Who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old,
from the hands of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities,
my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life, and that in quite a
contrary sense from what might naturally have been expected? The very
incident that inflamed my senses, gave my desires such an extraordinary
turn, that, confined to what I had already experienced, I sought no
further, and, with blood boiling with sensuality, almost from my birth,
preserved my purity beyond the age when the coldest constitutions lose
their insensibility; long tormented, without knowing by what, I gazed on
every handsome woman with delight; imagination incessantly brought their
charms to my remembrance, only to transform them into so many Miss
Lamberciers.

If ever education was perfectly chaste, it was certainly that I received;
my three aunts were not only of exemplary prudence, but maintained a
degree of modest reserve which women have long since thought unnecessary.
My father, it is true, loved pleasure, but his gallantry was rather of
the last than the present century, and he never expressed his affection
for any woman he regarded in terms a virgin could have blushed at;
indeed, it was impossible more attention should be paid to that regard we
owe the morals of children than was uniformly observed by every one I had
any concern with. An equal degree of reserve in this particular was
observed at M. Lambercier's, where a good maid-servant was discharged for
having once made use of an expression before us which was thought to
contain some degree of indelicacy. I had no precise idea of the ultimate
effect of the passions, but the conception I had formed was extremely
disgusting; I entertained a particular aversion for courtesans, nor could
I look on a rake without a degree of disdain mingled with terror.