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 when 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 reproached 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 in fine the ridiculousness of burning, at my age, with extravagant passion for an object whose heart was preëngaged, and who could neither afford me any return nor the least hope; moreover, with a passion which, far from having anything to gain by constancy, daily became less sufferable.

Who would imagine that this 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 gentleman of whom Madame d'Houdetot ought to be afraid? Would not it be said satirically, in answer to my presumptuous remorse, that my gallantry, manner, and style of dress must seduce her? Poor Jean-Jacques, love on at thy ease, with a good conscience, and be not afraid that thy sighs will be prejudicial to Saint-Lambert!

It has been seen that I never was enterprising, not even in my youth. Thinking so 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 that 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 some sophism, and not unfrequently some virtue.

Guilty without remorse, I soon became so without measure ; and I entreat the reader to observe 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 misMadame d'Houdetot, incessantly putting me in mind of my duty, without once for a single moment flattering my folly, treated me, on the other hand, with the greatest kindness, and adopted towards me the tone of the most tender friendship. This friendship would, I protest, have satisfied my wishes, had I thought it sincere; but, finding it too pronounced 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 Madame d'Houdetot, that this young flighty 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 twentysix years of age had made me guilty of extravagant behavior with Madame de Larnage, whom I did not know, would have been pardonable in me at forty-five with Madame d'Houdetot, had not I known that she and her lover were persons of too generous a disposition to indulge in such a barbarous

amusement.

Madame 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 its charm. She could not at first 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 re

proaches 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 were no other means of relieving me of 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 terms, should have got herself off so well. She refused me nothing the most tender friendship could grant; she granted me nothing that rendered her unfaithful; and I had the mortification of seeing that the disorder into which her most trifling favors had thrown all my senses had not lighted up the least spark in 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 Madame d'Houdetot, and how far she was right in depending 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, if even an unshared passion can inspire such as I felt!

But I am wrong in calling it an unshared love; that which I felt was so in some measure: 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; and yet 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 may have attempted to render her unfaithful, I was never really desirous of succeeding. The very vehemence of my passion restrained it within bounds. The duty of self-denial had elevated my soul. The luster of every virtue adorned in my eyes the idol of my heart; to have soiled the 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 Sophie! 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 such a price. 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 sometimes slept there. One evening, after having supped together, we went to walk in the garden under a brilliant moon. At the bottom of the garden was 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 bank 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 in my life; but I was sublime, if everything amiable and seductive 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 shed unwillingly! At length in an involuntary transport she exclaimed: "No, never was a man so amiable, nor ever was there lover who loved like you! But your friend SaintLambert hears us, and my heart is incapable of loving twice." I sighed and was silent. I embraced her what an embrace! But this was all. She had lived alone for the last six months - that is, absent from her lover and her husband; I had seen her almost every day during three months, and Love never failed to make a third. We had supped tête-à-tête, we were alone, in a grove by moonlight, and after two hours of the most lively and tender conversation, at midnight she left this grove, and the arms of her lover, as morally and physically pure as she had entered it. Reader, weigh all these circumstances; I will add no more.

Do not, however, imagine that in this situation my passions left me as undisturbed as I was with Thérèse and Mamma. I have already observed that I was at this time inspired not only with love, but with love in all its energy and all its fury. I

will not describe either the agitations, tremblings, palpitations, convulsionary emotions, or 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 affectionate reception she would give me, and upon the kiss which awaited me at my arrival. This single, this fatal kiss, 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 were unable to support me; 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 in 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 its consequences, assailed me in such a manner that it was impossible to avoid them; and in spite of all my efforts I do not believe that I ever made this 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 was first to arrive; it was proper that I should wait for her; but how dear this waiting cost me! To divert my attention, I endeavored to write with my pencil notes which I could have written with the purest drops of my blood; I never could finish one that was legible. When she found one of these in the niche upon which we had agreed, all she could learn 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 it 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 inflammable constitution, but, at the same time, perhaps one of the most timid mortals that nature ever produced. Such were the last happy days that were meted out to me upon earth.