this, I had a childish mistrust of myself.

"An overweening ambition preyed upon me; I believed that I was meant
for great things, and yet I felt myself to be nothing. I had need of
other men, and I was friendless. I found I must make my way in the
world, where I was quite alone, and bashful, rather than afraid.

"All through the year in which, by my father's wish, I threw myself
into the whirlpool of fashionable society, I came away with an
inexperienced heart, and fresh in mind. Like every grown child, I
sighed in secret for a love affair. I met, among young men of my own
age, a set of swaggerers who held their heads high, and talked about
trifles as they seated themselves without a tremor beside women who
inspired awe in me. They chattered nonsense, sucked the heads of their
canes, gave themselves affected airs, appropriated the fairest women,
and laid, or pretended that they had laid their heads on every pillow.
Pleasure, seemingly, was at their beck and call; they looked on the
most virtuous and prudish as an easy prey, ready to surrender at a
word, at the slightest impudent gesture or insolent look. I declare,
on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great
name in literature, seemed to me an easier victory than a success with
some young, witty, and gracious lady of high degree.

"So I found the tumult of my heart, my feelings, and my creeds all at
variance with the axioms of society. I had plenty of audacity in my
character, but none in my manner. Later, I found out that women did
not like to be implored. I have from afar adored many a one to whom I
devoted a soul proof against all tests, a heart to break, energy that
shrank from no sacrifice and from no torture; _they_ accepted fools whom
I would not have engaged as hall porters. How often, mute and