appy during all the time we
spent at Berne. I was quite cured of my misadventure with the horrible
widow, and I found that if love's pleasures are fleeting so are its
pains. I will go farther and maintain that the pleasures are of much
longer duration, as they leave memories which can be enjoyed in old age,
whereas, if a man does happen to remember the pains, it is so slightly as
to have no influence upon his happiness.

At ten o'clock the Mayor of Thun was announced. He was dressed in the
French fashion, in black, and had a manner at once graceful and polite
that pleased me. He was middle-aged, and enjoyed a considerable position
in the Government. He insisted on my reading the letter that M. de
Chavigni had written to him on my account. It was so flattering that I
told him that if it had not been sealed I should not have had the face to
deliver it. He asked me for the next day to a supper composed of men
only, and for the day after that, to a supper at which women as well as
men would be present. I went with him to the library where we saw M.
Felix, an unfrocked monk, more of a scribbler than a scholar, and a young
man named Schmidt, who gave good promise, and was already known to
advantage in the literary world. I also had the misfortune of meeting
here a very learned man of a very wearisome kind; he knew the names of
ten thousand shells by heart, and I was obliged to listen to him for two
hours, although I was totally ignorant of his science. Amongst other
things he told me that the Aar contained gold. I replied that all great
rivers contained gold, but he shrugged his shoulders and did not seem
convinced.

I dined with M. de Muralt in company with four or five of the most
distinguished women in Berne. I liked them very well, and above all
Madame de Saconai struck me as particularly amiable and well-educated. I
should have paid my addresses to her if I had been staying long in the
so-called capital of Switzerland.

The ladies of Berne are well though not extravagantly dressed, as luxury
is forbidden by the laws. Their manners are good and they speak French
with perfect ease. They enjoy the greatest liberty without abusing it,
for in spite of gallantry decency reigns everywhere. The husbands are not
jealous, but they require their wives to be home by supper-time.

I spent three weeks in the town, my time being divided between my dear
Dubois and an old lady of eighty-five who interested me greatly by her
knowledge