Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/128

1774] Eegret for such a love would suffice to make the sorrow and the despair of a tender soul. Ah ! but I suffer more cruelly stiU from the remorse that weighs upon my soul; I see myself guilty, I feel myself unworthy of the happiness I once enjoyed : I failed a man, the most virtuous, the most tender of men ; in a word, I failed my own self, I lost my own esteem ; judge, therefore, if I ought to claim yours ; and if you do not esteem me is there any means of blinding me to the point of believing that you can love me ?

After this knowledge of myself and the reflections it brings with it, do you think there can ever be a creature more unhappy ! Ah ! mon ami, that mobility of soul for which you blame me, and which I admit, serves me only when I see you. It is that which has brought my life to a single point : I live in you, and by you ; but, besides that, do you know what that mobility does for me ? It makes me experience in one hour all the classes of torture which can rend and cast down the soul. Yes, that is true : I feel sometimes the torpor, the despondency of death, and at the same moment the violent convulsions of despair. This mo- bility is a secret of nature which makes one live with greater force in a single day than the majority of men would feel in a lifetime of a hundred years. It is true that this same mobility, which is only one curse the more to sorrow, is sometimes the source of much pleasure to a calm disposition ; it is even, perhaps, a means of being agreeable, because it is one way of making vanity enjoy itself and of flattering self- love. I have felt a hundred times that I pleased by the impression I received of the charms and wit of the persons with whom I was; and, in general, I am loved because others believe and see that they are making an effect on me ; and not because of the effect I make on them. That proves both the insufficiency of my mind and the activity of mj