the greatest of care; she was more your friend than your governess. She loved you tenderly, and loved me because you do; she never instilled in us anything but principles of propriety and honor. I know all that, my dear, and concede it with pleasure. But concede also that the good old woman was not very prudent with us, that she unnecessarily told us the most indiscreet secrets, that she was forever repeating maxims of gallantry, the adventures of her youth, the wiles of lovers, and that in order to protect us from the snares of men, if she didn’t exactly teach us to set snares for them, she nonetheless instructed us about a thousand things which young maidens would do well not to know. Be comforted therefore in her loss, as a misfortune which is not unredeemed. At the age we have reached, her lessons were beginning to be dangerous, and Heaven perhaps took her from us at the moment when it was not good for her to remain with us longer . Remember all that you said to me when I lost the best of brothers. Is Chaillot dearer to you? Have you more reason to grieve for her?

Come back, my dear, she no longer needs you. Alas! while you are wasting your time in superXuous grief, how can you not fear bringing more upon yourself? How can you not fear, you who know the state of my heart, abandoning your friend to perils which your presence would have prevented? Oh how many things have happened since your departure!

You will shudder to learn what dangers I have run by my imprudence. I hope I am delivered from them; but I Wnd myself, so to speak, at another’s discretion: it is for you to restore me to myself. Hasten therefore to return.

I have said nothing so long as your ministries were useful to your poor Governess; I would have been the Wrst to exhort you to take care of her.

Now that she is no more, it is to her family that you owe them: we shall better fulWll them here together than you would alone in the country, and

Part One (Pl., II, 41–44) 35

you will discharge the duties of gratitude without neglecting those of friendship.

Since my Father’s departure we have returned to our former manner of life and my mother leaves my side less often. But this is more out of habit than mistrust. Her social calls still occupy many of the moments she does not wish to steal from my little lessons, and then Babi Wlls her role rather negligently. Although it seems to me my good mother is much too secure, I cannot bring myself to warn her; I would like to provide for my safety without losing her good opinion of me, and you are the only one who can reconcile all that. Come back, my Claire, come without delay. I feel bad about lessons I take without you, and I am afraid of learning too much.

Our master is not merely a man of merit; he is virtuous, and thus all the more to be feared. I am too satisWed with him to be satisWed with myself.

At his age and ours, with the most virtuous of men, when he is easy to love, it is better there be two maidens than one.

LETTER VII Reply

I hear you, and tremble for you. Not that I believe the danger as press-ing as you imagine it. Your fears temper mine with respect to the present:

but the future terriWes me, and if you cannot master yourself, I foresee nothing but misfortunes. Alas! how many times did poor Chaillot predict to me that your heart’s Wrst sigh would seal your life’s destiny! Ah, Cousin!

still so young, must we see your fate already accomplished? How we shall miss this able woman whose loss you think advantageous to us! Perhaps it would have been advantageous to fall from the outset into surer hands;

but in leaving hers we know too much ever to allow ourselves to be gov-erned by others, and not enough to govern ourselves: she alone could shield us from the dangers to which she had exposed us. She taught us much, and we have, it seems to me, done much thinking for our age. The warm and tender friendship that united us almost from the cradle has, in a manner of speaking, enlightened our hearts early on about every passion.

We know their signs and their eVects rather well; we lack only the art of re-pressing them. God grant that your young philosopher know more of that art than we.

When I say we, you hear me, it is of you above all that I am speaking: for in regard to me, the Governess always told me that my recklessness would stand me in stead of reason, that I would never have the wit to know how to love, and that I was too foolish ever to commit follies. My Julie, look

out for yourself; the better she augured for your reason, the more she feared for your heart. Take courage, all the same; all that propriety and honor can do, I know your soul will do, and mine, do not doubt it, will do all that friendship can do in turn. If we have learned too much for our years, at least such study came at no cost to our morals. Do believe, my dear, that there are many simpler maidens, who are less honest than we: if we are honest, it is because we choose to be, and whatever people may say, that is the means of being so more surely.

However on the basis of what you are telling me, I shall not have a mo-ment’s peace until I am by your side; for if you fear danger, it is not en-tirely illusory. It is true that prevention is easy; a word to your mother and that is the end; but I see what you mean; you want nothing to do with an expedient that puts an end to it all; you are willing to relinquish the right to succumb, but not the honor of the struggle. O poor Cousin!... if only the least glimmer... That the Baron d’Étange should consent to give his daughter, his only child, to a petty bourgeois without fortune! Do you ex-pect that?... what then do you exex-pect? what do you want?... poor, poor Cousin!... Fear nothing, however, from me. Your friend will keep your secret. Many would Wnd it is more honest to reveal it; maybe they would be right. For myself, who am not a great reasoner, I want nothing to do with an honesty that betrays faith, trust, friendship; I imagine that every relationship, every age has its maxims, its duties, its virtues, that what would be prudence to others, would to me be perWdy, and that to lump everything together, rather than making us virtuous, makes us wicked. If your love is weak, we shall overcome it; if it is extreme, to attack it with vi-olent means is to expose it to tragic consequences, and friendship should attempt only those means for which it can accept responsibility. But on the other hand, you will have to toe the line when you are under my guardian-ship. You will see, you will see what it’s like to have an eighteen-year-old Duenna!¹²

It is not, as you know, for my own pleasure that I am far from you, and spring is not as pleasant in the country as you think; here we suVer from both cold and heat; there is no shade when we go walking, and we have to heat the house. My Father for his part doesn’t fail to notice, for all his con-struction projects, that the gazette arrives later here than in town. So every-one asks nothing better than to return there, and you shall embrace me, I hope, in four or Wve days. But what makes me uneasy is that four or Wve days make I don’t know how many hours, several of which are reserved for the philosopher. For the philosopher, do you hear me, Cousin? Remem-ber it is for him only that all those hours are supposed to strike.

Now don’t go blushing at that and lowering your eyes. For you it is

im-Part One (Pl., II, 44–46) 37

possible to assume a serious mien; it doesn’t go with your features. You know full well that I can’t weep without laughing, and am not for that less sensible; it distresses me no less to be far from you; I do not mourn the good Chaillot any less. I am inWnitely grateful for your willingness to share the care of her family with me; I will never in all my days abandon them, but you would no longer be yourself if you lost some opportunity for do-ing good. I agree that poor Mie¹³babbled too much, was rather free with her familiar talk, hardly discrete with young maidens, and liked to recall old times. Indeed it is not so much her qualities of mind I miss, even though she had some excellent ones amidst the bad. The loss I mourn in her is her good heart, her perfect attachment that gave her for me both a mother’s tenderness and a sister’s conWdence. She stood me in stead of my whole family; my mother I scarce knew; my father loves me as much as he knows how; we have lost your amiable brother; my own brothers I almost never see. So here I am like an abandoned orphan. My child, I have no one left but you; for your good mother is you. Yet you are right. I have you: I was weeping! Then I was foolish: why should I weep?

P. S. For fear of a mishap, I address this letter to our master,¹⁴so that it will more surely reach you.

LETTER VIII*

To Julie

What, fair Julie, are the strange caprices of love! My heart has more than it hoped for, and is not content. You love me, you tell me so, and I sigh. This unfair heart dares desire still more, when it has nothing more to desire; it punishes me for its fantasies, and makes me uneasy in the bosom of happiness. Do not think I have forgotten the laws imposed on me, or lost the will to observe them; no, yet a secret spite nettles me in seeing that these laws are onerous to me alone, that you who pretended to be so weak are at present so strong, and that I have so few battles to wage against my-self, so attentive do I Wnd you to forestall them.

How changed you are these last two months, without anything having changed except you! Your languor has disappeared; there is no more talk of apathy or dejection; all the graces have resumed their posts; all your charms have revived; the freshly bloomed rose is no fresher than you; the

* One can tell there is a lacuna here, and there will be others in the course of the corre-spondence. Several letters have been lost; others have been suppressed; others have suVered curtailment: but nothing essential is missing that cannot easily be supplied with the help of what remains.

repartees are back; you are witty with everyone; you frolic, even with me as formerly; and, what irritates me more than all the rest, is that you swear me everlasting love as blithely as if you were uttering the most amusing thing in the world.

Tell me, tell me, my Wckle one? Is this the character of a violent passion reduced to warring with itself, and if you had the slightest desire to over-come, would not the eVort at least stiXe your playfulness? Oh how much more lovable you were when you were less lovely! How I miss that touch-ing pallor, the cherished sign of a lover’s happiness, and how I hate the conspicuous health you have recovered at the expense of my peace of mind!

Yes, I had rather you still were ill than to see that contented air, those sparkling eyes, that blooming complexion that are an insult to me. Have you so soon forgotten that you were not like that when you were begging me for mercy? Julie, Julie! How tranquil has so keen a love become in little time!

But what oVends me even more, is that after committing yourself to my discretion, you seem to mistrust it, and that you Xee dangers as if you still had something to fear. Is this how you honor my restraint, and did my in-violable respect merit from you such an aVront? Far from your father’s de-parture having left us more liberty, you can hardly be seen alone. Your in-separable Cousin never leaves your side. Insensibly we are returning to our Wrst ways together and our former circumspection, with this sole diVerence, that then you found it burdensome and now you like it.

What then will be the reward for so pure an homage if it is not your es-teem, and what good to me is perpetual and voluntary abstinence from all that is sweetest in the world if she who demands it is wholly ungrateful to me? To be sure, I am weary of needless suVering, and of inXicting on my-self the harshest denial without even being credited for it. What! must you with impunity become more and more beautiful while you are scorning me? Must my eyes continually devour charms my lips dare not approach?

Must I in sum relinquish all hope, without being able at least to take pride in such a stringent sacriWce? No, since you no longer trust yourself to my good faith, I no longer wish to leave it vainly engaged; the security you de-rive at once from my word and from your precautions is an unjust one;

you are too ungrateful or I am too scrupulous, and I no longer mean to refuse from fortune’s hands the opportunities you cannot withhold from her. Finally, whatever the consequences for me, I feel I have assumed an obligation that exceeds my strength. Julie, take back your own guardian-ship; I return to you a trust too dangerous for the faithfulness of the trustee, the defense of which will cost your heart less than you feigned to fear.

I say this in earnest; rely upon yourself, or oust me, that is, take my life.

Part One (Pl., II, 46–49) 39

I have made a rash commitment. I wonder how I have been able to keep it so long; I know I still should, but I feel I cannot. Anyone who takes on such perilous duties deserves defeat. Believe me, dear and tender Julie, be-lieve this sensible heart that lives for you alone; you will forever be re-spected; but my reason may fail me for a moment, and the intoxication of the senses might dictate a crime which one would abhor in a calmer state.

Fortunate not to have betrayed your hope, I have held out for two months, and you owe me the price of two centuries of torment.

LETTER IX From Julie

I see: with the pleasures of vice and the honor of virtue you would not complain of your lot? Is that your moral?... Ah! my good friend, your generosity tires very quickly! Was it then only an artiWce? What a singular sign of attachment, for you to complain of my health! Could it be that you hoped my foolish love would utterly destroy it, and that you were waiting until I would have to beg you for my life? Or rather, were you planning to respect me so long as I was hideous, and take back your word when I should become bearable? I do not see in such sacriWces any merit so worth vaunting.

With as much equity you reproach me for the trouble I am taking to spare you painful struggles with yourself, as if you should not rather thank me for it. Then, you retract the commitment you have assumed, as too burdensome a duty; so that in the same letter you complain of suVering too much, and not enough. Think better on it and try to be more attuned with yourself, to lend a less frivolous coloration to your alleged griev-ances. Or rather, drop all this dissembling which is not in your character.

Say what you will, your heart is more satisWed with mine than it pretends to be. Ingrate, you know too well that for you it will never be at fault! Your letter itself betrays you with its bantering style, and you would not be so witty if you were less at ease. That’s enough about the vain reproaches hav-ing to do with you; let us now pass on to those that have to do with me, and which at the outset seem better grounded.

I am well aware of it; the bland and placid life we have been leading these last two months does not accord with my earlier declaration, and I concede it is not without reason that you are surprised by this contrast. At Wrst you saw me in despair; now you Wnd me too composed; whence you complain that my sentiments are inconstant and my heart capricious. Ah my friend! are you not judging it too harshly? Getting to know it takes

more than a day. Wait, and you will perhaps Wnd that this heart that loves you is not unworthy of yours.

If you could understand with what terror I experienced the Wrst symp-toms of the sentiment that binds me to you, you would have an idea of the anguish it must have caused me. I was reared in accordance with maxims¹⁵ so severe that the purest love appeared to me the height of dishonor. Every-thing taught me or led me to believe that a maiden of any sensibility was undone at the Wrst tender word that escaped her lips; my troubled imagi-nation confused crime with the confession of passion; and I had such a hor-rible notion of that Wrst step that I could scarcely see any interval between it and the last. Excessive misgivings about myself increased my alarm, I

If you could understand with what terror I experienced the Wrst symp-toms of the sentiment that binds me to you, you would have an idea of the anguish it must have caused me. I was reared in accordance with maxims¹⁵ so severe that the purest love appeared to me the height of dishonor. Every-thing taught me or led me to believe that a maiden of any sensibility was undone at the Wrst tender word that escaped her lips; my troubled imagi-nation confused crime with the confession of passion; and I had such a hor-rible notion of that Wrst step that I could scarcely see any interval between it and the last. Excessive misgivings about myself increased my alarm, I