Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/88

1773] what you think you now disclose to me of your own accord. Do you wish me to tell you something of profound wisdom? It is that neither you nor I know you perfectly : you, because you are too near, and because you observe yourself too much; and I, because I have always regarded you with fear and embarrassment. Oh ! if ever I see you again, I will look better into you; it seems to me that my sight is growing keener.

What you say about the cause of your continental journeys is charming, full of wit and grace, and that is surely enough to make us do without truth. " I fill my youth in order that my old age may not blame me for neglecting to employ it." You see you are like the miser, who, while his children are dying of hunger, justifies his cruelty in his own eyes by saying that he amasses wealth that they may enjoy it after him. Let us be more candid ; let us not seek a pretext to justify our tastes and our passions : you go to the ends of the earth because your soul is more eager than tender. "Well, what harm in that ? You are young, you have known love, you have suffered, and you conclude from that that you have sen- sibility : it is not so. You are ardent, you can be impassioned, you are capable of all that is strong, of all that is grand, but you will never do any but things of movement ; that is to say, actions, detached deeds ; and such is not the way of sensibility and tenderness. They attach, they bind, they fill the whole life; they leave no place for aught but sweet and peaceful virtues; they evade distraction; all that separates and removes them from their object seems to them misfortune or tyranny. Consider and compare these things. As I have already told you, nature has not made you to be happy ; she has condemned you to be great ; submit, there- fore, without a murmur.

Tor the rest, I believe what you tell me about the advan-