Here ends my personal connections with Madam d'Houdetot; connections
of which each has been able to judge by appearance according to the
disposition of his own heart, but in which the passion inspired me
by that amiable woman, the most lively passion, perhaps, man ever
felt, will be honorable in our own eyes by the rare and painful
sacrifice we both made to duty, honor, love, and friendship. We each
had too high an opinion of the other easily to suffer ourselves to
do anything derogatory to our dignity. We must have been unworthy of
all esteem had we not set a proper value upon one like this, and the
energy of my sentiments which have rendered us culpable, was that
which prevented us from becoming so.
Thus after a long friendship for one of these women, and the
strongest affection for the other, I bade them both adieu the same
day, to one never to see her more, to the other to see her again
twice, upon occasions of which I shall hereafter speak.
After their departure, I found myself much embarrassed to fulfill so
many pressing and contradictory duties, the consequences of my
imprudence; had I been in my natural situation, after the
proposition and refusal of the journey to Geneva, I had only to remain
quiet, and everything was as it should be. But I had foolishly made of
it an affair which could not remain in the state it was, and an
explanation was absolutely necessary, unless I quitted the
Hermitage, which I had just promised Madam d'Houdetot not to do, at
least for the present.
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