I now felt the neglect I had been guilty of during the first years of our connection, in not taking advantage of the docility with which her love inspired her, to improve her talents and give her knowledge, which, by more closely connecting us in our retirement would agreeably have filled up her time and my own, without once suffering us to perceive the length of a private conversation.Not that this was ever exhausted between us, or that she seemed disgusted with our walks; but we had not a sufficient number of ideas common to both to make ourselves a great store, and we could not incessantly talk of our future projects which were confined to those of enjoying the pleasure of life.The objects around us inspired me with reflections beyond the reach of her comprehension.An attachment of twelve years' standing had no longer need of words: we were too well acquainted with each other to have any new knowledge to acquire in that respect.The resource of puns, jests, gossiping and scandal, was all that remained.In solitude especially is it, that the advantage of living with a person who knows how to think is particularly felt.I wanted not this resource to amuse myself with her; but she would have stood in need of it to have always found amusement with me.The worst of all was our being obliged to hold our conversations when we could; her mother, who become importunate, obliged me to watch for opportunities to do it.I was under constraint in my own house: this is saying everything; the air of love was prejudicial to good friendship.We had an intimate intercourse without living in intimacy.
The moment I thought I perceived that Theresa sometimes sought for a pretext to elude the walks I proposed to her, I ceased to invite her to accompany me, without being displeased with her for not finding in them so much amusement as I did.Pleasure is not a thing which depends upon the will.I was sure of her heart, and the possession of this was all I desired.As long as my pleasures were hers, I tasted of them with her; when this ceased to be the case I preferred 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 Istill 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 Saint-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 was to give separately my own ideas and those of the author, and, for this purpose, to enter into his views, to set them in a new light, to amplify, extend them, and spare nothing which might contribute to present them in all their excellence.
My work therefore was to be composed of two parts absolutely distinct: one, to explain, in the manner I have just mentioned, the different projects of the author; in the other, which was not to appear until the first had had its effect, I should have given my opinion upon these projects which I confess might sometimes have exposed them to the fate of the sonnet of the misanthrope.At the head of the whole was to have been the life of the author.For this I had collected some good materials, and which I flattered myself I should not spoil in ****** use of them.I had been a little acquainted with the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, in his old age, and the veneration I had for his memory warranted to me, upon the whole, that the comte would not be dissatisfied with the manner in which I should have treated his relation.
