air of preparation which she had adopted gave me a degree of inquietude;
while she spoke (in spite of myself) I was thoughtful and absent,
attending less to what she said than curious to know what she aimed at;
and no sooner had I comprehended her design (which I could not easily do)
than the novelty of the idea, which, during all the years I had passed
with her, had never once entered my imagination, took such entire
possession of me that I was no longer capable of minding what she said!
I only thought of her; I heard her no longer.

Thinking to render young minds attentive to reason by proposing some
highly interesting object as the result of it, is an error instructors
frequently run into, and one which I have not avoided in my Umilius.
The young pupil, struck with the object presented to him, is occupied
only with that, and leaping lightly over your preliminary discourses,
lights at once on the point, to which, in his idea, you lead him too
tediously. To render him attentive, he must be prevented from seeing the
whole of your design; and, in this particular, Madam de Warrens did not
act with sufficient precaution.

By a singularity which adhered to her systematic disposition, she took
the vain precaution of proposing conditions; but the moment I knew the
purchase, I no longer even heard them, but immediately consented to
everything; and I doubt whether there is a man on the whole earth who
would have been sincere or courageous enough to dispute terms, or one
single woman who would have pardoned such a dispute. By a continuation
of the same whimsicality, she attached a number of the gravest
formalities to the acquisition of her favors, and gave me eight days to
think of them, which I assured her I had no need of, though that
assurance was far from a truth: for to complete this assemblage of
singularities, I was very glad to have this intermission; so much had the