Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... found it more profitable to feast upon a good poem than to starve myself with roots. In vain, some years after, did M. Roland, paying his addresses, endeavor to revive in me this ancient taste; we made, indeed, a great many figures; but the mode of deduction by X and Y was never sufficiently attractive to fix my attention. September 5. / cut the sheet to inclose what I have written in the little box; for when I see a revolutionary army decreed, new tribunals formed for shedding innocent blood, famine threatened, and the tyrants at bay, I augur that they must have new victims, and conclude that no one is secure of living another day. The correspondence with Sophie was still one of my chief pleasures, and the bands of our friendship had been drawn closer by several journeys which she had made to Paris. My susceptible heart had need, I will not say of an illusion, but of an object upon which to centre its affections, and especially of confidence and communication. Friendship offered them, and I cherished it with ardor. My relation with my mother, agreeable as it was, would not have supplied the place of this affection; it had too much of the gravity resulting from respect on the one part, and of authority on the other. My mother might have known everything; I had nothing to conceal from her, but I could not tell her all. To a parent one addresses confessions; one can really confide only in an equal. My mother, without asking to see the letters I wrote to Sophie, was pleased to have them shown to her; and our arrangement of this matter was not without its humorous side. We understood each other without a word having passed between us on the subject. When I heard from my friend, which I did regularly every week, I read to my mother a few...