natural is unpardonable in the man. That is to say, modesty in a writer
consists in exposing what is false, immodesty in setting forth what is
true. If you have talent, show it, but not your soul, carrying mine away!
Oh, shame! What logic!

But after all, you are right at bottom, only you do not know how to
express it. It is perfectly true that there are mysteries, nudities,
parts of the soul not shameful but sensitive, depths, personalities, last
foldings of thought and feeling, which would cost horribly to uncover,
and which an honorable and natural scruple would never permit us to lay
bare, without the remorse of violated modesty. There is, I agree with
you, such a thing as indiscretion of heart. I felt this cruelly myself,
the first time when, having written certain poetic dreams of my soul
certain too real utterances of my sentiments, I read them to my most
intimate friends. My face was covered with blushes, and I could not
finish. I said to them: "No, I cannot go farther; you shall read it."
"And how is it," answered my friends, "that you cannot read to us what
you are about to give to all Europe to read?" "No," I said, "I cannot
tell why, but I feel no shame in letting the public read it, though I
experience an invincible repugnance to reading it myself, face to face to
only two or three of my friends."

They did not understand me--I did not understand myself. We together
exclaimed at the inconsistency of the human heart. Since then I have felt
the same instinctive repugnance at reading to a single person what cost
me not a single effort of violated modesty to give to the public: and
after having long reflected on it, I find that this apparent
inconsistency is at bottom only the perfect logic of our nature.

And why is this? The reason is, that a friend is somebody and the public