If I were deceived in my hope to please, I candidly confess I would
regret it, but not sufficiently so to repent having written my Memoirs,
for, after all, writing them has given me pleasure. Oh, cruel ennui! It
must be by mistake that those who have invented the torments of hell have
forgotten to ascribe thee the first place among them. Yet I am bound to
own that I entertain a great fear of hisses; it is too natural a fear for
me to boast of being insensible to them, and I cannot find any solace in
the idea that, when these Memoirs are published, I shall be no more. I
cannot think without a shudder of contracting any obligation towards
death: I hate death; for, happy or miserable, life is the only blessing
which man possesses, and those who do not love it are unworthy of it. If
we prefer honour to life, it is because life is blighted by infamy; and
if, in the alternative, man sometimes throws away his life, philosophy
must remain silent.

Oh, death, cruel death! Fatal law which nature necessarily rejects
because thy very office is to destroy nature! Cicero says that death
frees us from all pains and sorrows, but this great philosopher books all
the expense without taking the receipts into account. I do not recollect
if, when he wrote his 'Tusculan Disputations', his own Tullia was dead.
Death is a monster which turns away from the great theatre an attentive
hearer before the end of the play which deeply interests him, and this is
reason enough to hate it.

All my adventures are not to be found in these Memoirs; I have left out
those which might have offended the persons who have played a sorry part
therein. In spite of this reserve, my readers will perhaps often think me
indiscreet, and I am sorry for it. Should I perchance become wiser before
I give up the ghost, I might burn every one of these sheets, but now I