with those whose scruples I had no cause to dread.

My stay at Madam de Vercellis's had procured me some acquaintance, which
I thought might be serviceable to me, and therefore wished to retain.
Among others, I sometimes visited a Savoyard abbe, M. Gaime, who was
tutor to the Count of Melarede's children. He was young, and not much
known, but possessed an excellent cultivated understanding, with great
probity, and was, altogether, one of the best men I ever knew. He was
incapable of doing me the service I then stood most in need of, not
having sufficient interest to procure me a situation, but from him I
reaped advantages far more precious, which have been useful to me through
life, lessons of pure morality, and maxims of sound judgment.

In the successive order of my inclinations and ideas, I had ever been too
high or too low. Achilles or Thersites; sometimes a hero, at others a
villain. M. Gaime took pains to make me properly acquainted with myself,
without sparing or giving me too much discouragement. He spoke in
advantageous terms of my disposition and talents, adding, that he foresaw
obstacles which would prevent my profiting by them; thus, according to
him, they were to serve less as steps by which I should mount to fortune,
than as resources which might enable me to exist without one. He gave me
a true picture of human life, of which, hitherto, I had formed but a very
erroneous idea, teaching me, that a man of understanding, though destined
to experience adverse fortune, might, by skilful management, arrive at
happiness; that there was no true felicity without virtue, which was
practicable in every situation. He greatly diminished my admiration of
grandeur, by proving that those in a superior situation are neither
better nor happier than those they command. One of his maxims has
frequently returned to my memory: it was, that if we could truly read the
hearts of others we should feel more inclination to descend than rise: