dent, your virtue and good sense will
always defend you; but to fly with too great obstinacy the other, is not
to answer the end of your creation; and deny yourself a blessing, which
you seem formed to enjoy in the most extensive degree.

Both the voice and manner in which monsieur du Plessis spoke, gave
Louisa some suspicion of what he aimed at in this definition, and filled
her at the same time with emotions of various kinds; but dissembling
them as well as she could, and endeavouring to turn what he said into
raillery, you argue very learnedly on this subject, it must be
confessed, answered she smiling; but all you can urge on that head, nor
the compliment you make me, can win me to believe that love of any kind
is not attended with more mischief than good:--where it is accompanied
with the strictest honour, constancy, purity, and all the requisites
that constitute what is called a perfect passion, there are ordinarily
so many difficulties in the way to the completion of its wishes, that
the breast which harbours it must endure a continual agitation, which
surely none would chuse to be involved in.

Ah! madam, how little are you capable of judging of this passion, said
he; there is a delicacy in love which renders even its pains pleasing,
and how much soever a lover suffers, the thoughts of for whom he suffers
is more than a compensation; I am myself an instance of this truth:--I
am a lover:--conscious unworthiness of a suitable return of affection,
and a thousand other impediments lie between me and hope, yet would I
not change this dear anxiety for that insipid case I lived in before I
saw the only object capable of making me a convert to love.--It is
certain my passion is yet young; but a few days has given it root which
no time, no absence, no misfortune ever can dislodge.--The charming maid
is ignorant of her conquest:--the carnival draws near to a
conclusion.--I must return to the army, and these cruel circumstances
oblige me either to make a declaration which she may possibly condemn as
too abrupt, or go and leave her unknowing of my heart, and thereby
deprive myself even of her pity:--Which party, madam, shall I
take?--Will the severe extreme, to which I am driven, be sufficient to
attone for a presumption which else would merit her disdain?

Louisa must have been as dull as she was really the contrary, not to
have known all this was meant to herself; and the pleasing confusion
which this discovery infused