Thanks to Heaven, I have made my
third painful confession; if many such remained, I should certainly
abandon the work I have undertaken.
Of all the incidents I have yet related, a few traces are
remaining in the places where I then lived; but what I have to
relate in the following book is almost entirely unknown; these are the
greatest extravagancies of my life, and it is happy they had not a
worse conclusion. My head (if I may use the simile) screwed up to
the pitch of an instrument it did not naturally accord with, had
lost its diapason; in time it returned to it again, when I
discontinued my follies, or at least gave in to those more consonant
to my disposition. This epoch of my youth I am least able to
recollect, nothing having passed sufficiently interesting to influence
my heart, or make me clearly retrace the remembrance. In so many
successive changes, it is difficult not to make some transpositions of
time or place. I write absolutely from memory, without notes or
materials to help my recollection. Some events are as fresh in my idea
as if they had recently happened, but there are certain chasms which I
cannot fill up but by the aid of recital, as confused as the remaining
traces of those to which they refer. It is impossible, therefore, that
I may have erred in trifles, and perhaps shall again, but in every
matter of importance I can answer that the account is faithfully
exact, and with the same veracity the reader may depend I shall be
careful to continue it.
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