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.
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