Such are the criticisms that a continual attention has occasioned me to make on your portrait: in consequence of which I have formed a design to alter it, agreeable to my own taste. I have communicated my intentions to an able master, and from what he has already done, I hope to see you soon more like yourself. For fear of spoiling the picture, however, we try our alterations first on a copy, which I have made him take; and make them in the original only when we are quite sure of their effect. Although I design but indifferently, my artist cannot help admiring the subtilty of my observations, but he does not know that love, who dictates them, is a greater master than he. I seem to him also sometimes very whimsical: he tells me I am the first lover that ever chose to hide objects which others think cannot be too much exposed; and when I answer him, it is in order to have a full view of you, that I dress you up with so much care, he stares at me, as if he thought me a fool. Ah! my Eloisa, how much more affecting would be your portrait, if I could but find out the means to display it in your mind, as well as your face; to paint at once your modesty and your charms! what would not the latter gain by such an amendment! at present those only are seen which the painter imagined, and the ravished spectator thinks them such as they are. I know not what secret enchantment is about your person, but every thing that touches you seems to partake of its virtue: one need only perceive the corner of your garment to revere the wearer of it. One perceives in your dress how the veil of the graces affords a covering to the model of beauty; and the taste of your modest apparel displays to the mind all those charms it conceals. Letter XCI. To Eloisa. Oh, Eloisa! you whom once I could call mine, though now I profane your virtuous name! my pen drops from my trembling hand, I blot the paper with my tears, I can hardly trace the first words of a letter, which ought never to be written; alas! I can neither speak nor be silent. Come, thou dear and respectable image of my love, come, purify and strengthen a heart depressed with shame and torn to pieces by remorse. Support my resolution that fails me, and give my contrition the power to avow the involuntary crime into which the absence of Eloisa has plunged me. Oh! Eloisa, how contemptible will you think me! and yet you cannot hold me in greater contempt than I do myself. Abject as I may seem in your eyes, I am yet a hundred times more so in my own; for, in reflecting on my own demerits, what mortifies me most is to see, to feel you still in my heart, in a place henceforward so little worthy of your image and to think that the remembrance of the truest pleasures of love could not prevent me from falling into a snare that had no lure, from being led into a crime that had presented no temptation.