Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/31

16 expansion; excited, animated by things from without, but never deeply emotional.

But of what use is it to become clear-sighted? Did a woman's mind, great as it may be, ever check her heart? "The mind of most women serves to strengthen their folly rather than their reason!" La Rochefoucauld says that, and Mlle. de Lespinasse proves the truth of it. She continued to love M. de Guibert, all the while judging him. She suffers more and more; she appeals to him and chides him with a mixture of irritation and tenderness: "Fill my soul, or cease to torture it; make me to love you always, or to be as though I had never loved you—in short, do the impossible; calm me, or I die!"

Instead of that, he harms her; with his natural carelessness he finds a way to wound even her self-love. She compares him to M. de Mora; she blushes for him, for herself, at the difference between them: And it is you who have made me guilty towards that man! the thought revolts my soul, and I turn away from it." Repentance, hatred, jealousy, remorse, contempt of herself, and sometimes of him—she suffers at all moments the tortures of the damned. To deaden them, to distract her mind, to make truce with her sufferings, she has recourse to many things. She tries "Tancrède," which touches her; she thinks it beautiful, but nothing is on the key of her own soul. She has recourse to opium to suspend her life and numb her sensibilities. Sometimes she makes a resolution to no longer open the letters she receives; she keeps one, sealed, for six days. There are days, weeks, when she thinks herself almost cured, restored to reason, to calmness; she extols reason and its sweetness; but her calmness is merely an illusion. Her passion counterfeited death only to revive more ardent, more inflamed than ever. She regrets no longer her