Letter LXXXI. To Eloisa. What children does the impetuosity of our passions make of us! how readily does an extravagant affection nourish itself on chimeras; and how easily are our too violent desires prevented by the most frivolous objects! I received your letter with as much rapture as your presence could have inspir’d: in the excess of my transport, a piece of folded paper supplying in my mind the place of Eloisa. One of the greatest evils of absence, and the only one which reason cannot alleviate, is the inquietude we are under concerning the actual state of the person we love. Her health, her life, her repose, her affections, nothing escapes the apprehensions of him who has every thing to lose. Nor are we more certain of the present condition than of the future; and every possible accident is realiz’d in the mind of the timid lover. I breathe, and am alive again. You are in health, and still love me; or rather ten days ago you loved me, and was well; but who can assure me it is so at this instant? How cruel! how tormenting is absence! how fatally capricious is that situation in which we can enjoy only the past moment and the present not yet arrived. Had you said nothing about your _constant companion_, I should have detected her little malice in the censures passed on my observations, and her old grudge in the apology for Marini; but, if it be permitted me in turn to apologize for myself, I will not make her wait for a reply. In the first place then, my dear cousin, for it is to her I should address my answer, as to the stile of my remarks, I have adopted that of the subject: I endeavoured to give you at once both an idea and an example of the mode of conversation in fashion; and thus, following an ancient precept, I wrote to you in the same manner they talk in some companies to each other. Besides, it is not the use of rhetorical figures, but the choice of them, which I blame in Marini. If a man has the least warmth of imagination, he must necessarily use metaphors and figurative expressions to make himself understood. Even your own letters are full of them, without your knowing it; and I will maintain it, that none but a geometrician or a blockhead can talk without metaphor. In effect, the same sentiment may admit of an hundred different degrees of energy; and how are we to determine the precise degree in which to enforce it, but by the turn of expression? I must confess I could not help smiling myself at the absurdity of some phrases I used. I thank you for the trouble you took to pick them out. But, let them stand where they are, you will find them clear and peculiarly emphatical. Let us suppose that your two sprightly sparkling eyes, whose language is now expressive, were separated one from the other, and from the set of features to which they give such lustre; what think you, cousin, they would say, even with all their vivacity and fire? Believe me, they would lose all power of expression; they would be mute even to Mr. Orbe.