read
this:--"Whence comes her coldness to me? Is it possible that you can
have suspected me of wronging you with her, and of turning perfidious in
consequence of an unseasonably rigorous virtue? A passage in one of your
letters shows a glimpse of some such suspicion. No, no, Saint Lambert,
the breast of J.J. Rousseau never held the heart of a traitor, and I
should despise myself more than you suppose, if I had ever tried to rob
you of her heart.... Can you suspect that her friendship for me may hurt
her love for you? Surely natures endowed with sensibility are open to
all sorts of affections, and no sentiment can spring up in them which
does not turn to the advantage of the dominant passion. Where is the
lover who does not wax the more tender as he talks to his friend of her
whom he loves? And is it not sweeter for you in your banishment that
there should be some sympathetic creature to whom your mistress loves to
talk of you, and who loves to hear?"

Let us turn to another side of his correspondence. The way in which the
sympathetic creature in the present case loved to hear his friend's
mistress talk of him, is interestingly shown in one or two passages from
a letter to her; as when he cries, "Ah, how proud would even thy lover
himself be of thy constancy, if he only knew how much it has
surmounted.... I appeal to your sincerity. You, the witness and the
cause of this delirium, these tears, these ravishing ecstasies, these
transports which were never made for mortal, say, have I ever tasted
your favours in such a way that I deserve to lose them?... Never once
did my ardent desires nor my tender supplications dare to solicit
supreme happiness, without my feeling stopped by the inner cries of a
sorrow-stricken soul.... O Sophie, after moments so sweet, the idea of
eternal privation is too frightful for one who groans that he cannot
identify himself with thee. What, are thy tender eyes never again to be
lowered with a delicious modesty, intoxicating me with pleasure? What,
are my burning lips never again to lay my very soul on thy heart along
with my kisses? What, may I never more feel that heavenly shudder, that
rapid and devouring fire, swifter than lightning?"[282].... We see a
sympathetic creature assuredly, and listen to the voice of a nature
endowed with sensibility even more than enough, but with decency,
loyalty, above all with self-knowledge, far less than enough.

One more touch completes the picture of the fa