We sat a long while at supper, and the company at length began to grow noisy. For want of love, the wine went briskly round to inflame the guests: the discourse was not tender but immodest, and the women strove by the disorder of their dress to excite those passions which should have caused that disorder. All this had a very different effect upon me, and their endeavours to reduce me only heightened my disgust. Sweet modesty! said I to myself, it is thine to inspire the sublimest raptures love can bestow! how impotent are female charms when thou hast left them! if the sex did but know thy power, what pains would they not take to preserve thee inviolate; if not for the sake of virtue, at least for their interest! but modesty is not to be assumed. There is not a more ridiculous artifice in the world than that of the prude who affects it. What a difference, thought I, is there between the impudence of these creatures, with their licentious expressions, and those timid and tender looks, those conversations so full of modesty, so delicate, so sentimental, which----but I dare not finish the sentence; I blush at the comparison.----I reproach myself, as if it were criminal, with the delightful remembrance of her who pursues me wherever I go. But how shall I now dare to think of her?----alas! it is impossible to eraze your image from my heart: let me then strive to conceal it there. The noise, the discourse I heard, together with the objects that presented themselves to my view, insensibly inflamed me; my two neighbours plied me incessantly with wine. I found my head confused, and, though I drank all the while a good deal of water in my wine, I now took more water, and at length determined to drink water only. It was then I perceived the pretended water set before me was white wine, and that I had drank it from the first. I made no complaints, as they would only have subjected me to raillery, but gave over drinking entirely. But it was too late, the mischief was already done, and the intoxicating effects of what I had already drank soon deprived me of the little sense that remained. I was surprized, in recovering my senses, to find myself in a retired closet, locked in the embraces of one of those creatures I had supped with, and in the same instant had the mortification to find myself as criminal as I could possibly be. I have finished this horrible relation. Would to heaven it might never more offend your eyes, nor torture my memory. O Eloisa! it is from you I expect my doom; I demand, I deserve, your severity. Whatever be my punishment it will be less cruel than the remembrance of my crime. Letter XCII. The Answer.