xcept friendship? Of friendship, madam la marechale! Ah!
there is my misfortune! It is good in you and the marechal to make use
of this expression; but I am mad when I take you at your word. You amuse
yourselves, and I become attached; and the end of this prepares for me
new regrets. How I do hate all your titles, and pity you on account of
your being obliged to bear them? You seem to me to be so worthy of
tasting the charms of private life! Why do not you reside at Clarens?
I would go there in search of happiness; but the castle of Montmorency,
and the Hotel de Luxembourg! Is it in these places Jean Jacques ought to
be seen? Is it there a friend to equality ought to carry the affections
of a sensible heart, and who thus paying the esteem in which he is held,
thinks he returns as much as he receives? You are good and susceptible
also: this I know and have seen; I am sorry I was not sooner convinced of
it; but in the rank you hold, in the manner of living, nothing can make a
lasting impression; a succession of new objects efface each other so that
not one of them remains. You will forget me, madam, after having made it
impossible for me to imitate, you. You have done a great deal to make me
unhappy, to be inexcusable."

I joined with her the marechal, to render the compliment less severe; for
I was moreover so sure of him, that I never had a doubt in my mind of the
continuation of his friendship. Nothing that intimidated me in madam la
marechale, ever for a moment extended to him. I never have had the least
mistrust relative to his character, which I knew to be feeble, but
constant. I no more feared a coldness on his part than I expected from
him an heroic attachment. The simplicity and familiarity of our manners
with each other proved how far dependence was reciprocal. We were both
always right: I shall ever honor and hold dear the memory of this worthy
man, and, notwithstanding everything that was done to detach him from me,
I am as certain of his having died my friend as if I had been present in
his last moments.

At the second journey to Montmorency, in the year 1760, the reading of
Eloisa being finished, I had recourse to that of Emilius, to support
myself in the good graces of Madam de Luxembourg; but this, whether the
subject was less to her taste; or that so much reading at length fatigued
her, did not succeed so well. However, as she reproached me with
suffering myself to be the dupe of booksel