med 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. The storm
brought on by the 'Encyclopedie', far from being appeased, was at the
time at its height. Two parties exasperated against each other to the
last degree of fury soon resembled enraged wolves, set on for their
mutual destruction, rather than Christians and philosophers, who had a
reciprocal wish to enlighten and convince each other, and lead their
brethren to the way of truth. Perhaps nothing more was wanting to each
party than a few turbulent chiefs, who possessed a little power, to make
this quarrel terminate in a civil war; and God only knows what a civil
war of religion founded on each side upon the most cruel intolerance
would have produced. Naturally an enemy to all spirit of party, I had
freely spoken severe truths to each, of which they had not listened.
I thought of another expedient, which, in my simplicity, appeared to me
admirable: this was to abate their reciprocal hatred by destroying their
prejudic