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the truth. It would be a crime longer to preserve silence. Although my
attachment for her did not impose the necessity of responding to her
confidence, the love of truth would oblige me to make efforts to
dissipate the chimeras which render her unhappy.

I shall proceed then, Madam, to address you with the most complete
frankness. Perhaps at the first glance my ideas may appear strange;
but on examining them with still further care and attention, they will
cease to shock you. Reason, good faith, and truth cannot do otherwise
than exert great influence over such an intellect as yours. I appeal,
therefore, from your alarmed imagination to your more tranquil
judgment; I appeal from custom and prejudice to reflection and reason.
Nature has given you a gentle and sensible soul, and has imparted an
exquisitely lively imagination, and a certain admixture of melancholy
which disposes to despondent revery. It is from this peculiar mental
constitution that arise the woes that now afflict you. Your goodness,
candor, and sincerity preclude your suspecting in others either fraud
or malignity. The gentleness of your character prevents your
contradicting notions that would appear revolting if you deigned to
examine them. You have chosen rather to defer to the judgment of
others, and to subscribe to their ideas, than to consult your own
reason and rely upon your own understanding. The vivacity of your
imagination causes you to embrace with avidity the dismal delineations
which are presented to you; certain men, interested in agitating your
mind, abuse your sensibility in order to produce alarm; they cause you
to shudder at the terrible words, _death_, _judgment_, _hell_,
_punishment_, and _eternity_; they lead you to turn pale at the very
name of an inflexible _judge_, whose absolute decrees nothing can
change; you fancy that you see around you those demons whom he has
made the ministers of his vengeance upon his weak creatures; thus is
your heart filled with affright; you fear that at every instant you
may offend, without being aware of it, a capricious God, always
threatening and always enraged. In consequence of such a state of
mind, all those moments of your life which should only be productive
of contentment and peace, are constantly poisoned by inquietudes,
scruples, and panic terrors, from which a soul as pure as yours ought
to be forever exempt. The agitation into which you are thrown by these
fatal ideas suspends the exerci