touched me; in consoling me you have bound me to you,
and the singular thing is that the good you have done me,
which I received without consenting to it, far from rendering
me supple, docile, like other persons who receive favours,
seems, on the contrary, to have given me the right to be
exacting en your friendship. You, who judge from heights
and see into depths, tell me if that is the action of an
ungrateful soul, or of one too sensitive : whatever you say of
it I shall believe.
Return speedily; I see the days slip by with a pleasure I cannot express. They say the past is nothing; but as for me, it crushes me ; it is precisely because I have suffered so much that it is so dreadful to me to suffer still. Ah ! but there is madness in promising myself some sweetness, some consolation in your friendship ; you will have gained so many new ideas, your soul has been agitated by so many diverse sentiments that no trace of the impression you received of my sorrow and my confidence will remain. But come, come at any rate ; I shall judge, and I shall see clear — for illusions are not for the sorrowful. Besides, you have as much openness as I have truth ; we shall not for one moment deceive ourselves ; come, therefore, and do not bring back from your journey the melancholy impressions the Chevalier de Chastellux has brought from Italy. He speaks of all that he has seen without pleasure, and all that he now sees gives him but little more. I would not change my ways of thinking for his, and yet I pass my life in convul- sions of fear and pain; but then, what I expect, what I desire, what I obtain, what is given to me, has such value to my soul! I live, I exist with such force that there are moments when I find myself loving madly to my own unhappiness. Ought I not to cling to it ? ought it not to be dear to me ? It caused me to know you, to love you, and,
