Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/117

100 you have already received a note in which, you were told ... I don't know what.

Eh ! mon Dieu ! believe her, give her peace, and if it is possible, be happy yourself: that is the wish, that is the prayer of the unhappy woman who has always before her eyes the dreadful inscription on the portal of hell : " Give up all hope, ye who enter here." I have no hope, and I wish for none. I ought to have annihilated myself on the day I was left solitary. You prevented it, and you cannot now console me.

May 11, 1774.

You do not know me yet; it is almost impossible to wound my self-love ; and the heart is so indulgent ! In fact, the party of last night was like those insipid novels which make the author and the readers yawn together. However, one must say with the King of Prussia, on a rather more memorable occasion, " We will do better next time." That which makes an epoch remaius in the memory, and you will never forget in future that the day on which Louis XV. died you spent the evening at a party in a sound sleep. Believe me, there are recollections more painful than that. Good-bye.

Eleven o'clock at night. 1774.

I will wager that you are not as sleepy to-day as you were yesterday at the same hour ; and the reason is very simple ; you are being amused, interested, and you have the desire to please. Mon ami, you were not made for privacy ; you need expansion; movement and the hurly-burly of society is necessary to you ; this is not a need of your vanity ; it is that of your activity. Confidence, tenderness, forgetfulness of self and of vanity, all those blessings felt and appreciated by a tender and passionate soul, clog and extinguish yours. Yes, I repeat it : you have no need of being loved. What a