knows all your merit, and feels, moreover, bound to you by deep
gratitude. How can I forget that horrible moment when we met for the
first time? Your generous courage in risking your own life to save
mine from the fury of the waves; your tender care afterwards; your
constant attentions and your ardent love, which neither time nor
difficulties can lessen! For me you neglect your parents and your
country; you give up your own position in life to be a servant of my
father! How can I resist the influence that all this has over me? Is
it not enough to justify in my eyes my engagement to you? Yet, who
knows if it will be enough to justify it in the eyes of others? and
how can I feel sure that my motives will be understood?

VAL. You try in vain to find merit in what I have done; it is by my
love alone that I trust to deserve you. As for the scruples you feel,
your father himself justifies you but too much before the world; and
his avarice and the distant way in which he lives with his children
might authorise stranger things still. Forgive me, my dear Elise, for
speaking thus of your father before you; but you know that,
unfortunately, on this subject no good can be said of him. However, if
I can find my parents, as I fully hope I shall, they will soon be
favourable to us. I am expecting news of them with great impatience;
but if none comes I will go in search of them myself.

ELI. Oh no! Valere, do not leave me, I entreat you. Try rather to
ingratiate yourself in my father's favour.

VAL. You know how much I wish it, and you can see how I set about it.
You know the skilful manoeuvres I have had to use in order to
introduce myself into his service; under what a mask of sympathy and
conformity of tastes I disguise my own feelings to please him; and