Les Charmettes--I balanced love against pleasure, and
finding an equipoise, I decided by reason.

The little mother knew by my letter at what hour I should arrive. I came
to the garden; no one came out to meet me. I entered; the servants
seemed surprised to see me. I ran upstairs and found her; her welcome
was restrained and cold. The truth burst upon me. My place was taken!

Darkness flooded my soul, and from that moment onward my sensibilities
have been but half-alive. I took a situation as tutor in a private
family, but all my thoughts were of Charmettes and of our innocent life
together, now gone for ever. O dreadful illusion of human destiny!

_The Gathering Gloom_

I take up my pen again, after an interval of two years, to add a sequel
to my confessions. How different is the picture now! For thirty years
fate had favoured my inclinations, but for the second thirty, which I
must try to sketch, she has ground me in the mortar of the most
appalling afflictions.

This second part must inevitably be inferior, in every respect, to the
first. For I wrote, before, with pleasure and at ease; but now my
decaying memory and enfeebled brain have made me almost incapable of
work, and I have nothing to tell of but treacheries, perfidies, and
torturing memories. The walls around me have ears; I am encompassed by
spies and vigilant enemies. Racked with anxiety and fear, I scribble
page after page without revising them. An immense conspiracy surrounds
me....

[These delusions of suspicion are perhaps the most characteristic
symptoms of insanity. They colour so deeply the entire texture of
Rousseau's prolix second part as to make it not only unreliable, but
almost unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first
part; from the second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy
creature, besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman;
and this morbid condition had been aggravated by years of brooding
rancour before he wrote this miserable indictment of men who had done
their best to befriend him.--ED.]

* * * * *

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Memoirs

Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, was born in Paris on
September 15, 1613. Sprung from one of the noblest families of
France, handsome, winning, and brave to recklessness, he
intrigued and fought against Richelieu and Mazarin, and was
one of the leaders in the civil war of La Fronde.