I thought proper, my friend, in so serious and important an affair, to speak to you only in the plain language of reason, and to represent things simply as they are. If I would have described them as they appear to me, and engaged the passions and humanity in the cause, I should have addressed you in a different stile. You know that my father had the misfortune, in his youth, to kill his antagonist in a duel: that antagonist was his friend; they fought with regret, but were obliged to it by that absurd notion of a point of honour. That fatal blow which deprived the one of life, robbed the other of his piece of mind for ever. From that time has the most cruel remorse incessantly preyed on his heart; he is often heard to sigh and weep in private: his imagination still represents to him the fatal steel pushed by his cruel hand into the breast of the man he loved; his slumbers are disturbed by the appearances of his pale and bleeding friend: he looks with terror on the mortal wound; he endeavours to stop the blood that flows from it; he is seized with horror, and cries out, will this corpse never cease pursuing me? It is five years since he lost the only support of his name, and hope of his family; since when, he has reproached himself with his death, as a just judgment from heaven, which avenged on him the loss of that unhappy father, whom he deprived of an only son. I must confess that all this, added to my natural aversion to cruelty, fills me with such horror at duels, that I regard them as instances of the lowest degree of brutality into which mankind can possibly descend. I look upon those, who go chearfully to a duel, in no other light than as wild beasts going to tear each other to pieces; and, if there remains the least sentiment of humanity within them, I think the murdered less to be pitied than the murderer. Observe those men who are accustomed to this horrid practice; they only brave remorse by stifling the voice of nature; they grow by degrees cruel and insensible; they sport with the lives of others, and their punishment for having turned a deaf ear to humanity, is to lose at length every sense of it. How shocking must be such a situation? Is it possible you can desire to be like them? No, you were never made for such a state of detestable brutality: be careful of the first step that leads to it; your mind is yet undepraved and innocent: begin not to debase it, at the hazard of your life, by an attempt that has no virtue, a crime that has no temptation, and a point of honour founded only on absurdity. I have said nothing to you of your Eloisa; she will be a gainer, no doubt, by leaving your heart to speak for her. One word, only one word, and I leave her to you. You have sometimes honoured me with the endearing name of wife; perhaps I ought at this time to bear that of mother. Will you leave me a widow before we are legally united?