whatever was sufficient to make me fear the loss of it, and the ardent
desire I had to end my days in that island, was inseparable from the
apprehension of being obliged to leave it. I had contracted a habit of
going in the evening to sit upon the sandy shore, especially when the
lake was agitated. I felt a singular pleasure in seeing the waves break
at my feet. I formed of them in my imagination the image of the tumult
of the world contrasted with the peace of my habitation; and this
pleasing idea sometimes softened me even to tears. The repose I enjoyed
with ecstasy was disturbed by nothing but the fear of being deprived of
it, and this inquietude was accompanied with some bitterness. I felt my
situation so precarious as not to dare to depend upon its continuance.
"Ah! how willingly," said I to myself, "would I renounce the liberty of
quitting this place, for which I have no desire, for the assurance of
always remaining in it. Instead of being permitted to stay here by
favor, why am I not detained by force! They who suffer me to remain may
in a moment drive me away, and can I hope my persecutors, seeing me
happy, will leave me here to continue to be so? Permitting me to live in
the island is but a trifling favor. I could wish to be condemned to do
it, and constrained to remain here that I may not be obliged to go
elsewhere." I cast an envious eye upon Micheli du Cret, who, quiet in
the castle of Arbourg, had only to determine to be happy to become so.
In fine, by abandoning myself to these reflections, and the alarming
apprehensions of new storms always ready to break over my head, I wished
for them with an incredible ardor, and that instead of suffering me to
reside in the island, the Bernois would give it me for a perpetual
prison; and I can assert that had it depended upon me to get myself
condemned to this, I would most joyfully have done it, preferring a
thousand times the necessity of passing my life there to the danger of
being driven to another place.