her contentment to my own.

In this manner it was that, half deceived in my expectation, leading a
life after my own heart, in a residence I had chosen with a person who
was dear to me, I at length found myself almost alone. What I still
wanted prevented me from enjoying what I had. With respect to happiness
and enjoyment, everything or nothing, was what was necessary to me. The
reason of these observations will hereafter appear. At present I return
to the thread of my narrative.

I imagined that I possessed treasures in the manuscripts given me by the
Comte de St. Pierre. On examination I found they were a little more
than the collection of the printed works of his uncle, with notes and
corrections by his own hand, and a few other trifling fragments which had
not yet been published. I confirmed myself by these moral writings in
the idea I had conceived from some of his letters, shown me by Madam de
Crequi, that he had more sense and ingenuity than at first I had
imagined; but after a careful examination of his political works,
I discerned nothing but superficial notions, and projects that were
useful but impracticable, in consequence of the idea from which the
author never could depart, that men conducted themselves by their
sagacity rather than by their passions. The high opinion he had of the
knowledge of the moderns had made him adopt this false principle of
improved reason, the basis of all the institutions he proposed, and the
source of his political sophisms. This extraordinary man, an honor to
the age in which he lived, and to the human species, and perhaps the only
person, since the creation of mankind, whose sole passion was that of
reason, wandered in all his systems from error to error, by attempting to
make men like himself, instead of taking them as they were, are, and will
continue to be. He labored for imaginary beings, while he thought
himself employed for the benefit of his contemporaries.

All these things considered, I was rather embarrassed as to the form I
should give to my work. To suffer the author's visions to pass was doing
nothing useful; fully to refute them would have been unpolite, as the
care of revising and publishing his manuscripts, which I had accepted,
and even requested, had been intrusted to me; this trust had imposed on
me the obligation of treating the author honorably. I at length
concluded upon that which to me appeared the most decent, judicious, and
useful. This