THE CONFESSSIONS

BOOK IX

[1756]

  I WAS so impatient to take up my abode in Hermitage that I could not
wait for the return of fine weather; the moment my lodging was
prepared I hastened to take possession of it, to the great amusement
of the Coterie Holbachique, which publicly predicted I should not be
able to support solitude for three months, and that I should
unsuccessfully return to Paris, and live there as they did. For my
part, having for fifteen years been out of my element, finding
myself upon the eve of returning to it, I paid no attention to their
pleasantries. Since, contrary to my inclinations, I have again entered
the world, I have incessantly regretted my dear Charmettes, and the
agreeable life I led there. I felt a natural inclination to retirement
and the country: it was impossible for me to live happily elsewhere.
At Venice, in the train of public affairs, in the dignity of a kind of
representation, in the pride of projects of advancement; at Paris,
in the vortex of the great world, in the luxury of suppers, in the
brilliancy of spectacles, in the rays of splendor; my groves,
rivulets, and solitary walks, constantly presented themselves to my
recollection, interrupted my thought, rendered me melancholy and
made me sigh with desire. All the labor to which I had subjected
myself, every project of ambition which by fits had animated my ardor,
all had for object this happy country retirement, which I now
thought near at hand. Without having acquired a genteel
independence, which I had judged to be the only means of accomplishing
my views, I imagined myself, in my particular situation, to be able to
do without it, and that I could obtain the same end by a means quite
opposite. I had no regular income; but I possessed some talents, and
had acquired a name. My wants were few, and I had freed myself from
all those which were most expensive, and which merely depended on
prejudice and opinion. Besides this, although naturally indolent, I
was laborious when I chose to be so, and my idleness was less that
of an indolent man, than that of an independent one who applies to
business when it pleases him. My profession of a copyist of music
was neither splendid nor lucrative, but it was certain. The world gave
me credit for the courage I had shown in making choice of it. I
might depend upon having sufficient employment to enable me to live.
Two thousand livres which remained of the produce of the Devin du
Village, and my other writings, were a sum which kept me from being
straitened, and several works I had upon the stocks promised me,
without extorting money from the booksellers, supplies sufficient to
enable me to work at my ease without exhausting myself, even by
turning to advantage the leisure of my walks. My little family,
consisting of three persons, all of whom were usefully employed, was
not expensive to support. Finally, from my resources, proportioned
to my wants and desires, I might reasonably expect a happy and
permanent existence, in that manner of life which my inclination had
induced me to adopt.
  I might have taken the interested side of the question, and, instead
of subjecting my pen to copying, entirely devoted it to works which,
from the elevation to which I had soared, and at which I found
myself capable of continuing, might have enabled me to live in the
midst of abundance, nay, even of opulence, had I been the least
disposed to join the maneuvers of an author to the care of
publishing a good book. But I felt that writing for bread would soon
have extinguished my genius, and destroyed my talents, which were less
in my pen than in my heart, and solely proceeded from an elevated
and noble manner of thinking, by which alone they could be cherished
and preserved. Nothing vigorous or great can come from a pen totally
venal. Necessity, nay, even avarice, perhaps, would have made me write
rather rapidly than well. If the desire of success had not led me into
cabals, it might have made me endeavor to publish fewer true and
useful works than those which might be pleasing to the multitude;
and instead of a distinguished author, which I might possibly
become, I should have been nothing more than a scribbler. No: I have
always felt that the profession of letters was illustrious in
proportion as it was less a trade. It is too difficult to think
nobly when we think for a livelihood. To be able to dare even to speak
great truths, an author must be independent of success. I gave my
books to the public with a certainty of having written for the general
good of mankind, without giving myself the least concern about what
was to follow. If the work was thrown aside, so much the worse for
such as did not choose to profit by it. Their approbation was not
necessary to enable me to live, my profession was sufficient to
maintain me had not my works had a sale, for which reason alone they
all sold.
  It was on the ninth of August, 1756, that I left cities, never to
reside in them again: for I do not call a residence the few days I
afterwards remained in Paris, London, or other cities, always on the
wing, or contrary to my inclinations. Madam d'Epinay came and took
us all three in her coach; her farmer carted away my little baggage,
and I was put into possession the same day. I found my little
retreat simply furnished, but neatly, and with some taste. The hand
which had lent its aid in this furnishing rendered it inestimable in
my eyes, and I thought it charming to be the guest of my female friend
in a house I had made choice of, and which she had caused to be
built purposely for me.
  Although the weather was cold, and the ground lightly covered with
snow, the earth began to vegetate: violets and primroses already
made their appearance, the trees began to bud, and the evening of my
arrival was distinguished by the song of the nightingale, which was
heard almost under my window, in a wood adjoining the house. After a
light sleep, forgetting when I awoke my change of abode, I still
thought myself in the Rue Grenelle, when suddenly this warbling made
me give a start, and I exclaimed in my transport: "At length, all my
wishes are accomplished!" The first thing I did was abandon myself
to the impression of the rural objects with which I was surrounded.
Instead of beginning to set things in order in my new habitation, I
began by doing it for my walks, and there was not a path, a copse, a
grove, nor a corner in the environs of my place of residence that I
did not visit the next day. The more I examined this charming retreat,
the more I found it to my wishes. This solitary, rather than savage,
spot transported me in idea to the end of the world. It had striking
beauties which are but seldom found near cities, and never, if
suddenly transported thither, could any person have imagined himself
within four leagues of Paris.
  After abandoning myself for a few days to this rural delirium, I
began to arrange my papers, and regulate my occupations. I set
apart, as I had always done, my mornings to copying, and my afternoons
to walking, provided with my little paper book and a pencil, for never
having been able to write and think at my ease except sub dio, I had
no inclination to depart from this method, and I was persuaded the
forest of Montmorency, which was almost at my door, would in future be
my closet and study. I had several works begun; these I cast my eye
over. My mind was indeed fertile in great projects, but in the noise
of the city the execution of them had gone on but slowly. I proposed
to myself to use more diligence when I should be less interrupted. I
am of opinion I have sufficiently fulfilled this intention; and for
a man frequently ill, often at La Chevrette, at Epinay, at Eaubonne,
at the castle of Montmorency, at other times interrupted by the
indolent and curious, and always employed half the day in copying,
if what I produced during the six years I passed at the Hermitage
and at Montmorency be considered, I am persuaded it will appear that
if, in this interval, I lost my time, it was not in idleness.
  Of the different works I had upon the stocks, that I had longest
resolved in my mind, which was most to my taste, to which I destined a
certain portion of my life, and which, in my opinion, was to confirm
the reputation I had acquired, was my Institutions Politiques.* I had,
fourteen years before, when at Venice, where I had an opportunity of
remarking the defects of that government so much boasted of, conceived
the first idea of them. Since that time my views had become much
more extended by the historical study of morality. I had perceived
everything to be radically connected with politics, and that, upon
whatever principles these were founded, a people would never be more
than that which the nature of the government made them; therefore
the great question of the best government possible appeared to me to
be reduced to this: What is the nature of a government the most proper
to form the most virtuous and enlightened, the wisest and best people,
taking the last epithet in its most extensive meaning? I thought
this question was much if not quite of the same nature with that which
follows: What government is that which, by its nature, always
maintains itself nearest to the laws, or least deviates from the
laws.*(2) Hence, what is the law? and a series of questions of similar
importance. I perceived these led to great truths, useful to the
happiness of mankind, but more especially to that of my country,
wherein, in the journey I had just made to it, I had not found notions
of laws and liberty either sufficiently just or clear. I had thought
this indirect manner of communicating these to my fellow-citizens
would be least mortifying to their pride, and might obtain me
forgiveness for having seen a little further than themselves.

  * Political Institutions.
  *(2) Quel est le gouvernement qui par sa nature se tient toujours le
plus pres de la loi?

  Although I had already labored five or six years at the work, the
progress I had made in it was not considerable. Writings of this
kind require meditation, leisure, and tranquillity. I had besides
written the Institutions Politiques, as the expression is, en bonne
fortune, and had not communicated my project to any person, not even
to Diderot. I was afraid it would be thought too daring for the age
and country in which I wrote, and that the fears of my friends would
restrain me from carrying it into execution.* I did not yet know
that it would be finished in time, and in such a manner as to appear
before my decease. I wished fearlessly to give to my subject
everything it required; fully persuaded that not being of a
satirical turn, and never wishing to be personal, I should in equity
always be judged irreprehensible. I undoubtedly wished fully to
enjoy the right of thinking which I had by birth; but still respecting
the government under which I lived, without ever disobeying its
laws, and very attentive not to violate the rights of persons, I would
not from fear renounce its advantages.

  * It was more especially the wise severity of Duclos which
inspired me with this fear; as for Diderot, I know not by what means
all my conferences with him tended to make me more satirical than my
natural disposition inclined me to be. This prevented me from
consulting him upon an undertaking, in which I wished to introduce
nothing but the force of reasoning, without the least appearance of
ill humor or partiality. The manner of this work may be judged of by
that of the Contrat Social, (Social Contract), which is taken from it.

  I confess even that, as a stranger, and living in France, I found my
situation very favorable in daring to speak the truth; well knowing
that continuing, as I was determined to do, not to print anything in
the kingdom without permission, I was not obliged to give to any
person in it an account of my maxims nor of their publication
elsewhere. I should have been less independent even at Geneva,
where, in whatever place my books might have been printed, the
magistrate had a right to criticise their contents. This consideration
had greatly contributed to make me yield to the solicitations of Madam
d'Epinay, and abandon the project of fixing my residence at Geneva.
I felt, as I have remarked in my Emilius, that unless an author be a
man of intrigue, when he wishes to render his works really useful to
any country whatsoever, he must compose them in some other.
  What made me find my situation still more happy, was my being
persuaded that the government of France would, perhaps, without
looking upon me with a very favorable eye, make it a point to
protect me, or at least not to disturb my tranquillity. It appeared to
me a stroke of simple, yet dexterous policy, to make a merit of
tolerating that which there was no means of preventing; since, had I
been driven from France, which was all government had the right to do,
my work would still have been written, and perhaps with less
reserve; whereas if I were left undisturbed, the author remained to
answer for what he wrote, and a prejudice, general throughout all
Europe, would be destroyed by acquiring the reputation of observing
a proper respect for the rights of persons.
  They who, by the event, shall judge I was deceived, may perhaps be
deceived in their turn. In the storm which has since broken over my
head, my books served as a pretense, but it was against my person that
every shaft was directed. My persecutors gave themselves but little
concern about the author, but they wished to ruin Jean-Jacques; and
the greatest evil they found in my writings was the honor they might
possibly do me. Let us not encroach upon the future. I do not know
that this mystery, which is still one to me, will hereafter be cleared
up to my readers; but had my avowed principles been of a nature to
bring upon me the treatment I received, I should sooner have become
their victim, since the work in which these principles are
manifested with most courage, not to call it audacity, seemed to
have had its effect previous to my retreat to the Hermitage, without I
will not only say my having received the least censure, but without
any steps having been taken to prevent the publication of it in
France, where it was sold as publicly as in Holland. The New Eloisa
afterwards appeared with the same facility, I dare add, with the
same applause; and, what seems incredible, the profession of faith
of this Eloisa at the point of death is exactly similar to that of the
Savoyard vicar. Every strong idea in the Social Contract had been
before published in the discourse on Inequality; and every bold
opinion in Emilius previously found in Eloisa. This unrestrained
freedom did not excite the least murmur against the first two works;
therefore it was not that which gave cause to it against the latter.
  Another undertaking much of the same kind, but of which the
project was more recent, then engaged my attention: this was the
extract of the works of the Abbe de Saint Pierre, of which, having
been led away by the thread of my narrative, I have not hitherto
been able to speak. The idea was suggested to me, after my return from
Geneva, by the Abbe Mably, not immediately from himself, but by the
interposition of Madam Dupin, who had some interest in engaging me
to adopt it. She was one of the three or four pretty women of Paris,
of whom the Abbe de Saint Pierre had been the spoiled child, and
although she had not decidedly had the preference, she had at least
partaken of it with Madam d'Aiguillon. She preserved for the memory of
the good man a respect and an affection which did honor to them
both; and her self-love would have been flattered by seeing the
stillborn works of her friend brought to life by her secretary.
These works contained excellent things, but so badly told that the
reading of them was almost insupportable; and it is astonishing the
Abbe de Saint Pierre, who looked upon his readers as schoolboys,
should nevertheless have spoken to them as men, by the little care
he took to induce them to give him a hearing. It was for this
purpose that the work was proposed to me as useful in itself, and very
proper for a man laborious in maneuver, but idle as an author, who
finding the trouble of thinking very fatiguing, preferred, in things
which pleased him, throwing a light upon and extending the ideas of
others, to producing any himself. Besides, not being confined to the
function of a translator, I was at liberty sometimes to think for
myself; and I had it in my power to give such a form to my work,
that many important truths would pass in it under the name of the Abbe
de Saint Pierre, much more safely than under mine. The undertaking
also was not trifling; the business was nothing less than to read
and meditate twenty-three volumes, diffuse, confused, full of long
narrations and periods, repetitions, and false or little views, from
amongst which it was necessary to select some few that were great
and useful, and sufficiently encouraging to enable me to support the
painful labor. I frequently wished to have given it up, and should
have done so, could I have got it off my hands with a good grace;
but when I received the manuscripts of the abbe, which were given me
by his nephew, the Comte de Saint Pierre, I had, by the solicitation
of St. Lambert, in some measure engaged to make use of them, which I
must either have done, or have given them back. It was with the former
intention I had taken the manuscripts to the Hermitage, and this was
the first work to which I proposed to dedicate my leisure hours.
  I had likewise in my own mind projected a third, the idea of which I
owed to the observations I had made upon myself and I felt the more
disposed to undertake this work, as I had reason to hope I could
make it a truly useful one, and perhaps, the most so of any that could
be offered to the world, were the execution equal to the plan I had
laid down. It has been remarked that most men are in the course of
their lives frequently unlike themselves, and seem to be transformed
into others very different from what they were. It was not to
establish a thing so generally known that I wished to write a book;
I had a newer and more important object. This was to search for the
causes of these variations, and, by confining my observations to those
which depend on ourselves, to demonstrate in what manner it might be
possible to direct them, in order to render us better and more certain
of our dispositions. For it is undoubtedly more painful to an honest
man to resist desires already formed, and which it is his duty to
subdue, than to prevent, change, or modify the same desires in their
source, were he capable of tracing them to it. A man under
temptation resists once because he has strength of mind, he yields
another time because this is overcome; had it been the same as
before he would again have triumphed.
  By examining within myself, and searching in others what could be
the cause of these different manners of being, I discovered that, in a
great measure they depended on the anterior impression of external
objects; and that, continually modified by our senses and organs,
we, without knowing it, bore in our ideas, sentiments, and even
actions, the effect of these modifications. The striking and
numerous observations I had collected were beyond all manner of
dispute, and by their natural principle seemed proper to furnish and
exterior regimen, which, varied according to circumstances, might
place and support the mind in the state most favorable to virtue. From
how many mistakes would reason be preserved, how many vices would be
stifled in their birth, were it possible to force animal economy to
favor moral order, which it so frequently disturbs! Climates, seasons,
sounds, colors, light, darkness, the elements, aliments, noise,
silence, motion, rest, all act on the animal machine, and consequently
on the mind; all offer us a thousand means, almost certain of
directing in their origin the sentiments by which we suffer
ourselves to be governed. Such was the fundamental idea of which I had
already made a sketch upon paper, and whence I hoped for an effect the
more certain, in favor of persons well disposed, who, sincerely loving
virtue, were afraid of their own weakness, as it appeared to me easy
to make of it a book as agreeable to read as it was to compose. I
have, however, applied myself but very little to this work, the
title of which was to have been Morale Sensitive ou le Materialisme du
Sage.* Interruptions, the cause of which will soon appear, prevented
me from continuing it, and the fate of the sketch, which is more
connected with my own than it may appear to be, will hereafter be
seen.

  * Sensitive Morality, or the Materialism of the Sage.

  Besides this, I had for some time meditated a system of education,
of which Madam de Chenonceaux, alarmed for her son by that of her
husband, had desired me to consider. The authority of friendship
placed this object, although loss in itself to my taste, nearer to
my heart than any other. On which account this subject, of all,
those of which I have just spoken, is the only one I carried to its
utmost extent. The end I proposed to myself in treating of it
should, I think, have procured the author a better fate. But I will
not here anticipate this melancholy subject. I shall have too much
reason to speak of it in the course of my work.
  These different objects offered me subjects of meditation for my
walks; for, as I believe I have already observed, I am unable to
reflect when I am not walking: the moment I stop, I think no more, and
as soon as I am again in motion my head resumes its workings. I had,
however, provided myself with a work for the closet upon rainy days.
This was my dictionary of music, which my scattered, mutilated, and
unshapen materials made it necessary to rewrite almost entirely. I had
with me some books necessary to this purpose; I had spent two months
in making extracts from others, which I had borrowed from the king's
library, whence I was permitted to take several to the Hermitage. I
was thus provided with materials for composing in my apartment when
the weather did not permit me to go out, and my copying fatigued me.
This arrangement was so convenient that it made it turn to advantage
as well at the Hermitage as at Montmorency, and afterwards even at
Motiers, where I completed the work whilst I was engaged in others,
and constantly found a change of occupation to be a real relaxation.
  During a considerable time I exactly followed the distribution I had
prescribed myself, and found it very agreeable; but as soon as the
fine weather brought Madam d'Epinay more frequently to Epinay, or to
the Chevrette, I found that attentions, in the first instance
natural to me, but which I had not considered in my scheme,
considerably deranged my projects. I have already observed that
Madam d'Epinay had many amiable qualities; she sincerely loved her
friends; served them with zeal; and, not sparing for them either
time or pains, certainly deserved on their part every attention in
return. I had hitherto discharged this duty without considering it
as one; but at length I found that I had given myself a chain of which
nothing but friendship prevented me from feeling the weight, and
this was still aggravated by my dislike to numerous societies. Madam
d'Epinay took advantage of these circumstances to make me a
proposition seemingly agreeable to me, but which was more so to
herself; this was to let me know when she was alone, or had but little
company. I consented, without perceiving to what a degree I engaged
myself. The consequence was that I no longer visited her at my own
hour but at hers, and that I never was certain of being master of
myself for a day together. This constraint considerably diminished the
pleasure I had in going to see her. I found the liberty she had so
frequently promised was given me upon no other condition than that
of my never enjoying it; and once or twice when I wished to do this
there were so many messages, notes, and alarms relative to my
health, that I perceived I could have no excuse but being confined
to my bed, for not immediately running to her upon the first
intimation. It was necessary I should submit to this yoke, and I did
it, even more voluntarily than could be expected from so great an
enemy to dependence: the sincere attachment I had to Madam d'Epinay
preventing me, in a great measure, from feeling the inconvenience with
which it was accompanied. She, on her part, filled up, well or ill,
the void which the absence of her usual circle left in her amusements.
This for her was but a very slender supplement, although preferable to
absolute solitude, which she could not support. She had the means of
doing it much more at her ease after she began with literature, and at
all events to write novels, letters, comedies, tales, and other
trash of the same kind. But she was not so much amused in writing
these as in reading them; and she never scribbled over two or three
pages at one sitting, without being previously assured of having, at
least, two or three benevolent auditors at the end of so much labor. I
seldom had the honor of being the one of the chosen few except by
means of another. When alone, I was, for the most part, considered
as a cipher in everything; and this not only in the company of Madam
d'Epinay, but in that of M. d'Holbach, and in every place where
Grimm gave the ton. This nullity was very convenient to me, except
in a tete-a-tete, when I knew not what countenance to put on, not
daring to speak of literature, of which it was not for me to say a
word; nor of gallantry, being too timid, and fearing, more than death,
the ridiculousness of an old gallant; besides that, I never had such
an idea when in the company of Madam d'Epinay, and that it perhaps
would never have occurred to me, had I passed my whole life with
her; not that her person was in the least disagreeable to me; on the
contrary, I loved her perhaps too much as a friend to do it as a
lover. I felt a pleasure in seeing and speaking to her. Her
conversation, although agreeable enough in a mixed company, was
uninteresting in private; mine, not more elegant or entertaining
than her own, was no great amusement to her. Ashamed of being long
silent, I endeavored to enliven our tete-a-tete and, although this
frequently fatigued me, I was never disgusted with it. I was happy
to show her little attentions, and gave her little fraternal kisses,
which seemed not to be more sensual to herself; these were all. She
was very thin, very pale, and had a bosom which resembled the back
of her hand. This defect alone would have been sufficient to
moderate my most ardent desires; my heart never could distinguish a
woman in a person who had it; and, besides, other causes, useless to
mention, always made me forget the sex of this lady.
  Having resolved to conform to an assiduity which was necessary, I
immediately and voluntarily entered upon it, and for the first year at
least, found it less burthensome than I could have expected. Madam
d'Epinay, who commonly passed the summer in the country, continued
there but a part of this; whether she was more detained by her affairs
at Paris, or that the absence of Grimm rendered the residence of the
Chevrette less agreeable to her, I know not. I took the advantage of
the intervals of her absence, or when the company with her was
numerous, to enjoy my solitude with my good Theresa and her mother, in
such a manner as to taste all its charms. Although I had for several
years past been frequently in the country, I seldom had enjoyed much
of its pleasures; and these excursions, always made in company with
people who considered themselves as persons of consequence, and
rendered insipid by constraint, served to increase in me the natural
desire I had for rustic pleasures. The want of these was the more
sensible to me as I had the image of them immediately before my
eyes. I was so tired of saloons, jets-d'eau, groves, parterres, and of
the more fatiguing persons by whom they were shown; so exhausted
with pamphlets, harpsichords, trios, unravelings of plots, stupid
bon mots, insipid affectations, pitiful story-tellers, and great
suppers; that when I gave a side glance at a poor simple hawthorn
bush, a hedge, a barn, or a meadow; when, in passing through a hamlet,
I scented a good chervil omelette, and heard at a distance the
burden of the rustic song of the Bisquieres; I wished all rouge,
furbelows and ambergris at the devil, and envying the dinner of the
good housewife, and the wine of her own vineyard, I heartily wished to
give a slap on the chaps to Monsieur le Chef and Monsieur le Maitre,
who made me dine at the hour of supper, and sup when I should have
been asleep, but especially to Messieurs the lackeys, who devoured
with their eyes the morsel I put into my mouth, and, upon pain of my
dying with thirst, sold me the adulterated wine of their master, ten
times dearer than that of a better quality would have cost me at a
public house.
  At length I was settled in an agreeable and solitary asylum, at
liberty to pass there the remainder of my days, in that peaceful,
equal and independent life for which felt myself born. Before I relate
the effects this situation, so new to me, had upon my heart, it is
proper I should recapitulate its secret affections, that the reader
may better follow in their causes the progress of these new
modifications.
  I have always considered the day on which I was united to Theresa as
that which fixed my moral existence. An attachment was necessary for
me, since that which should have been sufficient to my heart had
been so cruelly broken. The thirst after happiness is never
extinguished in the heart of man. Mamma was advancing into years,
and dishonored herself! I had proofs that she could never more be
happy here below; it therefore remained to me to seek my own
happiness, having lost all hopes of partaking of hers. I was sometimes
irresolute, and fluctuated from one idea to another, and from
project to project. My journey to Venice would have thrown me into
public life, had the man with whom, almost against my inclination, I
was connected there had common sense. I was easily discouraged,
especially in undertakings of length and difficulty. The ill success
of this disgusted me with every other; and, according to my old
maxims, considering distant objects as deceitful allurements I
resolved in future to provide for immediate wants, seeing nothing in
life which could tempt me to make extraordinary efforts.
  It was precisely at this time we became acquainted. The mild
character of the good Theresa seemed so fitted to my own, that I
united myself to her with an attachment which neither time nor
injuries have been able to impair, and which has constantly been
increased by everything by which it might have been expected to be
diminished. The force of this sentiment will hereafter appear when I
come to speak of the wounds she has given my heart in the height of my
misery, without my ever having, until this moment, once uttered a word
of complaint to any person whatever.
  When it shall be known, that after having done everything, braved
everything, not to separate from her; that after passing with her
twenty years in despite of fate and men; I have in my old age made her
my wife, without the least expectation or solicitation on her part, or
promise or engagement on mine, the world will think that love
bordering upon madness, having from the first moment turned my head,
led me by degrees to the last act of extravagance; and this will no
longer appear doubtful when the strong and particular reasons which
should forever have prevented me from taking such a step are made
known. What, therefore, will the reader think when I shall have told
him, with all the truth he has ever found in me, that, from the
first moment in which I saw her, until that wherein I write, I have
never felt the least love for her, that I never desired to possess her
more than I did to possess Madam de Warrens, and that the physical
wants which were satisfied with her person were, for me, solely
those of the sex, and by no means proceeding from the individual? He
will think that, being of a constitution different from that of
other men, I was incapable of love, since this was not one of the
sentiments which attached me to women the most dear to my heart.
Patience, O my dear reader! the fatal moment approaches in which you
will be but too much undeceived.
  I fall into repetitions; I know it; and these are necessary. The
first of my wants, the greatest, strongest, and most insatiable, was
wholly in my heart; the want of an intimate connection, and as
intimate as it could possibly be: for this reason especially, a
woman was more necessary to me than a man, a female rather than a male
friend. This singular want was such that the closest corporal union
was not sufficient: two souls would have been necessary to me in the
same body, without which I always felt a void. I thought I was upon
the point of filling it up forever. This young person, amiable by a
thousand excellent qualities, and at that time by her form, without
the shadow of art or coquetry, would have confined within herself my
whole existence, could hers, as I had hoped it would have been totally
confined to me. I had nothing to fear from men; I am certain of
being the only man she ever really loved, and her moderate passions
seldom wanted another, not even after I ceased in this respect to be
one to her. I had no family; she had one; and this family was composed
of individuals whose dispositions were so different from mine, that
I could never make it my own. This was the first cause of my
unhappiness. What would I not have given to be the child of her
mother? I did everything in my power to become so, but could never
succeed. I in vain attempted to unite all our interests: this was
impossible. She always created herself one different from mine,
contrary to it, and to that even of her daughter, which already was no
longer separated from it. She, her other children, and grand-children,
became so many leeches, and the least evil these did to Theresa was
robbing her. The poor girl, accustomed to submit, even to her
nieces, suffered herself to be pilfered and governed without saying
a word; and I perceived with grief that by exhausting my purse, and
giving her advice, I did nothing that could be of any real advantage
to her. I endeavored to detach her from her mother; but she constantly
resisted such a proposal. I could not but respect her resistance,
and esteemed her the more for it; but her refusal was not on this
account less to the prejudice of us both. Abandoned to her mother
and the rest of her family, she was more their companion than mine,
and rather at their command than mistress of herself. Their avarice
was less ruinous than their advice was pernicious to her; in fact, if,
on account of the love she had for me, added to her good natural
disposition, she was not quite their slave, she was enough so to
prevent in a great measure the effect of the good maxims I
endeavored to instill into her, and, notwithstanding all my efforts,
to prevent our being united.
  Thus was it, that notwithstanding a sincere and reciprocal
attachment, in which I had lavished all the tenderness of my heart,
the void in that heart was never completely filled. Children, by
whom this effect should have been produced, were brought into the
world, but these only made things worse. I trembled at the thought
of intrusting them to a family ill brought up, to be still worse
educated. The risk of the education of the foundling hospital was much
less. This reason for the resolution I took, much stronger than all
those I stated in my letter to Madam de Francueil, was, however, the
only one with which I dared not make her acquainted; I chose rather to
appear less excusable than expose to reproach the family of a person I
loved. But by the conduct of her wretched brother, notwithstanding all
that can be said in his defense, it will be judged whether or not I
ought to have exposed my children to an education similar to his.
  Not having it in my power to taste in all its plenitude the charms
of that intimate connection of which I felt the want, I sought for
substitutes which did not fill up the void, yet they made it less
sensible. Not having a friend entirely devoted to me, I wanted others,
whose impulse should overcome my indolence; for this reason I
cultivated and strengthened my connections with Diderot and the Abbe
de Condillac, formed with Grimm a new one still more intimate, till at
length, by the unfortunate discourse, of which I have related some
particulars, I unexpectedly found myself thrown back into a literary
circle which I thought I had quitted forever.
  My first steps conducted me by a new path to another intellectual
world, the simple and noble economy of which I cannot contemplate
without enthusiasm. I reflected so much on the subject that I soon saw
nothing but error and folly in the doctrine of our sages, and
oppression and misery in our social order. In the illusion of my
foolish pride, I thought myself capable of destroying all imposture;
and thinking that, to make myself listened to, it was necessary my
conduct should agree with my principles, I adopted the singular manner
of life which I have not been permitted to continue, the example of
which my pretended friends have never forgiven me, which at first made
me ridiculous, and would at length have rendered me respectable, had
it been possible for me to persevere.
  Until then I had been good; from that moment I became virtuous, or
at least infatuated with virtue. This infatuation had begun in my
head, but afterwards passed into my heart. The most noble pride
there took root amongst the ruins of extirpated vanity. I affected
nothing; I became what I appeared to be, and during four years at
least, whilst this effervescence continued at its greatest height,
there is nothing great and good that can enter the heart of man, of
which I was not capable between heaven and myself. Hence flowed my
sudden eloquence; hence, in my first writings, that fire really
celestial, which consumed me, and whence during forty years not a
single spark had escaped, because it was not yet lighted up.
  I was really transformed; my friends and acquaintance scarcely
knew me. I was no longer that timid, and rather bashful than modest
man, who neither dared to present himself, nor utter a word; whom a
single pleasantry disconcerted, and whose face was covered with a
blush the moment his eyes met those of a woman. I became bold,
haughty, intrepid, with a confidence the more firm, as it was
simple, and resided in my soul rather than in my manner. The
contempt with which my profound meditations had inspired me for the
manners, maxims and prejudices of the age in which I lived, rendered
me proof against the raillery of those by whom they were possessed,
and I crushed their little pleasantries with a sentence, as I would
have crushed an insect with my fingers. What a change! All Paris
repeated the severe and acute sarcasms of the same man who, two
years before, and ten years afterwards, knew not how to find what he
had to say, nor the word he ought to employ. Let the situation in
the world the most contrary to my natural disposition be sought after,
and this will be found. Let one of the short moments of my life in
which I became another man, and ceased to be myself, be recollected,
this also will be found in the time of which I speak; but, instead
of continuing only six days, or six weeks, it lasted almost six years,
and would perhaps still continue, but for the particular circumstances
which caused it to cease, and restored me to nature, above which I had
wished to soar.
  The beginning of this change took place as soon as I had quitted
Paris, and the sight of the vices of that city no longer kept up the
indignation with which it had inspired me. I no sooner had lost
sight of men than I ceased to despise them, and once removed from
those who designed me evil, my hatred against them no longer
existed. My heart, little fitted for hatred, pitied their misery,
and even their wickedness. This situation, more pleasing but less
sublime, soon allayed the ardent enthusiasm by which I had so long
been transported; and I insensibly, almost to myself even, again
became fearful, complaisant and timid; in a word, the same
Jean-Jacques I before had been.
  Had this resolution gone no further than restoring me to myself, all
would have been well; but unfortunately it rapidly carried me away
to the other extreme. From that moment my mind in agitation passed the
line of repose, and its oscillations, continually renewed, have
never permitted it to remain here. I must enter into some detail of
this second revolution; terrible and fatal era, of a fate unparalleled
amongst mortals.
  We were but three persons in our retirement; it was therefore
natural our intimacy should be increased by leisure and solitude. This
was the case between Theresa and myself. We passed in conversations in
the shade the most charming and delightful hours, more so than any I
had hitherto enjoyed. She seemed to taste of this sweet intercourse
more than I had until then observed her to do; she opened her heart,
and communicated to me, relative to her mother and family, things
she had had resolution enough to conceal for a great length of time.
Both had received from Madam Dupin numerous presents, made them on
my account, and mostly for me, but which the cunning old woman, to
prevent my being angry, had appropriated to her own use and that of
her other children, without suffering Theresa to have the least share,
strongly forbidding her to say a word to me of the matter: an order
the poor girl had obeyed with an incredible exactness.
  But another thing which surprised me more than this had done, was
the discovery that besides the private conversations Diderot and Grimm
had frequently had with both to endeavor to detach them from me, in
which, by means of the resistance of Theresa, they had not been able
to succeed, they had afterwards had frequent conferences with the
mother, the subject of which was a secret to the daughter. However,
she knew little presents had been made, and that there were mysterious
goings backward and forward, the motive of which was entirely
unknown to her. When we left Paris, Madam le Vasseur had long been
in the habit of going to see Grimm twice or thrice a month, and
continuing with him for hours together, in conversation so secret that
the servant was always sent out of the room.
  I judged this motive to be of the same nature with the project
into which they had attempted to make the daughter enter, by promising
to procure her and her mother, by means of Madam d'Epinay, a salt
huckster's license, or a snuff-shop; in a word, by tempting her with
the allurements of gain. They had been told that, as I was not in a
situation to do anything for them, I could not, on their account, do
anything for myself. As in all this I saw nothing but good intentions,
I was not absolutely displeased with them for it. The mystery was
the only thing which gave me pain, especially on the part of the old
woman, who moreover daily became more parasitical and flattering
towards me. This, however, did not prevent her from reproaching her
daughter in private with telling me everything, and loving me too
much, observing to her she was a fool and would at length be made a
dupe.
  This woman possessed, to a supreme degree, the art of multiplying
the presents made her, by concealing from one what she received from
another, and from me what she received from all. I could have pardoned
her avarice, but it was impossible I should forgive her dissimulation.
What could she have to conceal from me whose happiness she knew
principally consisted in that of herself and her daughter? What I
had done for the daughter I had done for myself, but the services I
rendered the mother merited on her part some acknowledgement. She
ought, at least, to have thought herself obliged for them to her
daughter, and to have loved me for the sake of her by whom I was
already beloved. I had raised her from the lowest state of
wretchedness; she received from my hands the means of subsistence, and
was indebted to me for her acquaintance with the persons from whom she
found means to reap considerable benefit. Theresa had long supported
her by her industry, and now maintained her with my bread. She owed
everything to this daughter, for whom she had done nothing, and her
other children, to whom she had given marriage portions, and on
whose account she had ruined herself, far from giving her the least
aid, devoured her substance and mine. I thought that in such a
situation she ought to consider me as her only friend and most sure
protector, and that, far from making of my own affairs a secret to me,
and conspiring against me in my house, it was her duty faithfully to
acquaint me with everything in which I was interested, when this
came to her knowledge before it did to mine. In what light, therefore,
could I consider her false and mysterious conduct? What could I
think of the sentiments with which she endeavored to inspire her
daughter? What monstrous ingratitude was hers, to endeavor to
instill it into her from whom I expected my greatest consolation?
  These reflections at length alienated my affections from this woman,
and to such a degree that I could no longer look upon her but with
contempt. I nevertheless continued to treat with respect the mother of
the friend of my bosom, and in everything to show her almost the
reverence of a son; but I must confess I could not remain long with
her without pain, and that I never knew how to bear constraint.
  This is another short moment of my life, in which I approached
near to happiness without being able to attain it, and this by no
fault of my own. Had the mother been of a good disposition we all
three should have been happy to the end of our days; the longest liver
only would have been to be pitied. Instead of which, the reader will
see the course things took, and judge whether or not it was in my
power to change it.
  Madam de Vasseur, who perceived I had got more full possession of
the heart of Theresa, and that she had lost ground with her,
endeavored to regain it; and, instead of striving to restore herself
to my good opinion by the mediation of her daughter, attempted to
alienate her affections from me. One of the means she employed was
to call her family to her aid. I had begged Theresa not to invite
any of her relations to the Hermitage, and she had promised me she
would not. These were sent for in my absence, without consulting
her, and she was afterwards prevailed upon to promise not to say
anything of the matter. After the first step was taken all the rest
were easy. When once we make a secret of anything to the person we
love, we soon make little scruple of doing it in everything; the
moment I was at the Chevrette the Hermitage was full of people who
sufficiently amused themselves. A mother has always great power over a
daughter of a mild disposition; yet notwithstanding all the old
woman could do, she was never able to prevail upon Theresa to enter
into her views, nor to persuade her to join in the league against
me. For her part, she resolved upon doing it forever, and seeing on
one side her daughter and myself, who were in a situation to live, and
that was all; on the other, Diderot, Grimm, D'Holbach and Madam
d'Epinay, who promised great things, and gave some little ones, she
could not conceive it was possible to be in the wrong with the wife of
a farmer-general and a baron. Had I been more clear sighted, I
should from this moment have perceived I nourished a serpent in my
bosom. But my blind confidence, which nothing had yet diminished,
was such that I could not imagine she wished to injure the person
she ought to love. Though I saw numerous conspiracies formed on
every side, all I complain of was the tyranny of persons who called
themselves my friends, and who, as it seemed, would force me to be
happy in the manner they should point out, and not in that I had
chosen for myself.
  Although Theresa refused to join in the confederacy with her mother,
she afterwards kept her secret. For this her motive was commendable,
although I will not determine whether she did it well or ill. Two
women, who have secrets between them, love to prattle together; this
attracted them towards each other, and Theresa, by dividing herself,
sometimes let me feet I was alone; for I could no tonger consider as a
society that which we all three formed.
  I now felt the neglect I had been guilty of during the first years
of our connection, in not taking advantage of the docility with
which her love inspired her, to improve her talents and give her
knowledge, which, by more closely connecting us in our retirement
would agreeably have filled up her time and my own, without once
suffering us to perceive the length of a private conversation. Not
that this was ever exhausted between us, or that she seemed
disgusted with our walks; but we had not a sufficient number of
ideas common to both to make ourselves a great store, and we could not
incessantly talk of our future projects which were confined to those
of enjoying the pleasure of life. The objects around us inspired me
with reflections beyond the reach of her comprehension. An
attachment of twelve years' standing had no longer need of words: we
were too well acquainted with each other to have any new knowledge
to acquire in that respect. The resource of puns, jests, gossiping and
scandal, was all that remained. In solitude especially is it, that the
advantage of living with a person who knows how to think is
particularly felt. I wanted not this resource to amuse myself with
her; but she would have stood in need of it to have always found
amusement with me. The worst of all was our being obliged to hold
our conversations when we could; her mother, who become importunate,
obliged me to watch for opportunities to do it. I was under constraint
in my own house: this is saying everything; the air of love was
prejudicial to good friendship. We had an intimate intercourse without
living in intimacy.
  The moment I thought I perceived that Theresa sometimes sought for a
pretext to elude the walks I proposed to her, I ceased to invite her
to accompany me, without being displeased with her for not finding
in them so much amusement as I did. Pleasure is not a thing which
depends upon the will. I was sure of her heart, and the possession
of this was all I desired. As long as my pleasures were hers, I tasted
of them with her; when this ceased to be the case I preferred her
contentment to my own.
  In this manner it was that, half deceived in my expectation, leading
a life after my own heart, in a residence I had chosen with a person
who was dear to me, I at length found myself almost alone. What I
still wanted prevented me from enjoying what I had. With respect to
happiness and enjoyment, everything or nothing, was what was necessary
to me. The reason of these observations will hereafter appear. At
present I return to the thread of my narrative.
  I imagined that I possessed treasures in the manuscripts given me by
the Comte de Saint-Pierre. On examination I found they were a little
more than the collection of the printed works of his uncle, with notes
and corrections by his own hand, and a few other trifling fragments
which had not yet been published. I confirmed myself by these moral
writings in the idea I had conceived from some of his letters, shown
me by Madam de Crequi, that he had more sense and ingenuity than at
first I had imagined; but after a careful examination of his political
works, I discerned nothing but superficial notions, and projects
that were useful but impracticable, in consequence of the idea from
which the author never could depart, that men conducted themselves
by their sagacity rather than by their passions. The high opinion he
had of the knowledge of the moderns had made him adopt this false
principle of improved reason, the basis of all the institutions he
proposed, and the source of his political sophisms. This extraordinary
man, an honor to the age in which he lived, and to the human
species, and perhaps the only person, since the creation of mankind,
whose sole passion was that of reason, wandered in all his systems
from error to error, by attempting to make men like himself, instead
of taking them as they were, are, and will continue to be. He
labored for imaginary beings, while he thought himself employed for
the benefit of his contemporaries.
  All these things considered, I was rather embarrassed as to the form
I should give to my work. To suffer the author's visions to pass was
doing nothing useful; fully to refute them would have been unpolite,
as the care of revising and publishing his manuscripts, which I had
accepted, and even requested, had been intrusted to me; this trust had
imposed on me the obligation of treating the author honorably. I at
length concluded upon that which to me appeared the most decent,
judicious, and useful. This was to give separately my own ideas and
those of the author, and, for this purpose, to enter into his views,
to set them in a new light, to amplify, extend them, and spare nothing
which might contribute to present them in all their excellence.
  My work therefore was to be composed of two parts absolutely
distinct: one, to explain, in the manner I have just mentioned, the
different projects of the author; in the other, which was not to
appear until the first had had its effect, I should have given my
opinion upon these projects which I confess might sometimes have
exposed them to the fate of the sonnet of the misanthrope. At the head
of the whole was to have been the life of the author. For this I had
collected some good materials, and which I flattered myself I should
not spoil in making use of them. I had been a little acquainted with
the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, in his old age, and the veneration I had for
his memory warranted to me, upon the whole, that the comte would not
be dissatisfied with the manner in which I should have treated his
relation.
  I made my first essay on the Perpetual Peace, the greatest and
most elaborate of all the works which composed the collection; and
before I abandoned myself to my reflections I had the courage to
read everything the abbe had written upon this fine subject, without
once suffering myself to be disgusted either by his slowness or
repetitions. The public has seen the extract, on which account I
have nothing to say upon the subject. My opinion of it has been
printed, nor do I know that it ever will be; however, it was written
at the same time the extract was made. From this I passed to the
Polysynodie, or Plurality of Councils; a work written under the regent
to favor the administration he had chosen, and which caused the Abbe
de Saint Pierre to be expelled from the academy, on account of some
remarks unfavorable to the preceding administration, and with which
the Duchess of Maine and the Cardinal de Polignac were displeased. I
completed this work as I did the former, with an extract and
remarks; but I stopped here without intending to continue the
undertaking which I ought never to have begun.
  The reflection which induced me to give it up naturally presents
itself, and it was astonishing I had not made it sooner. Most of the
writings of the Abbe de Saint Pierre were either observations, or
contained observations, on some parts of the government of France, and
several of these were of so free a nature, that it was happy for him
he had made them with impunity. But in the offices of all the
ministers of state the Abbe de Saint Pierre had ever been considered
as a kind of preacher rather than a real politician, and he was
suffered to say what he pleased, because it appeared that nobody
listened to him. Had I procured him readers the case would have been
different. He was a Frenchman, and I was not one; and by repeating his
censures, although in his own name. I exposed myself to be asked,
rather rudely, but without injustice, what it was with which I
meddled. Happily before I proceeded any further, I perceived the
hold I was about to give the government against me, and I
immediately withdrew. I knew that, living alone in the midst of men
more powerful than myself, I never could by any means whatever be
sheltered from the injury they chose to do me. There was but one thing
which depended upon my own efforts: this was, to observe such a line
of conduct that whenever they chose to make me feel the weight of
authority they could not do it without being unjust. The maxim which
induced me to decline proceeding with the works of the Abbe de Saint
Pierre, has frequently made me give up projects I had much more at
heart. People who are always ready to construe adversity into a crime,
would be much surprised were they to know the pains I have taken, that
during my misfortunes it might never with truth be said of me, Thou
hast well deserved them.
  After having given up the manuscript, I remained some time without
determining upon the work which should succeed it, and this interval
of inactivity was destructive, by permitting me to turn my reflections
on myself, for want of another object to engage my attention. I had no
project for the future which could amuse my imagination. It was not
even possible to form any, as my situation was precisely that in which
all my desires were united. I had not another to conceive, and yet
there was a void in my heart. This state was the more cruel, as I
saw no other that was to be preferred to it. I had fixed my most
tender affections upon a person who made me a return of her own. I
lived with her without constraint, and, so to speak, at discretion.
Notwithstanding this, a secret grief of mind never quitted me for a
moment, either when she was present or absent. In possessing
Theresa, I still perceived she wanted something to her happiness;
and the sole idea of my not being everything to her had such an effect
upon my mind that she was next to nothing to me.
  I had friends of both sexes, to whom I was attached by the purest
friendship and most perfect esteem; I depended upon a real return on
their part, and a doubt of their sincerity never entered my mind;
yet this friendship was more tormenting than agreeable to me, by their
obstinate perseverance, and even by their affectation, in opposing
my taste, inclinations, and manner of living; and this to such a
degree, that the moment I seemed to desire a thing which interested
myself only, and depended not upon them, they immediately joined their
efforts to oblige me to renounce it. This continued desire to
control me in all my wishes, the more unjust, as I did not so much
as make myself acquainted with theirs, became so cruelly oppressive,
that I never received one of their letters without feeling a certain
terror as I opened it, and which was but too well justified by the
contents. I thought being treated like a child by persons younger than
myself, and who, of themselves, stood in great need of the advice they
so prodigally bestowed on me was too much: "Love me," said I to
them, "as I love you, but, in every other respect, let my affairs be
as indifferent to you, as yours are to me: this is all I ask." If they
granted me one of these two requests, it was not the latter.
  I had a retired residence in a charming solitude, was master of my
own house, and could live in it in the manner I thought proper,
without being controlled by any person. This habitation imposed on
me duties agreeable to discharge, but which were indispensable. My
liberty was precarious. In a greater state of subjection than a person
at the command of another, it was my duty to be so by inclination.
When I arose in the morning, I never could say to myself, I will
employ this day as I think proper. And, moreover, besides my being
subject to obey the call of Madam d'Epinay, I was exposed to the still
more disagreeable importunities of the public and chance comers. The
distance I was at from Paris did not prevent crowds of idlers, not
knowing how to spend their time, from daily breaking in upon me,
and, without the least scruple, freely disposing of mine. When I least
expected visitors I was unmercifully assailed by them, and I seldom
made a plan for the agreeable employment of the day that was not
counteracted by the arrival of some stranger.
  In short, finding no real enjoyment in the midst of the pleasures
I had been most desirous to obtain, I, by sudden mental transitions,
returned in imagination to the serene days of my youth, and
sometimes exclaimed with a sigh: "Ah! this is not Les Charmettes!"
  The recollection of the different periods of my life led me to
reflect upon that at which I was arrived, and I found I was already on
the decline, a prey to painful disorders, and imagined I was
approaching the end of my days without having tasted, in all its
plenitude, scarcely any one of the pleasures after which my heart
had so much thirsted, or having given scope to the lively sentiments I
felt it had in reserve. I had not favored even that intoxicating
voluptuousness with which my mind was richly stored, and which, for
want of an object, was always compressed, and never exhaled but by
signs.
  How was it possible that, with a mind naturally expansive, I, with
whom to live was to love, should not hitherto have found a friend
entirely devoted to me; a real friend: I who felt myself so capable of
being such a friend to another? How can it be accounted for that
with such warm affections, such combustible senses, and a heart wholly
made up of love, I had not once, at least, felt its flame for a
determinate object? Tormented by the want of loving, without ever
having been able to satisfy it, I perceived myself approaching the eve
of old age, and hastening on to death without having lived.
  These melancholy but affecting recollections led me to others which,
although accompanied with regret, were not wholly unsatisfactory. I
thought something I had not yet received was still due to me from
destiny.
  To what end was I born with exquisite faculties? To suffer them to
remain unemployed? The sentiment of conscious merit, which made me
consider myself as suffering injustice, was some kind of reparation,
and caused me to shed tears which with pleasure I suffered to flow.
  These were my meditations during the finest season of the year, in
the month of June, in cool shades, to the songs of the nightingale,
and the warbling of brooks. Everything concurred in plunging me into
that too seducing state of indolence for which I was born, but from
which my austere manner, proceeding from a long effervescence,
should forever have delivered me. I unfortunately recollected the
dinner of the Chateau de Toune, and my meeting with the two charming
girls in the same season, in places much resembling that in which I
then was. The remembrance of these circumstances, which the
innocence that accompanied them rendered to me still more dear,
brought several others of the nature to my recollection. I presently
saw myself surrounded by all the objects which, in my youth, had given
me emotion. Mademoiselle Galley, Mademoiselle de Graffenried,
Mademoiselle de Breil, Madam Basile, Madam de Larnage, my pretty
scholars, and even the bewitching Zulietta, whom my heart could not
forget. I found myself in the midst of a seraglio of houris of my
old acquaintance, for whom the most lively inclination was not new
to me. My blood became inflamed, my head turned, notwithstanding my
hair was almost gray, and the grave citizen of Geneva, the austere
Jean-Jacques, at forty-five years of age, again became the fond
shepherd. The intoxication, with which my mind was seized, although
sudden and extravagant, was so strong and lasting, that, to enable
me to recover from it, nothing less than the unforeseen and terrible
crisis it brought on was necessary.
  This intoxication, to whatever degree it was carried, went not so
far as to make me forget my age and situation, to flatter me that I
could still inspire love, nor to make me attempt to communicate the
devouring flame by which ever since my youth I had felt my heart in
vain consumed. For this I did not hope; I did not even desire it. I
knew the season of love was past; I knew too well in what contempt the
ridiculous pretensions of superannuated gallants were held, ever to
add one to the number, and I was not a man to become an impudent
coxcomb in the decline of life, after having been so little such
during the flower of my age. Besides, as a friend to peace, I should
have been apprehensive of domestic dissensions; and I too sincerely
loved Theresa to expose her to the mortification of seeing me
entertain for others more lively sentiments than those with which
she inspired me for herself.
  What step did I take upon this occasion? My reader will already have
guessed it, if he has taken the trouble to pay the least attention
to my narrative. The impossibility of attaining real beings threw me
into the regions of chimera, and seeing nothing in existence worthy of
my delirium, I sought food for it in the ideal world, which my
imagination quickly peopled with beings after my own heart. This
resource never came more apropos, nor was it ever so fertile. In my
continual ecstasy I intoxicated my mind with the most delicious
sentiments that ever entered the heart of man. Entirely forgetting the
human species, I formed to myself societies of perfect beings, whose
virtues were as celestial as their beauty, tender and faithful
friends, such as I never found here below. I became so fond of soaring
in the empyrean, in the midst of the charming objects with which I was
surrounded, that I thus passed hours and days without perceiving it;
and, losing the remembrance of all other things, I scarcely had
eaten a morsel in haste before I was impatient to make my escape and
run to regain my groves. When ready to depart for the enchanted world,
I saw arrive wretched mortals who came to detain me upon earth, I
could neither conceal nor moderate my vexation; and no longer master
of myself, I gave them so uncivil a reception, that it might justly be
termed brutal. This tended to confirm my reputation as a
misanthrope, from the very cause which, could the world have read my
heart, should have acquired me one of a nature directly opposite.
  In the midst of my exaltation I was pulled down like a paper kite,
and restored to my proper place by means of a smart attack of my
disorder. I recurred to the only means that had before given me
relief, and thus made a truce with my angelic amours; for besides that
it seldom happens that a man is amorous when he suffers, my
imagination, which is animated in the country and beneath the shade of
trees, languishes and becomes extinguished in a chamber, and under the
joists of a ceiling. I frequently regretted that there existed no
dryads; it would certainly have been amongst these that I should
have fixed my attachment.
  Other domestic broils came at the same time to increase my
chagrin. Madam le Vasseur, while making me the finest compliments in
the world, alienated from me her daughter as much as she possibly
could. I received letters from my late neighborhood, informing me that
the good old lady had secretly contracted several debts in the name of
Theresa, to whom these became known, but of which she had never
mentioned to me a word. The debts to be paid hurt me much less than
the secret that had been made of them. How could she, from whom I
had never had a secret, have one from me? Is it possible to
dissimulate with persons whom we love? The Coterie Holbachique, who
found I never made a journey to Paris, began seriously to be afraid
I was happy and satisfied in the country, and madman enough to
reside there.
  Hence the cabals by which attempts were made to recall me indirectly
to the city. Diderot, who did not immediately wish to show himself,
began by detaching from me De Leyre, whom I had brought acquainted
with him, and who received and transmitted to me the impressions
Diderot chose to give without suspecting to what end they were
directed.
  Everything seemed to concur in withdrawing me from my charming and
mad reverie. I was not recovered from the late attack I had when I
received the copy of the poem on the destruction of Lisbon, which I
imagined to be sent by the author. This made it necessary I should
write to him and speak of his composition. I did so, and my letter was
a long time afterwards printed without my consent, as I shall
hereafter have occasion to remark.
  Struck by seeing this poor man overwhelmed, if I may so speak,
with prosperity and honor, bitterly exclaiming against the miseries of
this life, and finding everything to be wrong, I formed the mad
project of making him turn his attention to himself, and of proving to
him that everything was right. Voltaire, while he appeared to
believe in God, never really believed in anything but the devil; since
his pretended deity is a malicious being, who, according to him, had
no pleasure but in evil. The glaring absurdity of this doctrine is
particularly disgusting from a man enjoying the greatest prosperity;
who, from the bosom of happiness, endeavors, by the frightful and
cruel image of all the calamities from which he is exempt, to reduce
his fellow creatures to despair. I, who had a better right than he
to calculate and weigh all the evils of human life, impartially
examined them, and proved to him that of all possible evils there
was not one to be attributed to Providence, and which had not its
source rather in the abusive use man made of his faculties than in
nature. I treated him, in this letter, with the greatest respect and
delicacy possible. Yet, knowing his self-love to be extremely
irritable, I did not send the letter immediately to himself, but to
Doctor Tronchin, his physician and friend, with full power either to
give it him or destroy it. Voltaire informed me in a few lines that
being ill, having likewise the care of a sick person, he postponed his
answer until some future day, and said not a word upon the subject.
Tronchin, when he sent me the letter, inclosed it in another, in which
he expressed but very little esteem for the person from whom he
received it.
  I have never published, nor even shown, either of these two letters,
not liking to make a parade of such little triumphs; but the originals
are in my collections. Since that time Voltaire has published the
answer he promised me, but which I never received. This is the novel
of Candide, of which I cannot speak because I have not read it.
  All these interruptions ought to have cured me of my fantastic
amours, and they were perhaps the means offered me by Heaven to
prevent their destructive consequences; but my evil genius
prevailed, and I had scarcely begun to go out before my heart, my
head, and my feet returned to the same paths. I say the same in
certain respects; for my ideas, rather less exalted, remained this
time upon earth, but yet were busied in making so exquisite a choice
of all that was to be found there amiable of every kind, that it was
not much less chimerical than the imaginary world I had abandoned.
  I figured to myself love and friendship, the two idols of my
heart, under the most ravishing images. I amused myself in adorning
them with all the charms of the sex I had always adored. I imagined
two female friends rather than two of my own sex, because, although
the example be more rare, it is also more amiable. I endowed them with
different characters, but analogous to their connection, with two
faces, not perfectly beautiful, but according to my taste, and
animated with benevolence and sensibility. I made one brown and the
other fair, one lively and the other languishing, one wise and the
other weak, but of so amiable a weakness that it seemed to add a charm
to virtue. I gave to one of the two a lover, of whom the other was the
tender friend, and even something more, but I did not admit either
rivalry, quarrels, or jealousy: because every painful sentiment is
painful to me to imagine, and I was unwilling to tarnish this
delightful picture by anything which was degrading to nature.
Smitten with my two charming models, I drew my own portrait in the
lover and the friend, as much as it was possible to do it; but I
made him young and amiable, giving him, at the same time, the
virtues and the defects which I felt in myself.
  That I might place my characters in a residence proper for them, I
successively passed in review the most beautiful places I had seen
in my travels. But I found no grove sufficiently delightful, no
landscape that pleased me. The valleys of Thessaly would have
satisfied me had I but once had a sight of them; but my imagination,
fatigued with invention, wished for some real place which might
serve it as a point to rest upon, and create in me an illusion with
respect to the real existence of the inhabitants I intended to place
there. I thought a good while upon the Borromean Islands, the
delightful prospect of which had transported me, but I found in them
too much art and ornament for my lovers. I however wanted a lake,
and I concluded by making choice of that about which my heart has
never ceased to wander. I fixed myself upon that part of the banks
of this lake where my wishes have long since placed my residence in
the imaginary happiness to which fate has confined me. The native
place of my poor mamma had still for me a charm. The contrast of the
situations, the richness and variety of the sites, the magnificence,
the majesty of the whole, which ravishes the senses, affects the
heart, and elevates the mind, determined me to give it the preference,
and I placed my young pupils at Vervey. This is what I imagined at the
first sketch; the rest was not added until afterwards.
  I for a long time confined myself to this vague plan, because it was
sufficient to fill my imagination with agreeable objects, and my heart
with sentiments in which it delighted. These fictions, by frequently
presenting themselves, at length gained a consistence, and took in
my mind a determined form. I then had an inclination to express upon
paper some of the situations fancy presented to me, and,
recollecting everything I had felt during my youth, thus, in some
measure, gave an object to that desire of loving, which I had never
been able to satisfy, and by which I felt myself consumed.
  I first wrote a few incoherent letters, and when I afterwards wished
to give them connection, I frequently found a difficulty in doing
it. What is scarcely credible, although most strictly true, is my
having written the first two parts almost wholly in this manner,
without having any plan formed, and not foreseeing I should one day be
tempted to make it a regular work. For this reason the two parts
afterwards formed of materials not prepared for the place in which
they are disposed, are full of unmeaning expressions not found in
the others.
  In the midst of my reveries I had a visit from Madam d'Houdetot, the
first she had ever made me, but which unfortunately was not the
last, as will hereafter appear. The Comtesse d'Houdetot was the
daughter of the late M. de Bellegarde, a farmer-general, sister to
M. d'Epinay, and Messieurs de Lalive and De la Briche, both of whom
have since been introductors to ambassadors. I have spoken of the
acquaintance I made with her before she was married: since that
event I had not seen her, except at the fetes of La Chevrette, with
Madam d'Epinay, her sister-in-law. Having frequently passed several
days with her, both at La Chevrette and Epinay, I always thought her
amiable, and that she seemed to be my well-wisher. She was fond of
walking with me; we were both good walkers, and the conversation
between us was inexhaustible. However, I never went to see her in
Paris, although she had several times requested and solicited me to do
it. Her connections with M. de St. Lambert, with whom I began to be
intimate, rendered her more interesting to me, and it was to bring
me some account of that friend who was, I believe, then at Mahon, that
she came to see me at the Hermitage.
  This visit had something of the appearance of the beginning of a
romance. She lost her way. Her coachman, quitting the road, which
turned to the right, attempted to cross straight over from the mill of
Clairveaux to the Hermitage: her carriage struck in a quagmire in
the bottom of the valley, and she got out and walked the rest of the
road. Her delicate shoes were soon worn through; she sank into the
dirt, her servants had the greatest difficulty in extricating her, and
she at length arrived at the Hermitage in boots, making the place
resound with her laughter, in which I most heartily joined. She had to
change everything. Theresa provided her with what was necessary, and I
prevailed upon her to forget her dignity and partake of a rustic
coalition, with which she seemed highly satisfied. It was late, and
her stay was short; but the interview was so mirthful that it
pleased her, and she seemed disposed to return. She did not however
put this project into execution until the next year: but, alas! the
delay was not favorable to me in anything.
  I passed the autumn in an employment no person would suspect me of
undertaking: this was guarding the fruit of M. d'Epinay. The Hermitage
was the reservoir of the waters of the park of the Chevrette; there
was a garden walled round and planted with espaliers and other
trees, which produced M. d'Epinay more fruit than his kitchen-garden
at the Chevrette, although three-fourths of it were stolen from him.
That I might not be a guest entirely useless, I took upon myself the
direction of the garden and the inspection of the conduct of the
gardener. Everything went on well until the fruit season, but as
this became ripe, I observed that it disappeared without knowing in
what manner it was disposed of. The gardener assured me it was the
dormice which ate it all. I destroyed a great number of these animals,
notwithstanding which the fruit still diminished. I watched the
gardener's motions so narrowly, that I found he was the great
dormouse. He lodged at Montmorency, whence he came in the night with
his wife and children to take away the fruit he had concealed in the
daytime, and which he sold in the market at Paris as publicly as if he
had brought it from a garden of his own. This wretch whom I loaded
with kindness, whose children were clothed by Theresa, and whose
father, who was a beggar, I almost supported, robbed us with as much
ease as effrontery, not one of the three being sufficiently vigilant
to prevent him: and one night he emptied my cellar.
  Whilst he seemed to address himself to me only I suffered
everything, but being desirous of giving an account of the fruit, I
was obliged to declare by whom a great part of it had been stolen.
Madam d'Epinay desired me to pay and discharge him, and look out for
another; I did so. As this rascal rambled about the Hermitage in the
night, armed with a thick club staff with an iron ferrule, and
accompanied by other villains like himself, to relieve the governesses
from their fears, I made his successor sleep in the house with us; and
this not being sufficient to remove their apprehensions, I sent to ask
M. d'Epinay for a musket, which I kept in the chamber of the gardener,
with a charge not to make use of it except an attempt was made to
break open the door or scale the walls of the garden, and to fire
nothing but powder, meaning only to frighten the thieves. This was
certainly the least precaution a man indisposed could take for the
common safety of himself and family, having to pass the winter in
the midst of a wood, with two timid women. I also procured a little
dog to serve as a sentinel. De Leyre coming to see me about this time,
I related to him my situation, and we laughed together at my
military apparatus. At his return to Paris he wished to amuse
Diderot with the story, and by this means the Coterie d'Holbachique
learned that I was seriously resolved to pass the winter at the
Hermitage. This perseverance, of which they had not imagined me to
be capable, disconcerted them, and, until they could think of some
other means of making my residence disagreeable to me, they sent back,
by means of Diderot, the same De Leyre, who, though at first he had
thought my precautions quite natural, now pretended to discover that
they were inconsistent with my principles, and styled them more than
ridiculous in his letters, in which he overwhelmed me with
pleasantries sufficiently bitter and satirical to offend me had I been
the least disposed to take offense. But at that time being full of
tender and affectionate sentiments, and not suspectible of any
other, I perceived in his biting sarcasms nothing more than a jest,
and believed him only jocose when others would have thought him mad.
  By my care and vigilance I guarded the garden so well, that,
although there had been but little fruit that year the produce was
triple that of the preceding years; it is true, I spared no pains to
preserve it, and I went so far as to escort what I sent to the
Chevrette and to Epinay, and to carry baskets of it myself. The "aunt"
and I carried one of these, which was so heavy that we were obliged to
rest at every dozen steps, and when we arrived with it we were quite
wet with perspiration.
  As soon as the bad season began to confine me to the house, I wished
to return to my indolent amusements, but this I found impossible. I
had everywhere two charming female friends before my eyes, their
friend, everything by which they were surrounded, the country they
inhabited, and the objects created or embellished for them by my
imagination. I was no longer myself for a moment, my delirium never
left me. After many useless efforts to banish all fictions from my
mind, they at length seduced me, and my future endeavors were confined
to giving them order and coherence, for the purpose of converting them
into a species of novel.
  What embarrassed me most was, that I had contradicted myself so
openly and fully. After the severe principles I had just so publicly
asserted, after the austere maxims I had so loudly preached, and my
violent invectives against books, which breathed nothing but
effeminacy and love, could anything be less expected or more
extraordinary, than to see me, with my own hand, write my name in
the list of authors of those books, I had so severely censured? I felt
this incoherence in all its extent. I reproached myself with it, I
blushed at it and was vexed; but all this could not bring me back to
reason. Completely overcome, I was at all risks obliged to submit, and
to resolve to brave the What will the world say of it? Except only
deliberating afterwards whether or not I should show my work, for I
did not yet suppose should ever determine to publish it.
  This resolution taken, I entirely abandoned myself to my reveries,
and, by frequently resolving these in my mind, formed with them the
kind of plan of which the execution has been seen. This was
certainly the greatest advantage that could be drawn from my
follies; the love of good which has never once been effaced from my
heart, turned them towards useful objects, the moral of which might
have produced its good effects. My voluptuous descriptions would
have lost all their graces, had they been devoid of the coloring of
innocence.
  A weak girl is an object of pity, whom love may render
interesting, and who frequently is not therefore the less amiable; but
who can see without indignation the manners of the age; and what is
more disgusting than the pride of an unchaste wife, who, openly
treading under foot every duty, pretends that her husband ought to
be grateful for her unwillingness to suffer herself to be taken in the
fact? Perfect beings are not in nature, and their examples are not
near enough to us. But whoever says that the description of a young
person born with good dispositions, and a heart equally tender and
virtuous, who suffers herself, when a girl, to be overcome by love,
and when a woman, has resolution enough to conquer in her turn, is
upon the whole scandalous and useless, is a liar and a hypocrite;
hearken not to him.
  Besides this object of morality and conjugal chastity which is
radically connected with all social order, I had in view one more
secret in behalf of concord and public peace, a greater, and perhaps
more important object in itself, at least for the moment for which
it was created. The storm brought on by the Encyclopedie, far from
being appeased, was at this time at its height. Two parties
exasperated against each other to the last degree of fury soon
resembled enraged wolves, set on for their mutual destruction,
rather than Christians and philosophers, who had a reciprocal wish
to enlighten and convince each other, and lead their brethren to the
way of truth. Perhaps nothing more was wanting to each party than a
few turbulent chiefs, who possessed a little power, to make this
quarrel terminate in a civil war; and God only knows what a civil
war of religion founded on each side upon the most cruel intolerance
would have produced. Naturally an enemy to all spirit of party, I
had freely spoken severe truths to each, of which they had not
listened. I thought of another expedient, which, in my simplicity,
appeared to me admirable: this was to abate their reciprocal hatred by
destroying their prejudices, and showing to each party the virtue
and merit which in the other was worthy of public esteem and
respect. This project, little remarkable for its wisdom, which
supported sincerity in mankind, and whereby I fell into the error with
which I reproached the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, had the success that
was to be expected from it: it drew together and united the parties
for no other purpose than that of crushing the author. Until
experience made me discover my folly, I gave my attention to it with a
zeal worthy of the motive by which I was inspired; and I imagined
the two characters of Wolmar and Julia in an ecstasy, which made me
hope to render them both amiable, and, what is still more, by means of
each other.
  Satisfied with having made a rough sketch of my plan, I returned
to the situations in detail, which I had marked out; and from the
arrangement I gave them resulted the first two parts of the Eloisa,
which I finished during the winter with inexpressible pleasure,
procuring gilt paper to receive a fair copy of them, azure and
silver powder to dry the writing, and blue narrow ribbon to tack my
sheets together; in a word, I thought nothing sufficiently elegant and
delicate for my two charming girls, of whom, like another Pygmalion, I
became madly enamoured. Every evening, by the fireside, I read the two
parts to the governesses. The daughter, without saying a word, was
like myself moved to tenderness, and we mingled our sighs; her mother,
finding there were no compliments, understood nothing of the matter,
remained unmoved, and at the intervals when I was silent always
repeated: "Sir, that is very fine."
  Madam d'Epinay, uneasy at my being alone, in winter, in a solitary
house, in the midst of woods, often sent to inquire after my health. I
never had such real proofs of her friendship for me, to which mine
never more fully answered. It would be wrong in me were not I, among
these proofs, to make special mention of her portrait, which she
sent me, at the same time requesting instructions from me in what
manner she might have mine, painted by La Tour, and which had been
shown at the exhibition. I ought equally to speak of another proof
of her attention to me, which, although it be laughable, is a
feature in the history of my character, on account of the impression
received from it. One day when it froze to an extreme degree, in
opening a packet she had sent me of several things I had desired her
to purchase for me, I found a little under-petticoat of English
flannel, which she told me she had worn, and desired I would make of
it an under-waistcoat.
  This care, more than friendly, appeared to me so tender, and as if
she had stripped herself to clothe me, that in my emotion I repeatedly
kissed, shedding tears at the same time, both the note and the
petticoat. Theresa thought me mad. It is singular that of all the
marks of friendship Madam d'Epinay ever showed me this touched me
the most, and that ever since our rupture I have never recollected
it without being very sensibly affected. I for a long time preserved
her little note, and it would still have been in my possession had not
it shared the fate of my other notes received at the same period.
  Although my disorder then gave me but little respite in winter,
and a part of the interval was employed in seeking relief from pain,
this was still upon the whole the season which since my residence in
France I had passed with most pleasure and tranquillity. During four
or five months, whilst the bad weather sheltered me from the
interruptions of importunate visits, I tasted to a greater degree than
I had ever yet or have since done, of that equally simple and
independent life, the enjoyment of which still made it more
desirable to me; without any other company than the two governesses in
reality, and the two female cousins in idea. It was then especially
that I daily congratulated myself upon the resolution I had had the
good sense to take, unmindful of the clamors of my friends, who were
vexed at seeing me delivered from their tyranny; and when I heard of
the attempt of a madman, when De Leyre and Madam d'Epinay spoke to
me in letters of the trouble and agitation which reigned in Paris, how
thankful was I to Heaven for having placed me at a distance from all
such spectacles of horror and guilt. These would have continued and
increased the bilious humor which the sight of public disorders had
given me; whilst seeing nothing around me in my retirement but gay and
pleasing objects my heart was wholly abandoned to sentiments which
were amiable.
  I remark here with pleasure the course of the last peaceful
moments that were left me. The spring succeeding to this winter, which
had been so calm, developed the germ of the misfortunes I have yet
to describe; in the tissue of which, a like interval, wherein I had
leisure to respite, will not be found.
  I think however, I recollect, that during this interval of peace,
and in the bosom of my solitude, I was not quite undisturbed by the
Holbachiens. Diderot stirred me up some strife, and I am much deceived
if it was not in the course of this winter that the Fils Naturel,*
of which I shall soon have occasion to speak, made its appearance.
Independently of the causes which left me but few papers relative to
that period, those even which I have been able to preserve are not
very exact with respect to dates. Diderot never dated his letters.
Madam d'Epinay and Madam d'Houdetot seldom dated theirs, except the
day of the week, and De Leyre mostly confined himself to the same
rules. When I was desirous of putting these letters in order I was
obliged to supply what was wanting by guessing at dates, so
uncertain that I cannot depend upon them. Unable therefore to fix with
certainty the beginning of these quarrels, I prefer relating in one
subsequent article everything I can recollect concerning them.

  * Natural Son; a Comedy, by Diderot.

  The return of spring had increased my amorous delirium, and in my
melancholy, occasioned by the excess of my transports, I had
composed for the last parts of Eloisa several letters, wherein evident
marks of the rapture in which I wrote them are found. Amongst others I
may quote those from the Elysium, and the excursion upon the lake,
which, if my memory does not deceive me, are at the end of the
fourth part. Whoever, in reading these letters, does not feel his
heart soften and melt into the tenderness by which they were dictated,
ought to lay down the book: nature has refused him the means of
judging of sentiment.
  Precisely at the same time I received a second unforeseen visit from
Madam d'Houdetot, in the absence of her husband, who was captain of
the Gendarmarie, and of her lover, who was also in the service. She
had come to Eaubonne, in the middle of the Valley of Montmorency,
where she had taken a pretty house, from thence she made a new
excursion to the Hermitage. She came on horseback, and dressed in
men's clothes. Although I am not very fond of this kind of masquerade,
I was struck with the romantic appearance she made, and, for once,
it was with love. As this was the first and only time in all my
life, the consequence of which will forever render it terrible to my
remembrance, I must take the permission to enter into some particulars
on the subject.
  The Countess d'Houdetot was nearly thirty years of age, and not
handsome; her face was marked with the smallpox, her complexion
coarse, she was short-sighted, and her eyes were rather round; but she
had fine long black hair, which hung down in natural curls below her
waist; her figure was agreeable, and she was at once both awkward
and graceful in her motions; her wit was natural and pleasing; to this
gayety, heedlessness and ingenuousness were perfectly suited: she
abounded in charming sallies, after which she so little sought, that
they sometimes escaped her lips in spite of herself. She possessed
several agreeable talents, played the harpsichord, danced well, and
wrote pleasing poetry. Her character was angelic- this was founded
upon a sweetness of mind, and except prudence and fortitude, contained
in it every virtue. She was besides so much to be depended upon in all
intercourse, so faithful in society, even her enemies were not under
the necessity of concealing from her their secrets. I mean by her
enemies the men, or rather the women, by whom she was not beloved; for
as to herself she had not a heart capable of hatred, and I am of
opinion this conformity with mine greatly contributed towards
inspiring me with a passion for her. In confidence of the most
intimate friendship, I never heard her speak ill of persons who were
absent, nor even of her sister-in-law. She could neither conceal her
thoughts for any one, nor disguise any of her sentiments, and I am
persuaded she spoke of her lover to her husband, as she spoke of him
to her friends and acquaintance, and to everybody without
distinction of persons. What proved, beyond all manner of doubt, the
purity and sincerity of her nature was, that subject to very
extraordinary absences of mind, and the most laughable
inconsiderateness, she was often guilty of some very imprudent ones
with respect to herself, but never in the least offensive to any
person whatsoever.
  She had been married very young and against her inclinations to
the Comte d'Houdetot, a man of fashion, and a good officer; but a
man who loved play and chicane, who was not very amiable, and whom she
never loved. She found in M. de Saint Lambert all the merit of her
husband, with more agreeable qualities of mind, joined with virtue and
talents. If anything in the manners of the age can be pardoned, it
is an attachment which duration renders more pure, to which its
effects do honor, and which becomes cemented by reciprocal esteem.
It was a little from inclination, as I am disposed to think, but
much more to please Saint Lambert, that she came to see me. He had
requested her to do it, and there was reason to believe the friendship
which began to be established between us would render this society
agreeable to all three. She knew I was acquainted with their
connection, and as she could speak to me without restraint, it was
natural she should find my conversation agreeable. She came; I saw
her; I was intoxicated with love without an object; this
intoxication fascinated my eyes; the object fixed itself upon her. I
saw my Julia in Madam d'Houdetot, and I soon saw nothing but Madam
d'Houdetot, but with all the perfections with which I had just adorned
the idol of my heart. To complete my delirium she spoke to me of Saint
Lambert with a fondness of a passionate lover. Contagious force of
love! while listening to her, and finding myself near her, I was
seized with a delicious trembling which I had never before experienced
when near to any person whatsoever. She spoke, and I felt myself
affected; I thought I was nothing more than interested by her
sentiments, when I perceived I possessed those which were similar; I
drank freely of the poisoned cup, of which I yet tasted nothing more
than the sweetness. Finally, imperceptibly to us both, she inspired me
for herself with all she expressed for her lover. Alas! it was very
late in life, and cruel was it to consume with a passion not less
violent than unfortunate for a woman whose heart was already in the
possession of another.
  Notwithstanding the extraordinary emotions I had felt when near to
her, I did not at first perceive what had happened to me; it was not
until after her departure that, wishing to think of Julia, I was
struck with surprise at being unable to think of anything but Madam
d'Houdetot. Then was it my eyes were opened: I felt my misfortune, and
lamented what had happened, but I did not foresee the consequences.
  I hesitated a long time on the manner in which I should conduct
myself towards her, as if real love left behind it sufficient reason
to deliberate and act accordingly. I had not yet determined upon
this when she unexpectedly returned and found me unprovided. It was
this time, perfectly acquainted with my situation, shame, the
companion of evil, rendered me dumb, and made me tremble in her
presence; I neither dared to open my mouth nor raise my eyes; I was in
an inexpressible confusion which it was impossible she should not
perceive. I resolved to confess to her my troubled state of mind,
and left her to guess the cause whence it proceeded: this was
telling her in terms sufficiently clear.
  Had I been young and amiable, and Madam d'Houdetot, afterwards weak,
I should here blame her conduct; but this was not the case, and I am
obliged to applaud and admire it. The resolution she took was
equally prudent and generous. She could not suddenly break with me
without giving her reasons for it to Saint Lambert, who himself had
desired her to come and see me; this would have exposed two friends to
a rupture, and perhaps a public one, which she wished to avoid. She
had for me esteem and good wishes; she pitied my folly without
encouraging it, and endeavored to restore me to reason. She was glad
to preserve to her lover and herself a friend for whom she had some
respect; and she spoke of nothing with more pleasure than the intimate
and agreeable society we might form between us three the moment I
should become reasonable. She did not always confine herself to
these friendly exhortations, and, in case of need, did not spare me
more severe reproaches, which I had richly deserved.
  I spared myself still less: the moment I was alone I began to
recover; I was more calm after my declaration- love, known to the
person by whom it is inspired, becomes more supportable.
  The forcible manner in which I approached myself with mine ought
to have cured me of it had the thing been possible. What powerful
motives did I not call to my aid to stifle it? My morals, sentiments
and principles; the shame, the treachery and crime, of abusing what
was confided to friendship, and the ridiculousness of burning, at my
age, with the most extravagant passion for an object whose heart was
pre-engaged, and who could neither make me a return, nor least hope;
moreover with a passion which, far from having anything to gain by
constancy, daily became less sufferable.
  We would imagine that the last consideration which ought to have
added weight to all the others, was that whereby I eluded them! What
scruple, thought I, ought I to make of a folly prejudicial to nobody
but myself? Am I then a young man of whom Madam d'Houdetot ought to be
afraid? Would not it be said by my presumptive remorse that, by my
gallantry, manner and dress, I was going to seduce her? Poor
Jean-Jacques, love on at thy ease, in all safety of conscience, and be
not afraid that thy sighs will be prejudicial to Saint Lambert.
  It has been seen that I never was a coxcomb, not even in my youth.
The manner of thinking, of which I have spoken, was according to my
turn of mind, it flattered my passion; this was sufficient to induce
me to abandon myself to it without reserve, and to laugh even at the
impertinent scruple I thought I had made from vanity, rather than from
reason. This is a great lesson for virtuous minds, which vice never
attacks openly; it finds means to surprise them by masking itself with
sophisms, and not unfrequently with a virtue.
  Guilty without remorse, I soon became so without measure; and I
entreat it may be observed in what manner my passion followed my
nature, at length to plunge me into an abyss. In the first place, it
assumed an air of humility to encourage me; and to render me
intrepid it carried this humility even to mistrust. Madam d'Houdetot
incessantly putting me in mind of my duty, without once for a single
moment flattering my folly, treated me with the greatest mildness, and
remained with me upon the footing of the most tender friendship.
This friendship would, I protest, have satisfied my wishes, had I
thought it sincere; but finding it too strong to be real, I took it
into my head that love, so ill-suited to my age and appearance, had
rendered me contemptible in the eyes of Madam d'Houdetot; that this
young mad creature only wished to divert herself with me and my
superannuated passion; that she had communicated this to
Saint-Lambert; and that the indignation caused by my breach of
friendship, having made her lover enter into her views, they were
agreed to turn my head and then to laugh at me. This folly, which at
twenty-six years of age, had made me guilty of some extravagant
behavior to Madam de Larnage, whom I did not know, would have been
pardonable in me at forty-five with Madam d'Houdetot had not I known
that she and her lover were persons of too much uprightness to indulge
themselves in such a barbarous amusement.
  Madam d'Houdetot continued her visits, which I delayed not to
return. She, as well as myself, was fond of walking, and we took
long walks in an enchanting country. Satisfied with loving and
daring to say I loved, I should have been in the most agreeable
situation had not my extravagance spoiled all the charm of it. She, at
first, could not comprehend the foolish pettishness with which I
received her attentions; but my heart, incapable of concealing what
passed in it, did not long leave her ignorant of my suspicions; she
endeavored to laugh at them, but this expedient did not succeed;
transports of rage would have been the consequence, and she changed
her tone. Her compassionate gentleness was invincible; she made me
reproaches, which penetrated my heart; she expressed an inquietude
at my unjust fears, of which I took advantage. I required proofs of
her being in earnest. She perceived there was no other means of
relieving me from my apprehensions. I became pressing: the step was
delicate. It is astonishing, and perhaps without example, that a woman
having suffered herself to be brought to hesitate should have got
herself off so well. She refused me nothing the most tender friendship
could grant; yet she granted me nothing that rendered her
unfaithful, and I had the mortification to see that the disorder
into which her most trifling favors had thrown all my senses had not
the least affect upon hers.
  I have somewhere said, that nothing should be granted to the senses,
when we wish to refuse them anything. To prove how false this maxim
was relative to Madam d'Houdetot and how far she was right to depend
upon her own strength of mind, it would be necessary to enter into the
detail of our long and frequent conversations, and follow them, in
all, their liveliness, during the four months we passed together in an
intimacy almost without example between two friends of different sexes
who contain themselves within the bounds which we never exceeded.
Ah! if I had lived so long without feeling the power of real love,
my heart and senses abundantly paid the arrears. What, therefore,
are the transports we feel with the object of our affections by whom
we are beloved, since the passions of which my idol did not partake
inspired such as I felt?
  But I am wrong in saying Madam d'Houdetot did not partake of the
passion of love; that which I felt was in some measure confined to
myself; yet love was equal on both sides, but not reciprocal. We
were both intoxicated with the passion, she for her lover, and I for
herself; our sighs and delicious tears were mingled together. Tender
confidants of the secrets of each other, there was so great a
similarity in our sentiments that it was impossible they should not
find some common point of union. In the midst of this delicious
intoxication, she never forgot herself for a moment, and I solemnly
protest that, if ever, led away by my senses, I have attempted to
render her unfaithful, I was never really desirous of succeeding.
The vehemence itself of my passion restrained it within bounds. The
duty of self-denial had elevated my mind. The luster of every virtue
adorned in my eyes the idol of my heart; to have soiled their divine
image would have been to destroy it. I might have committed the crime;
it has been a hundred times committed in my heart; but to dishonor
my Sophia! Ah! was this ever possible? No! I have told her a hundred
times it was not. Had I had it in my power to satisfy my desires,
had she consented to commit herself to my discretion, I should, except
in a few moments of delirium, have refused to be happy at the price of
her honor. I loved her too well to wish to possess her.
  The distance from the Hermitage to Eaubonne is almost a league; in
my frequent excursions to it I have sometimes slept there. One evening
after having supped tete-a-tete we went to walk in the garden by a
fine moonlight. At the bottom of the garden is a considerable copse,
through which we passed on our way to a pretty grove ornamented with a
cascade, of which I had given her the idea, and she had procured it to
be executed accordingly.
  Eternal remembrance of innocence and enjoyment! It was in this grove
that, seated by her side upon a seat of turf under an acacia in full
bloom, I found for the emotions of my heart a language worthy of them.
It was the first and only time of my life; but I was sublime: if
everything amiable and seducing with which the most tender and
ardent love can inspire the heart of man can be so called. What
intoxicating tears did I shed upon her knees! how many did I make
her to shed involuntarily! At length in an involuntary transport she
exclaimed: "No, never was man so amiable, nor ever was there one who
loved like you! But your friend Saint Lambert hears us, and my heart
is incapable of loving twice." I exhausted myself with sighs; I
embraced her- what an embrace! But this was all. She had lived alone
for the last six months, that is absent from her husband and lover;
I had seen her almost every day during three months, and love seldom
failed to make a third. We had supped tete-a-tete, we were alone, in
the grove by moonlight, and after two hours of the most lively and
tender conversation, she left this grove at midnight, and the arms
of her lover, as morally and physically pure as she had entered it.
Reader, weigh all these circumstances; I will add nothing more.
  Do not, however, imagine that in this situation my passions left
me as undisturbed as I was with Theresa and mamma. I have already
observed I was this time inspired not only with love, but with love
and all its energy and fury. I will not describe either the
agitations, tremblings, palpitations, convulsionary emotions, nor
faintings of the heart, I continually experienced; these may be judged
of by the effect her image alone made upon me. I have observed the
distance from the Hermitage to Eaubonne was considerable; I went by
the hills of Andilly, which are delightful; I mused, as I walked, on
her whom I was going to see, the charming reception she would give me,
and upon the kiss which awaited me at my arrival. This single kiss,
this pernicious embrace, even before I received it, inflamed my
blood to such a degree as to affect my head, my eyes were dazzled,
my knees trembled, and unable to support me; and I was obliged to stop
and sit down; my whole frame was in inconceivable disorder, and I
was upon the point of fainting. Knowing the danger, I endeavored at
setting out to divert my attention from the object, and think of
something else. I had not proceeded twenty steps before the same
recollection, and all that was the consequence of it, assailed me in
such a manner that it was impossible to avoid them, and in spite of
all my efforts I do not believe I ever made this little excursion
alone with impunity. I arrived at Eaubonne, weak, exhausted, and
scarcely able to support myself. The moment I saw her everything was
repaired; all I felt in her presence was the importunity of an
inexhaustible and useless ardor. Upon the road to Eaubonne there was a
pleasant terrace, called Mont Olympe, at which we sometimes met. I
arrived first, it was proper I should wait for her; but how dear
this waiting cost me! To divert my attention, I endeavored to write
with my pencil billets, which I could have written with the purest
drops of my blood; I never could finish one which was eligible. When
she found a note in the niche upon which we had agreed, all she
learned from the contents was the deplorable state in which I was when
I wrote it. This state and its continuation, during three months of
irritation and self-denial, so exhausted me, that I was several
years before I recovered from it, and at the end of these it left me
an ailment which I shall carry with me, or which will carry me to
the grave. Such was the sole enjoyment of a man of the most
combustible constitution, but who was, at the same time, perhaps,
one of the most timid mortals nature ever produced. Such were the last
happy days I can reckon upon earth; at the end of these began the long
train of evils, in which there will be found but little interruption.
  It has been seen that, during the whole course of my life, my heart,
as transparent as crystal, has never been capable of concealing for
the space of a moment any sentiment in the least lively which had
taken refuge in it. It will therefore be judged whether or not it
was possible for me long to conceal my affection for Madam d'Houdetot.
Our intimacy struck the eyes of everybody, we did not make of it
either a secret or a mystery. It was not of a nature to require any
such precaution, and as Madam d'Houdetot had for me the most tender
friendship with which she did not reproach herself, and I for her an
esteem with the justice of which nobody was better acquainted than
myself; she frank, absent, heedless; I true, awkward, haughty,
impatient and choleric; we exposed ourselves more in deceitful
security than we should have done had we been culpable. We both went
to the Chevrette; we sometimes met there by appointment. We lived
there according to our accustomed manner; walking together every day
talking of our amours, our duties, our friend, and our innocent
projects: all this in the park opposite the apartment of Madam
d'Epinay, under her windows, whence incessantly examining us, and
thinking herself braved, she by her eyes filled her heart with rage
and indignation.
  Women have the art of concealing their anger, especially when it
is great. Madam d'Epinay, violent but deliberate, possessed this art
to an eminent degree. She feigned not to see or suspect anything,
and at the same time that she doubled towards me her cares, attention,
and allurements, she affected to load her sister-in-law with
incivilities and marks of disdain, which she seemingly wished to
communicate to me. It will easily be imagined she did not succeed; but
I was on the rack. Torn by opposite passions, at the same time that
I was sensible of her caresses, I could scarcely contain my anger when
I saw her wanting in good manners to Madam d'Houdetot. The angelic
sweetness of this lady made her endure everything without a complaint,
or even without being offended.
  She was, in fact, so absent, and always so little attentive to these
things, that half the time she did not perceive them.
  I was so taken up with my passion, that, seeing nothing but Sophia
(one of the names of Madam. d'Houdetot), I did not perceive that I was
become the laughing stock of the whole house, and all those who came
to it. The Baron d'Holbach, who never, as I heard of, had been at
the Chevrette, was one of the latter. Had I at that time been as
mistrusful as I am since become, I should strongly have suspected
Madam d'Epinay to have contrived this journey to give the baron the
amusing spectacle of the amorous citizen. But I was then so stupid
that I saw not that even which was glaring to everybody. My
stupidity did not, however, prevent me from finding in the baron a
more jovial and satisfied appearance than ordinary. instead of looking
upon me with his usual moroseness, he said to me a hundred jocose
things without my knowing what he meant. Surprise was painted in my
countenance, but I answered not a word: Madam d'Epinay shook her sides
with laughing; I knew not what possessed them. As nothing yet passed
the bounds of pleasantry, the best thing I could have done, had I been
in the secret, would have been to have humored the joke. It is true, I
perceived amid the rallying gayety of the baron, that his eyes
sparkled with a malicious joy, which could have given me pain had I
then remarked it to the degree it has since occurred to my
recollection.
  One day when I went to see Madam d'Houdetot, at Eaubonne, after
her return from one of her journeys to Paris, I found her
melancholy, and observed that she had been weeping. I was obliged to
put a restraint on myself, because Madam de Blainville, sister to
her husband, was present; but the moment I found an opportunity, I
expressed to her my uneasiness. "Ah," said she, with a sigh, "I am
much afraid your follies will cost me the repose of the rest of my
days. St. Lambert has been informed of what has passed, and ill
informed of it. He does me justice, but he is vexed; and what is still
worse, he conceals from me a part of his vexation. Fortunately I
have not concealed from him anything relative to our connection
which was formed under his auspices. My letters, like my heart, were
full of yourself; I made him acquainted with everything, except your
extravagant passion, of which I hoped to cure you, and which he
imputes to me as a crime. Somebody has done us ill offices. I have
been injured, but what does this signify? Either let us entirely break
with each other, or do you be what you ought to be. I will not in
future have anything to conceal from my lover."
  This was the first moment in which I was sensible of the shame of
feeling myself humbled by the sentiment of my fault, in presence of
a young woman of whose just reproaches I approved, and to whom I ought
to have been a mentor. The indignation I felt against myself would,
perhaps, have been sufficient to overcome my weakness, had not the
tender passion inspired me by the victim of it again softened my
heart. Alas! was this a moment to harden it when it was overflowed
by the tears which penetrated it in every part? This tenderness was
soon changed into rage against the vile informers, who had seen
nothing but the evil of a criminal but involuntary sentiment,
without believing or even imagining the sincere uprightness of heart
by which it was counteracted. We did not remain long in doubt about
the hand by which the blow was directed.
  We both knew that Madam d'Epinay corresponded with St. Lambert. This
was not the first storm she had raised up against Madam d'Houdetot,
from whom she had made a thousand efforts to detach her lover, the
success of some of which made the consequences to be dreaded. Besides,
Grimm, who, I think, had accompanied M. de Castries to the army, was
in Westphalia, as well as Saint Lambert; they sometimes visited. Grimm
had made some attempts on Madam d'Houdetot, which had not succeeded,
and being extremely piqued, suddenly discontinued his visits to her.
Let it be judged with what calmness, modest as he is known to be, he
supposed she preferred to him a man older than himself, and of whom,
since he had frequented the great, he had never spoken but as a person
whom he patronized.
  My suspicions of Madam d'Epinay were changed into a certainty the
moment I heard what had passed in my own house. When I was at the
Chevrette, Theresa frequently came there, either to bring me letters
or to pay me that attention which my ill state of health rendered
necessary. Madam d'Epinay had asked her if Madam d'Houdetot and I
did not write to each other. Upon her answering in the affirmative,
Madam d'Epinay pressed her to give her the letters of Madam
d'Houdetot, assuring her she would reseal them in such a manner as
it should never be known. Theresa without showing how much she was
shocked at the proposition, and without even putting me upon my guard,
did nothing more than seal the letters she brought me more
carefully; a lucky precaution, for Madam d'Epinay had her watched when
she arrived, and, waiting for her in the passage, several times
carried her audaciousness as far as to examine her tucker. She did
more even than this: having one day invited herself with M. de
Margency to dinner at the Hermitage, for the first time since I had
resided there, she seized the moment I was walking with Margency to go
into my closet with the mother and daughter, and to press them to show
her the letters of Madam d'Houdetot. Had the mother known where the
letters were, they would have been given to her; but, fortunately, the
daughter was the only person who was in the secret, and denied my
having preserved any one of them. A virtuous, faithful and generous
falsehood; whilst truth would have been a perfidy. Madam d'Epinay,
perceiving Theresa was not to be seduced, endeavored to irritate her
by jealousy, reproaching her with her easy temper and blindness.
"How is it possible," said she to her, "you cannot perceive there is a
criminal intercourse between them? If besides what strikes your eyes
you stand in need of other proofs, lend your assistance to obtain that
which may furnish them; you say he tears the letters from Madam
d'Houdetot as soon as he has read them. Well, carefully gather up
the pieces and give them to me; I will take upon myself to put them
together." Such were the lessons my friend gave to the partner of my
bed.
  Theresa had the discretion to conceal from me, for a considerable
time, all these attempts; but perceiving how much I was perplexed, she
thought herself obliged to inform me of everything, to the end that
knowing with whom I had to do, I might take my measures accordingly.
My rage and indignation are not to be described. Instead of
dissembling with Madam d'Epinay, according to her own example, and
making use of counterplots, I abandoned myself without reserve to
the natural impetuosity of my temper; and with my accustomed
inconsiderateness came to an open rupture. My imprudence will be
judged of by the following letters, which sufficiently show the manner
of proceeding of both parties on this occasion.

                 NOTE FROM MADAM D'EPINAY.

                                          Packet A, No. 44.
  "Why, my dear friend, do I not see you? You make me uneasy. You have
so often promised me to do nothing but go and come between this
place and the Hermitage! In this I have left you at liberty; and you
have suffered a week to pass without coming. Had not I been told you
were well I should have imagined the contrary. I expected you either
the day before yesterday, or yesterday, but found myself disappointed.
My God, what is the matter with you? You have no business, nor can you
have any uneasiness; for had this been the case, I flatter myself
you would have come and communicated it to me. You are, therefore,
ill! Relieve me, I beseech you, speedily from my fears. Adieu, my dear
friend: let this adieu produce me a good-morning from you."

                         ANSWER.

                                         Wednesday morning.
  "I cannot yet say anything to you. I wait to be better informed, and
this I shall be sooner or later. In the meantime be persuaded that
innocence will find a defender sufficiently powerful to cause some
repentance in the slanderers, be they who they may."

                 SECOND NOTE FROM THE SAME.

                                          Packet A, No. 45.
  "Do you know that your letter frightens me? What does it mean? I
have read it twenty times. In truth I do not understand what it means.
All I can perceive is, that you are uneasy and tormented, and that you
wait until you are no longer so before you speak to me upon the
subject. Is this, my dear friend, what we agreed upon? What then is
become of that friendship and confidence, and by what means have I
lost them? Is it with me or for me that you are angry? However this
may be, come to me this evening I conjure you; remember you promised
me no longer than a week ago to let nothing remain upon your mind, but
immediately to communicate to me whatever might make it uneasy. My
dear friend, I live in that confidence- There- I have just read your
letter again; I do not understand the contents better, but they make
me tremble. You seem to be cruelly agitated. I could wish to calm your
mind, but as I am ignorant of the cause whence your uneasiness arises,
I know not what to say, except that I am as wretched as yourself,
and shall remain so until we meet. If you are not here this evening at
six o'clock, I set off to-morrow for the Hermitage, let the weather be
how it will, and in whatever state of health I may be; for I can no
longer support the inquietude I now feel. Good day, my dear friend, at
all risks I take the liberty to tell you, without knowing whether or
not you are in need of such advice, to endeavor to stop the progress
uneasiness makes in solitude. A fly becomes a monster. I have
frequently experienced it."

                         ANSWER.

                                         Wednesday evening.
  "I can neither come to see you nor receive your visit so long as
my present inquietude continues. The confidence of which you speak
no longer exists, and it will be easy for you to recover it. I see
nothing more in your present anxiety than the desire of drawing from
the confessions of others some advantage agreeable to your views;
and my heart, so ready to pour its overflowings into another which
opens itself to receive them, is shut against trick and cunning. I
distinguish your ordinary address in the difficulty you find in
understanding my note. Do you think me dupe enough to believe you have
not comprehended what it meant? No: but I shall know how to overcome
your subtleties by my frankness. I will explain myself more clearly,
that you may understand me still less.
  "Two lovers closely united and worthy of each other's love are
dear to me; I expect you will not know who I mean unless I name
them. I presume attempts have been made to disunite them, and that I
have been made use of to inspire one of the two with jealousy. The
choice was not judicious, but it appeared convenient to the purposes
of malice, and of this malice it is you whom I suspect to be guilty. I
hope this becomes more clear.
  "Thus the woman whom I most esteem would, with my knowledge, have
been loaded with the infamy of dividing her heart and person between
two lovers, and I with that of being one of these wretches. If I
knew that, for a single moment in your life, you ever had thought
this, either of her or myself, I should hate you until my last hour.
But it is with having said, and not with having thought it, that I
charge you. In this case, I cannot comprehend which of the three you
wished to injure; but, if you love peace of mind, tremble lest you
should have succeeded. I have not concealed either from you or her all
the ill I think of certain connections, but I wish these to end by a
means as virtuous as their cause, and that an illegitimate love may be
changed into an eternal friendship. Should I, who never do ill to
any person, be the innocent means of doing it to my friends? No, I
should never forgive you; I should become your irreconcilable enemy.
Your secrets are all I should respect; for I will never be a man
without honor.
  "I do not apprehend my present perplexity will continue a long time.
I shall soon know whether or not I am deceived; I shall then perhaps
have great injuries to repair, which I will do with as much
cheerfulness as that with which the most agreeable act of my life
has been accompanied. But do you know in what manner I will make
amends for my faults during the short space of time I have to remain
near to you? By doing what nobody but myself would do; by telling
you freely what the world thinks of you, and the breaches you have
to repair in your reputation. Notwithstanding all the pretended
friends by whom you are surrounded, the moment you see me depart you
may bid adieu to truth, you will no longer find any person who will
tell it to you."

                 THIRD LETTER FROM THE SAME.

                                          Packet A, No. 46.

  "I did not understand your letter of this morning; this I told you
because it was the case. I understand that of this evening; do not
imagine I shall, ever return an answer to it; I am too anxious to
forget what it contains; and although you excite my pity, I am not
proof against the bitterness with which it has filled my mind. I!
descend to trick and cunning with you! I! accused of the blackest of
all infamies! Adieu, I regret your having the- adieu. I know not
what I say- adieu: I shall be very anxious to forgive you. You will
come when you please; you will be better received than your suspicions
deserve. All I have to desire of you is not to trouble yourself
about my reputation. The opinion of the world concerning me is of
but little importance in my esteem. My conduct is good, and this is
sufficient for me. Besides, I am ignorant of what has happened to
the two persons who are dear to me as they are to you.

  This last letter extricated me from a terrible embarrassment, and
threw me into another of almost the same magnitude. Although these
letters and answers were sent and returned the same day with an
extreme rapidity, the interval had been sufficient to place another
between my rage and transport, and to give me time to reflect on the
enormity of my imprudence. Madam d'Houdetot had not recommended to
me anything so much as to remain quiet, to leave her the care of
extricating herself, and to avoid, especially at that moment, all
noise and rupture; and I, by the most open and atrocious insults, took
the properest means of carrying rage to its greatest height in the
heart of a woman who was already but too well disposed to it. I now
could naturally expect nothing from her but an answer so haughty,
disdainful, and expressive of contempt, that I could not, without
the utmost meanness, do otherwise than immediately quit her house.
Happily she, more adroit than I was furious, avoided, by the manner of
her answer, reducing me to that extremity. But it was necessary either
to quit or immediately go and see her; the alternative was inevitable;
I resolved on the latter, though I foresaw how much I must be
embarrassed in the explanation. For how was I to get through it
without exposing either Madam d'Houdetot or Theresa? and woe to her
whom I should have named! There was nothing that the vengeance of an
implacable and an intriguing woman did not make me fear for the person
who should be the object of it. It was to prevent this misfortune that
in my letter I had spoken of nothing but suspicions, that I might
not be under the necessity of producing my proofs. This, it is true,
rendered my transports less excusable; no simple suspicions being
sufficient to authorize me to treat a woman, and especially a
friend, in the manner I had treated Madam d'Epinay. But here begins
the noble task I worthily fulfilled of expiating my faults and
secret weaknesses by charging myself with such of the former as I
was incapable of committing, and which I never did commit.
  I had not to bear the attack I had expected, and fear was the
greatest evil I received from it. At my approach, Madam d'Epinay threw
her arms about my neck, bursting into tears. This unexpected
reception, and by an old friend, extremely affected me; I also shed
many tears. I said to her a few words which had not much meaning;
she uttered others with still less, and everything ended here.
Supper was served; we sat down to table, where, in expectation of
the explanation I imagined to be deferred until supper was over, I
made a very poor figure; for I am so overpowered by the most
trifling inquietude of mind that I cannot conceal it from persons
the least clear-sighted. My embarrassed appearance must have given her
courage, yet she did not risk anything upon that foundation. There was
no more explanation after than before supper: none took place on the
next day, and our little tete-a-tete conversations consisted of
indifferent things, or some complimentary words on my part, by
which, while I informed her I could not say more relative to my
suspicions, I asserted, with the greatest truth, that, if they were
ill-founded, my whole life should be employed in repairing the
injustice. She did not show the least curiosity to know precisely what
they were, nor for what reason I had formed them, and all our
peacemaking consisted, on her part as well as on mine, in the
embrace at our first meeting. Since Madam d'Epinay was the only person
offended, at least in form, I thought it was not for me to strive to
bring about an eclaircissement for which she herself did not seem
anxious, and I return