Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/33

18 "All these many contradictions, these many impulses are true, and three words explain them: I love you."

Eemark that amid this life of exhaustion and delirium, Mile, de Lespinasse is in society; she receives her friends as usual ; she amazes them at times by her variable humour, but they attribute this change to her regrets at the absence, and then at the death, of M. de Mora. " They do me the honour to believe that I am crushed by the loss that I have met with." They praised her and admired her for it, which redoubled her shame. Poor d'Alembert, who lived in the same house, endeavoured vainly to console her, to amuse her; he never comprehended why she repulsed him now and then with a sort of horror. Alas! it was the horror she felt at her own dissimulation with such a friend. The long agony had its ending at last. She died on the 23d of May, 1776, at the age of forty-three years and six months. Her passion for M. de Guibert had lasted for more than three years.

Amid this consuming passion, which seems as though it could admit no other element, do not suppose that these Letters fail to show the charming mind which was joined to this noble heart. What delicate jesting as she writes of the "good" Condorcet, the Chevalier de Chastellux, Chamfort, and others of her society! What grace! Lofty and generous sentiments, patriotism and virility of views, are revealed in more places than one, and make us appreciate the worthy friend of Turgot and of Malesherbes. When she talks with Lord Shelburne she feels what is grand and vivifying for thought in being born under a free Government: "How can we not be grieved at being born under a Government like ours? As for me, weak and unhappy creature that I am, if I were born again, I would rather be the lowest member of the House of Commons than the King of Prussia