This resolution taken, I entirely abandoned myself to my reveries,
and, by frequently resolving these in my mind, formed with them the
kind of plan of which the execution has been seen. This was
certainly the greatest advantage that could be drawn from my
follies; the love of good which has never once been effaced from my
heart, turned them towards useful objects, the moral of which might
have produced its good effects. My voluptuous descriptions would
have lost all their graces, had they been devoid of the coloring of
innocence.
A weak girl is an object of pity, whom love may render
interesting, and who frequently is not therefore the less amiable; but
who can see without indignation the manners of the age; and what is
more disgusting than the pride of an unchaste wife, who, openly
treading under foot every duty, pretends that her husband ought to
be grateful for her unwillingness to suffer herself to be taken in the
fact? Perfect beings are not in nature, and their examples are not
near enough to us. But whoever says that the description of a young
person born with good dispositions, and a heart equally tender and
virtuous, who suffers herself, when a girl, to be overcome by love,
and when a woman, has resolution enough to conquer in her turn, is
upon the whole scandalous and useless, is a liar and a hypocrite;
hearken not to him.
Besides this object of morality and conjugal chastity which is
radically connected with all social order, I had in view one more
secret in behalf of concord and public peace, a greater, and perhaps
more important object in itself, at least for the moment for which
it was created.
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