The Confessions

  Mme de Warens lived in an old house, large enough to contain a fine spare room which she used as a drawing-room, and it was here that I was put. It gave on to the passage already described, in which our first interview took place, and from it, on the far side of the stream and the gardens, one could see the country. This view was not a matter of indifference to the room’s young occupant. Now, for the first time since Bossey, I had green fields outside my windows. Always shut in by walls, I had had nothing on which to gaze but the roofs of houses and the grey of the streets. I was truly sensitive, therefore, to the charm and novelty of my new situation, which greatly increased my susceptibility to tender feelings. I thought of this charming landscape as an additional gift from my dear patroness, who seemed to have placed it there deliberately for me. There I took my place peacefully beside her, and saw her everywhere among the flowers and the greenery. Her charms and the charms of spring became one in my eyes. My heart, constricted till then, felt more free before this open prospect, and among the orchards my sighs found easier vent.

  There was no such magnificence in Mme de Warens’s house as I had seen at Turin. But there was neatness and decency, and a patriarchal abundance that is never to be found with pomp. She had little silver plate and no porcelain, no game in her kitchen nor imported wines in her cellar. But both her kitchen and her cellar were well stocked for everybody, and in earthenware cups she provided excellent coffee. Whoever came to see her was invited to dine with her or in the house; and no workman or messenger or caller ever left without having had something to eat or drink. Her domestic staff was made up of a rather pretty chambermaid from Fribourg, called Merceret; of a valet from her own district, Claude Anet by name, of whom there will be more in the sequel; of a cook and of two hired chairmen when she went on a visit, which she seldom did. That is a good deal for a pension of two thousand livres. But her small income, well managed, would have been enough for all that in a country where the soil is good and money extremely scarce. Unfortunately economy was never her favourite virtue. She contracted debts, she paid them, her money never stayed in her purse but flowed away.

  She ran her household in exactly the way I should have chosen myself, and naturally I was only too pleased to take advantage of it. What somewhat displeased me, however, was having to spend a long time over meals. At the first smell of the soup and of the other dishes she almost fell into a faint. Indeed she could hardly bear these smells at all, and took some time to recover from her nausea. But little by little she felt better. Then she began to talk, but ate nothing. It would be half an hour before she would take her first mouthful. I could have eaten my dinner three times over in this time. My meal was finished long before she had started hers. So I began again, to keep her company, and ate enough for two, without feeling any the worse for it.

  In a word, I gave myself up to the sweet sense of well-being I felt in her company, a state of mind which was undisturbed by any concern as to the means of preserving it. Not being as yet in her close confidence, I supposed that the present state of affairs was likely always to continue. I found the same comforts again in her house in later days. But, knowing the true situation better, and seeing that she was anticipating her revenue, I was not able to enjoy them so calmly. Looking ahead always ruins my enjoyment. It is never any good foreseeing the future. I have never known how to avoid it.

  From the first day the sweetest intimacy was established between us, and it continued to prevail during the rest of her life. ‘Little one’ was my name, hers was ‘Mamma’, and we always remained ‘Little one’ and ‘Mamma’, even when the passage of the years had almost effaced the difference between our ages. The two names, I find, admirably express the tone of our behaviour, the simplicity of our habits and, what is more, the relation between our hearts. To me she was the most tender of mothers, who never thought of her own pleasure but always of my good. And if there was a sensual side of my attachment to her, that did not alter its character, but only made it more enchanting. I was intoxicated with delight at having a young and pretty mamma whom I loved to caress. I use caress in the strict sense of the word, for she never thought of grudging me kisses or the tender caresses of a mother, and it never entered my thoughts to abuse them. It will be objected that we had in the end a relationship of a different character. I agree. But wait, I cannot tell everything at the same time.

  The sudden moment of our first meeting was the only truly passionate one she ever made me feel. But that moment was the product of surprise. My glances never went wandering indiscreetly beneath her kerchief, though an ill-concealed plumpness in that region might well have attracted them. I felt neither emotions nor desires in her presence; my state was one of blissful calm, in which I enjoyed I knew not what. I could have spent my life like that and eternity as well, without a moment’s boredom. She is the only person with whom I never suffered from that inability to find words that makes the maintenance of conversation such a penance to me. Our time together was spent less in conversation than in one interminable gossip, which required an interruption to bring it to an end. I needed no compulsion to talk; it almost needed compulsion to silence me. As she often thought over her plans, she often fell into reveries. I let her dream on. I gazed on her in silence and was the happiest of men. I had another singular habit. I never claimed the favour of being alone with her, but I ceaselessly sought opportunities for private interviews, which I enjoyed with a passion that turned to fury whenever troublesome visitors came to disturb us. As soon as anyone arrived – whether man or woman, it did not matter which – I went out grumbling, for I could never bear to remain with a third party. Then I would stay in her ante-chamber, counting the minutes and continually cursing her eternal visitors, quite unable to conceive how they could have so much to say since I had so much more.

  I only felt the full strength of my attachment to her when she was out of my sight. When I could see her I was merely happy. But my disquiet when she was away became almost painful. My inability to live without her caused me outbreaks of tenderness which often concluded with tears. I shall always remember how, on a Saint’s day, while she was at vespers, I went for a walk outside the town, with my heart full of the thought of her and with a burning desire to spend my days beside her. I had sense enough to see that for the present this was impossible, that a happiness so deeply enjoyed must needs be short. This gave my thoughts a sad tinge, but not a gloomy one. For it was tempered by a flattering hope. The sound of the bells, which has always singularly moved me, the song of the birds, the beauty of the day, the calm of the countryside, the scattered country dwellings, one of which I fancifully pictured as our common home – all these produced so vivid an impression upon me, raised in me so tender, sad, and touching a mood, that I saw myself ecstatically transported into that happy time and place in which my heart would possess everything it could desire and in which I should enjoy it all with indescribable rapture, yet without so much as a thought of sensual pleasure. I do not remember ever having leapt into the future with greater force and illusion than I did then. And what has struck me most about my memory of this dream, now that it has been realized, is that eventually I found things exactly as I imagined them. If ever a waking man’s dream seemed like a prophetic vision, that reverie of mine did. I was only deceived in my dream’s seeming duration. For in it days and years and a whole life passed in changeless tranquillity, whilst in reality the whole experience was only a momentary one. Alas, my most lasting happiness was in a dream. Its fruition was almost immediately succeeded by my awakening.

  I should never finish were I to describe in detail all the follies which the memory of my dear Mamma caused me to commit when I was out of her sight. How often have I kissed my bed because she had slept in it; my curtains, all the furniture of my room, since they belonged to her and her fair hand had touched them; even the floor on to which I threw myself, calling to mind how she had walked there! Sometimes even in her presence I fell into extravagances that seemed as if they could only have been
inspired by the most violent love. One day at table, just as she had put some food into her mouth, I cried out that I had seen a hair in it. She spat the morsel back on her plate, whereupon I seized it greedily and swallowed it. In a word, there was but one difference between myself and the most passionate of lovers. But that difference was an essential one, and sufficient to render my whole condition inexplicable in the light of reason.

  I had returned from Italy a different person from the one who had gone there. Perhaps no one of my age had ever come back in as strange a state as I. I had preserved my physical but not my moral virginity. The progress of the years had told upon me, and my restless temperament had at last made itself felt. Its first quite involuntary outbreak indeed had caused me some alarm about my health, a fact which illustrates better than anything else the innocence in which I had lived till then. Soon I was reassured, however, and learned that dangerous means of cheating Nature, which leads in young men of my temperament to various kinds of excesses, that eventually imperil their health, their strength, and sometimes their lives. This vice, which shame and timidity find so convenient, has a particular attraction for lively imaginations. It allows them to dispose, so to speak, of the whole female sex at their will, and to make any beauty who tempts them serve their pleasure without the need of first obtaining her consent. Seduced by this fatal advantage, I set about destroying the sturdy constitution which Nature had restored to me, and which I had allowed sufficient time to ripen. Added to my temptations, too, were the circumstances in which I lived, in the house of a pretty woman, fondling her image in my secret heart, seeing her continually throughout the day, and surrounded at night by objects to remind me of her, lying in a bed where I knew she had lain. How much to stimulate me! Let the reader imagine my condition, and he will think of me as already half-dead! But I was far from it. What might have been my undoing was in fact my salvation, at least for a time. Intoxicated with the pleasure of living beside her, and burning with desire to spend my life with her, I saw in her always, whether she were absent or present, a tender mother, a beloved sister, a delightful friend, and nothing more. I saw her always in that way, as always the same, and never any other woman. Her picture was always present in my heart and left room for no one else. For me she was the only woman in the whole world; and the utter sweetness of the feelings she inspired in me, leaving my senses no time to be roused by others, safeguarded me against her and all her sex. In a word, I was chaste because I loved her. I cannot easily describe her effect upon me. But from its results any reader can judge the nature of my affection for her. All that I can say is that, extraordinary though this state of things may seem, in the sequel it will appear even more so.

  I passed my days in the pleasantest possible way, although occupied with things that pleased me very little. There were plans to draw up, accounts to make fair copies of, recipes to transcribe, herbs to pick over, drugs to pound, stills to work. And in the midst of all this came crowds of travellers, beggars, and visitors of all kinds. I had to entertain a soldier, an apothecary, a canon, a fine lady, and a lay brother, all at the same time. I cursed and grumbled and swore, and wished the whole damned gang at the devil. But she took everything cheerfully, and my furies made her laugh till she cried. But what made her laugh even more was to see me get even angrier when I found that I could not prevent myself from laughing. These little interruptions when I enjoyed my grumble were quite delightful; and if a new interrupter arrived while we were arguing, she knew how to extract amusement from that too by maliciously prolonging his visit and throwing me glances meanwhile for which I could cheerfully have beaten her. She could hardly prevent herself from laughing aloud when she saw me painfully restrained by good manners, and glaring at her like one possessed, although in my secret heart I could not help finding the whole situation extremely comical also.

  All this, though not pleasing in itself, amused me nevertheless because it was part of a way of life that charmed me. Nothing that went on around me, nothing that I was made to do, suited my own taste, but everything pleased my heart. I think that I should have succeeded in eventually liking medicine, if my distaste for it had not given rise to those comical scenes which continually delighted us. This was perhaps the first time that the art of medicine had produced such humorous effects. I pretended to recognize a medical book by its smell, and the funny thing is that I was seldom wrong. She made me taste the loathsome drugs. I might run away or try to defend myself, but despite my resistance and the most horrible grimaces, despite struggles and clenched teeth, I had only to see those pretty fingers, all besmeared, approaching my face, and I was forced to open my mouth and lick them. When all her small household was thus assembled in one room, to judge by our running and shouting with laughter we might have been acting a farce instead of compounding opiates and elixirs.

  My time was not entirely spent, however, in these pranks. I had found some books in the room I was given: The Spectator,* Puffendorf, Saint-Évremond, and the Henriade, and although I had lost my former mania for reading, I dipped into them when I had nothing else to do. The Spectator particularly pleased me, and improved my mind. The Abbé de Gouvon had taught me to read less voraciously and more reflectively. So I derived greater profit from my reading. I grew used to thinking about language and the niceties of style. I practised distinguishing between pure French and my provincial idioms. For instance I was cured of a mistake in spelling that I made in common with all Genevese, by these two verses from the Henriade:

  Soit qu’un ancien respect pour le sang de leurs maîtres

  Parlât encore pour lui dans le cœur de ses traîtres.†

  I was struck by the word parlât, and it taught me that the third person singular of the subjunctive requires a t, whereas formerly I had written and pronounced the word parla, as if it had been the past tense in the indicative.

  Sometimes I talked to Mamma about my reading. Sometimes I read to her, which gave me great delight. I practised reading well, and that was useful to me also. I have said that she had a cultivated mind, and at that time it was at its prime. Several men of letters had been at pains to win her favour and had taught her some standards of literary judgement. She had, if I may so put it, a somewhat Protestant taste. She talked a great deal about Bayle and set great store by Saint-Évremond, who had died some time before in France. But this did not hinder her knowledge of good literature, or prevent her from discussing it most intelligently. She had been brought up in refined society, and had come to Savoy while still young. So in pleasant intercourse with the Savoyard nobility she had thrown off the affectations of the Vaud country, where women consider attempts at wit a social asset and cannot speak except in epigrams.

  Although she had only a passing acquaintance with the Court, she had learnt sufficient from one rapid glance to know it well. She always retained some friends there and, despite secret jealousies and the disapproval excited by her general behaviour and her debts, she never lost her pension.* She had some experience of the world, and the capacity for reflection that makes such experience profitable. This was a favourite subject of conversation with her, and it gave me, with my fantastic notions, just the sort of instruction I was most in need of. We read La Bruyère together, whom she preferred to La Rochefoucauld, a gloomy and depressing author, especially when one is young and does not care to see man as he is. When she moralized, she sometimes wandered off into vagueness. But if I kissed her lips or her hands from time to time I was able to endure her prolixities patiently to the end.

  This life was too sweet to last. I felt that, and the fear of seeing it end was the one thing which disturbed my enjoyment of it. All the time she was fooling with me Mamma was studying and observing me, asking me questions and making plans for my future fortune, plans with which I would gladly have dispensed. Fortunately it was not merely a matter of knowing my inclinations, my tastes, and my little talents. It was necessary to find or prepare opportunities for bringing them out, and all this could not be done in a day. Even the mistake
n estimate the poor woman had made of my abilities postponed the moment in which they would have to be displayed, since they made her more particular about the choice of means. In fact, thanks to her high opinion of me, everything played into my hands. But I had to climb down a peg or two, and then farewell to my peace of mind. A relative of hers, M. d’Aubonne by name, came to see her. He was a man of great intelligence, an intriguer and, like her, a great schemer, but he did not ruin himself by his schemes; he was a sort of adventurer. He had just suggested to Cardinal Fleury a very elaborate plan for a lottery, which had not found favour. So he was going to propose it at the Court of Turin, where it was adopted and carried out. He stayed at Annecy for some time, and there fell in love with the Intendant’s wife, a very charming person, whom I greatly liked, and who was the only visitor I was glad to see at Mamma’s. M. d’Aubonne saw me; Mme de Warens talked to him about me; he undertook to examine me and see what I was fit for and, if he found anything in me, to try and find me a post.

  Mme de Warens sent me to him on two or three successive mornings, inventing some errand as a pretext and giving me no warning of her purpose. He very skilfully started me talking, treating me with some familiarity and putting me as much at my ease as he possibly could. Then, without seeming to observe me, he touched quite unaffectedly on all sorts of topics, trivial and otherwise, as if he had taken a fancy to me and was bent on idle conversation. I was absolutely charmed by him. But the conclusion he came to was that, though I might not be a complete fool, I had not very much intelligence. For despite my promising appearance and lively features, he could not find an idea in my head or any trace of education. In short, I laboured under every sort of limitation, and the very highest I could ever aim was one day to become a village priest. Such was his report to Mme de Warens. This was the second or third time I had been judged in this way, and it was not to be the last; M. Masseron’s verdict has often been repeated.