against me. You alone knew that these notes had long existed, shut up in
my casket of rosewood, along with the ten volumes of the notes of my
mother; that they were intended never to be taken thence; that I rejected
the first suggestion of publishing them, with all possible warmth of
resolution; that I refused the ransom of a king for those leaves of no
real value; and that finally, one day--a day for which I reproach
myself-constrained fatally to choose between the necessity of selling my
poor _Charmettes_--_Charmettes_, as dear and more holy than the
_Charmettes_ of the _Confessions_--and the necessity of publishing these
pages, I preferred myself to suffer rather than cause suffering to good
old servants, by selling their roofs and their vines to strangers. With
one hand I received the price of the _Confidences_, and with the other I
gave it to others in order to purchase time.

Behold here all the crime that I am expiating.

And let the critics rejoice till their vengeance is satiated. This
sacrifice was in vain. It is in vain that I have cast upon the wind these
leaves, torn from the book of my most pious memories. The time that their
price procured has not proved sufficient to conduct me to the threshold
of that abode where we cease to regret anything. My _Charmettes_ have
been sold. Let them be content. I have had the shame of publishing these
_Confidences_, but not the joy of having saved my garden. Steps of
strangers will efface there the steps of my father and mother. God is
God, and sometimes he commands the wind to uproot the oak of a hundred
years, and man to uproot his own heart. The oak and the heart are his, we
must yield them to him, and yield him therewith justice, glory, and
benedictions!

And now that my acceptance of these critics is complete, and that I