e; surrounded by friends who render sincere homage
to your talents, your knowledge, and your tastes,--how can you suffer
the pains of melancholy and sorrow? Your pure and virtuous soul can
surely know neither shame nor remorse. Always so far removed from the
weaknesses of your sex, on what account can you blush? Agreeably
occupied with your duties, refreshed with useful reading and
entertaining conversation, and having within your reach every
diversity of virtuous pleasures, how happens it that fears, distastes,
and cares come to assail a heart for which every thing should procure
contentment and peace? Alas! even if your letter had not confirmed it
but too much, from the trouble which agitates you I should have
recognized without difficulty the work of superstition. This fiend
alone possesses the power of disturbing honest souls, without calming
the passions of the corrupt; and when once she gains possession of a
heart, she has the ability to annihilate its repose forever.

Yes, Madam, for a long time I have known the dangerous effects of
religious prejudices. I was myself formerly troubled with them. Like
you I have trembled under the yoke of religion; and if a careful and
deliberate examination had not fully undeceived me, instead of now
being in a state to console you and to reassure you against yourself,
you would see me at the present moment partaking your inquietudes, and
augmenting in your mind the lugubrious ideas with which I perceive you
to be tormented. Thanks to Reason and Philosophy, an unruffled
serenity long ago irradiated my understanding, and banished the
terrors with which I was formerly agitated. What happiness for me if
the peace which I enjoy should put it in my power to break the charm
which yet binds you with the chains of prejudice?

Nevertheless, without your express orders, I should never have dared
to point out to you a mode of thinking widely different from your
own, nor to combat the dangerous opinions to which you have been
persuaded your happiness is attached. But for your request I should
have continued to enclose in my own breast opinions odious to the most
part of men accustomed to see nothing except by the eyes of judges
visibly interested in deceiving them. Now, however, a sacred duty
obliges me to speak. Eugenia, unquiet and alarmed, wishes me to
explore her heart; she needs assistance; she wishes to fix her ideas
upon an object which interests her repose and her felicity. I owe he