I have somewhere said, that nothing should be granted to the senses, when we wish to refuse them anything.To prove how false this maxim was relative to Madam d'Houdetot and how far she was right to depend upon her own strength of mind, it would be necessary to enter into the detail of our long and frequent conversations, and follow them, in all, their liveliness, during the four months we passed together in an intimacy almost without example between two friends of different sexes who contain themselves within the bounds which we never exceeded.
Ah! if I had lived so long without feeling the power of real love, my heart and senses abundantly paid the arrears.What, therefore, are the transports we feel with the object of our affections by whom we are beloved, since the passions of which my idol did not partake inspired such as I felt?
But I am wrong in saying Madam d'Houdetot did not partake of the passion of love; that which I felt was in some measure confined to myself; yet love was equal on both sides, but not reciprocal.We were both intoxicated with the passion, she for her lover, and I for herself; our sighs and delicious tears were mingled together.Tender confidants of the secrets of each other, there was so great a similarity in our sentiments that it was impossible they should not find some common point of union.In the midst of this delicious intoxication, she never forgot herself for a moment, and I solemnly protest that, if ever, led away by my senses, I have attempted to render her unfaithful, I was never really desirous of succeeding.
The vehemence itself of my passion restrained it within bounds.The duty of self-denial had elevated my mind.The luster of every virtue adorned in my eyes the idol of my heart; to have soiled their divine image would have been to destroy it.I might have committed the crime;it has been a hundred times committed in my heart; but to dishonor my Sophia! Ah! was this ever possible? No! I have told her a hundred times it was not.Had I had it in my power to satisfy my desires, had she consented to commit herself to my discretion, I should, except in a few moments of delirium, have refused to be happy at the price of her honor.I loved her too well to wish to possess her.
The distance from the Hermitage to Eaubonne is almost a league; in my frequent excursions to it I have sometimes slept there.One evening after having supped tete-a-tete we went to walk in the garden by a fine moonlight.At the bottom of the garden is a considerable copse, through which we passed on our way to a pretty grove ornamented with a cascade, of which I had given her the idea, and she had procured it to be executed accordingly.
Eternal remembrance of innocence and enjoyment! It was in this grove that, seated by her side upon a seat of turf under an acacia in full bloom, I found for the emotions of my heart a language worthy of them.
It was the first and only time of my life; but I was sublime: if everything amiable and seducing with which the most tender and ardent love can inspire the heart of man can be so called.What intoxicating tears did I shed upon her knees! how many did I make her to shed involuntarily! At length in an involuntary transport she exclaimed: "No, never was man so amiable, nor ever was there one who loved like you! But your friend Saint Lambert hears us, and my heart is incapable of loving twice." I exhausted myself with sighs; Iembraced her- what an embrace! But this was all.She had lived alone for the last six months, that is absent from her husband and lover;I had seen her almost every day during three months, and love seldom failed to make a third.We had supped tete-a-tete, we were alone, in the grove by moonlight, and after two hours of the most lively and tender conversation, she left this grove at midnight, and the arms of her lover, as morally and physically pure as she had entered it.
Reader, weigh all these circumstances; I will add nothing more.
