attention, I endeavored to write with my pencil billets, which I could
have written with the purest drops of my blood; I never could finish one
which was eligible. When she found a note in the niche upon which we had
agreed, all she learned from the contents was the deplorable state in
which I was when I wrote it. This state and its continuation, during
three months of irritation and self-denial, so exhausted me, that I was
several years before I recovered from it, and at the end of these it left
me an ailment which I shall carry with me, or which will carry me to the
grave. Such was the sole enjoyment of a man of the most combustible
constitution, but who was, at the same time, perhaps, one of the most
timid mortals nature ever produced. Such were the last happy days I can
reckon upon earth; at the end of these began the long train of evils, in
which there will be found but little interruption.

It has been seen that, during the whole course of my life, my heart, as
transparent as crystal, has never been capable of concealing for the
space of a moment any sentiment in the least lively which had taken
refuge in it. It will therefore be judged whether or not it was possible
for me long to conceal my affection for Madam d'Houdetot. Our intimacy
struck the eyes of everybody, we did not make of it either a secret or a
mystery. It was not of a nature to require any such precaution, and as
Madam d'Houdetot had for me the most tender friendship with which she did
not reproach herself, and I for her an esteem with the justice of which
nobody was better acquainted than myself; she frank, absent, heedless; I
true, awkward, haughty, impatient and choleric; We exposed ourselves more
in deceitful security than we should have done had we been culpable. We
both went to the Chevrette; we sometimes met there by appointment. We
lived there according to our accustomed manner; walking together every
day talking of our amours, our duties, our friend, and our innocent
projects; all this in the park opposite the apartment of Madam d'Epinay,