However this might be, Madam de Warrens conceived it necessary to guard me from the perils of youth by treating me as a man: this she immediately set about, but in the most extraordinary manner that any woman, in similar circumstances, ever devised.I all at once observed that her manner was graver, and her discourse more moral than usual.To the playful gayety with which she used to intermingle her instructions suddenly succeeded an uniformity of manner, neither familiar nor severe, but which seemed to prepare me for some explanation.After having vainly racked my brain for the reason of this change, I mentioned it to her; this she had expected and immediately proposed a walk to our garden the next day.Accordingly we went there the next morning; she had contrived that we should remain alone the whole day, which she employed in preparing me for those favors she meant to bestow; not as another woman would have done, by toying and folly, but by discourses full of sentiment and reason, rather tending to instruct than seduce, and which spoke more to my heart than to my senses.Meantime, however excellent and to the purpose these discourses might be, and though far enough from coldness or melancholy, I did not listen to them with all the attention they merited, nor fix them in my memory as I should have done at any other time.That air of preparation which she had adopted gave me a degree of inquietude; while she spoke (in spite of myself) I was thoughtful and absent, attending less to what she said than curious to know what she aimed at; and no sooner had I comprehended her design (which I could not easily do) than the novelty of the idea, which, during all the years I had passed with her, had never once entered my imagination, took such entire possession of me that I was no longer capable of minding what she said! I only thought of her; I heard her no longer.
Thinking to render young minds attentive to reason by proposing some highly interesting object as the result of it, is an error instructors frequently run into, and one which I have not avoided in my Emilius.
The young pupil, struck with the object presented to him, is occupied only with that, and leaping lightly over your preliminary discourses, lights at once on the point, to which, in his idea, you lead him too tediously.To render him attentive, he must be prevented from seeing the whole of your design; and, in this particular, Madam de Warrens did not act with sufficient precaution.
By a singularity of her systematic disposition, she took the vain precaution of proposing conditions; but the moment I knew the price, Ino longer even heard them, but consented to everything, and I doubt whether there is a man on the whole earth who would have been sincere or courageous enough to dispute terms, or one single woman who would have pardoned such a dispute.By the same whimsicality, she attached a number of the gravest formalities to the acquisition of her favors, and gave me eight days to think of them, which I assured her Ihad no need of, though far from a truth; I was very glad to have this intermission; so much had the novelty of these ideas struck me, and such disorder did I feel in mine, that it required time to arrange them.
It will be supposed, that these eight days appeared to me as many ages; on the contrary, I should have been very glad had the time been lengthened.I found myself in a strange state; it was a strange chaos of fear and impatience, dreading what I desired, and studying some pretext to evade my happiness.
Let the warmth of my constitution be remembered, my age, and my heart intoxicated with love; think of my strength, my health, my blood on fire; that in this state, burning with thirst for women, I had never yet approached one; that imagination, necessity, vanity and curiosity combined to excite in me the most ardent desire to be a man and to prove myself to be one, let my tender attachment to her be supposed, which far from having diminished, had daily gained additional strength; I was only happy when with her, that my heart was full, not only of her bounty, of her amiable disposition, but of her shape, of her sex, of her person, of her self; in a word, conceive me united to her by every affinity that could possibly render her dear; nor let it be supposed, that, being ten or twelve years older than myself, she began to grow an old woman, or was so in my opinion.The first sight of her had made such an impression on me, she had really altered very little.To me she was ever charming.She had got something jollier, but had the same fine eyes, the same complexion, the same bosom, the same gayety, and even the same voice.Naturally, what I most should have feared in waiting for the possession of a woman I loved so dearly, was to anticipate it, and not being strong enough to control my desires and my imagination sufficiently not to forget myself.It will be seen, that in a more advanced age, the bare idea of some trifling favors I had to expect from the person I loved, inflamed me so far that I could not support, with any degree of patience, the time necessary to traverse the short space that separated us; how then, by what miracle, when in the flower of my youth, had I so little impatience for a happiness I had never tasted but in idea? Why, instead of transports that should have intoxicated me with their deliciousness, did Iexperience only fears and repugnance? I have no doubt that if Icould have avoided this happiness with any degree of decency, I should have relinquished it with all my heart.I have promised a number of extravagancies in the history of my attachment to her; this certainly is one that no idea could be formed of.
The reader supposes, that being in the situation I have before described with Claude Anet, she was already degraded in my opinion by this participation of her favors, and that a sentiment of disesteem weakened those she had before inspired me with; but he is mistaken.
