hole scene had the appearance of the reprimand a preceptor
gives to his pupil while he graciously spares inflicting the rod.
I never think of it without perceiving to what degree judgments, founded
upon appearances to which the vulgar give so much weight, are deceitful,
and how frequently audaciousness and pride are found in the guilty, and
shame and embarrassment in the innocent.

We were reconciled: this was a relief to my heart, which every kind of
quarrel fills with anguish. It will naturally be supposed that a like
reconciliation changed nothing in his manners; all it effected was to
deprive me of the right of complaining of them. For this reason I took a
resolution to endure everything, and for the future to say not a word.

So many successive vexations overwhelmed me to such a degree as to leave
me but little power over my mind. Receiving no answer from Saint
Lambert, neglected by Madam d'Houdetot, and no longer daring to open my
heart to any person, I began to be afraid that by making friendship my
idol, I should sacrifice my whole life to chimeras. After putting all
those with whom I had been acquainted to the test, there remained but two
who had preserved my esteem, and in whom my heart could confide: Duclos,
of whom since my retreat to the Hermitage I had lost sight, and Saint
Lambert. I thought the only means of repairing the wrongs I had done the
latter, was to open myself to him without reserve, and I resolved to
confess to him everything by which his mistress should not be exposed.
I have no doubt but this was another snare of my passions to keep me
nearer to her person; but I should certainly have had no reserve with her
lover, entirely submitting to his direction, and carrying sincerity as
far as it was possible to do it. I was upon the point of writing to him
a second letter, to which I was certain he would have returned an answer,
when I learned the melancholy cause of his silence relative to the first.
He had been unable to support until the end the fatigues of the campaign.
Madam d'Epinay informed me he had had an attack of the palsy, and Madam
d'Houdetot, ill from affliction, wrote me two or three days after from
Paris, that he was going to Aix-la-Chapelle to take the benefit of the
waters. I will not say this melancholy circumstance afflicted me as it
did her; but I am of opinion my grief of heart was as painful as her
tears. The pain of knowing him to be in such a state, increased by the