Italian Letters, Vols. I and II

But no, my Matilda, I am a stranger to these fears, my breast is unvisited by the demon of suspicion. I employ no precaution. I do not seek to constrain my passion. I lay my heart naked before you. I shall ever maintain the most grateful sense of the benevolent friendship of your venerable father, of your own unexampled and ravishing condescension. But love, my amiable Matilda, knows no distinction of rank. We cannot love without building our ardour upon the sense of a kind of equality. All obligations must here in a manner cease but those which are mutual. Those hearts that are sensible to the distance of benefactor and client, are strangers to the sweetest emotions of this amiable passion.