dishonor my Sophia! Ah! was this ever possible? No! I have told her a
hundred times it was not. Had I had it in my power to satisfy my
desires, had she consented to commit herself to my discretion, I should,
except in a few moments of delirium, have refused to be happy at the
price of her honor. I loved her too well to wish to possess her.

The distance from the Hermitage to Raubonne is almost a league; in my
frequent excursions to it I have sometimes slept there. One evening
after having supped tete-a-tete we went to walk in the garden by a fine
moonlight. At the bottom of the garden a considerable copse, through
which we passed on our way to a pretty grove ornamented with a cascade,
of which I had given her the idea, and she had procured it to be executed
accordingly.

Eternal remembrance of innocence and enjoyment! It was in this grove
that, seated by her side upon a seat of turf under an acacia in full
bloom, I found for the emotions of my heart a language worthy of them.
It was the first and only time of my life; but I was sublime: if
everything amiable and seducing with which the most tender and ardent
love can inspire the heart of man can be so called. What intoxicating
tears did I shed upon her knees! how many did I make her to shed
involuntarily! At length in an involuntary transport she exclaimed:
"No, never was a man so amiable, nor ever was there one who loved like
you! But your friend Saint Lambert hears us, and my heart is incapable
of loving twice." I exhausted myself with sighs; I embraced her--what an
embrace! But this was all. She had lived alone for the last six months,
that is absent from her husband and lover; I had seen her almost every
day during three months, and love seldom failed to make a third. We had
supped tete-a-tete, we were alone, in the grove by moonlight, and after
two hours of the most lively and tender conversation, she left this grove