The Confessions

  All these reflections finally alienated my affections from this woman to such a degree that I could no longer look at her without contempt. However I never ceased to treat the mother of my partner with respect and to show her, in almost every way, the attentions and consideration of a son. But it is true that I never cared to stay long in her company; for it is hardly in me to subject myself to restraint.

  Here is another of these brief moments in my life when I have seen happiness close at hand without being able to attain it and without its being my fault that I have missed it. If Mme Le Vasseur had been a good woman we could have been happy, all three, to the end of our days, and the only one to be pitied would have been the last of us to survive. Instead, you will watch the march of events and judge whether I could have stayed it.

  Seeing that I had gained ground in her daughter’s affections while she had lost, Mme Le Vasseur struggled to recover her position and, instead of drawing closer to me through Thérèse, tried to alienate her daughter from me altogether. One of the means she employed was to call her family to her aid. I had begged Thérèse not to let any of them come to the Hermitage; and she had given me her promise. They were sent for in my absence, and she was not consulted. After the first step all the rest were easy. When once one has kept one matter secret from the person one loves, very soon one has hardly any scruples in keeping everything from him. As soon as I was at La Chevrette the Hermitage was full of people who enjoyed themselves quite a bit. A mother has always a strong influence on a daughter who is good-natured. Nevertheless, however hard the old woman tried, she could never win Thérèse round to her point of view or bring her into the conspiracy against me. But Mme Le Vasseur committed herself irrevocably; and seeing on one side her daughter and myself, with whom she could live and no more, and on the other Diderot, Grimm, d’Holbach, and Mme d’Épinay, who made her large promises and gave her something, she reckoned that no one could go far wrong in the company of a farmer-general and a baron. If I had had better eyes I should have seen from that moment that I was harbouring a snake in my bosom. But such was my blind confidence, which nothing had yet affected, that I did not even conceive of a person’s harming someone he ought to love. While I saw a thousand plots spun all round me, all I found to complain of was the tyranny of those I called my friends, who were trying, as I thought, to force me to be happy in their way rather than in mine.

  Although Thérèse refused to enter into a league with her mother she once more kept her secret. Her motive was praiseworthy. I will not say whether she did right or wrong. Two women who share a secret like to chatter about it. This brought them closer together, and Thérèse by dividing her loyalty sometimes left me feeling that I was alone. For I could no longer count the relationship we formed when all together as society. It was then that I felt acutely how wrong I had been, during our early intimacy, not to profit by the pliability which her love had inspired in her, to bring out her talents and give her knowledge which would have drawn us closer together in our retreat, pleasantly filled up her time and mine, and prevented the moments when we were alone together from ever hanging heavy on our hands. It was not that conversation dried up between us, or that she seemed to be bored during our walks; but we had not sufficient ideas in common to make any great store. We could no longer talk incessantly about our plans, for now they were limited to that of enjoying ourselves. The objects that came into view inspired me with reflections beyond her understanding. A twelve-year-old affection had no more need of words. We knew one another too well to have anything fresh to say. The only resources left us were trivialities, scandal, and bad puns. It is particularly in solitude that one feels the advantage of living with someone who can think. I had no need of this resource to delight in her company, but she required it if she were always to delight in mine. The worst of it was that even then we had to snatch our times together; her mother, who had grown tiresome to me, forced me to watch out for them. I was under constraint in my own house, that is the whole story; the atmosphere of love spoilt a simple friendship. Our relationship was intimate but we did not live in intimacy.

  As soon as I thought I saw Thérèse sometimes looking for excuses to escape the walks I suggested, I ceased to suggest any, without feeling at all annoyed with her for not enjoying them as much as I. Pleasure is not a thing that depends on the will. I was certain of her love, and that satisfied me. When my pleasures were hers I enjoyed them with her; when they were not I put her happiness before mine.

  Thus it was that, half deceived in my expectations, leading a life after my own heart in a place of my choice with a person who was dear to me, I nevertheless managed to feel almost isolated. What I lacked prevented my enjoying what I had. Where happiness and enjoyment were concerned, I needed all or nothing. It will be clear later why I have felt it necessary to make this explanation. Now I will resume the thread of my story.

  I believed that the manuscripts which the Count de Saint-Pierre had given me were so many treasures. When I examined them I saw that they were little more than the collection of his uncle’s printed works, annotated and corrected by his hand, with a few little pieces in addition that had never been published. His moral writings confirmed me in the opinion I had formed on some of his letters which Mme de Créqui had shown me, that he had much more intelligence than I had previously imagined. But a thorough examination of his political works showed me only superficial views, and plans useful enough but impracticable owing to one idea from which the author could never escape, that men are motivated by their intelligence rather than by their passions. The high opinion he had of modern learning had led him into adopting a false belief in perfect wisdom, which was the basis of all the institutions he proposed and the source of all his political sophistries. This rare man, an ornament to his age and to his kind – the only man, perhaps, in all the history of the human race whose only passion was the passion for reason – nevertheless only advanced from error to error in all his systems, because he wished to make all men like himself instead of taking them as they are and as they will continue to be. Whilst thinking that he was working for his contemporaries he was in fact labouring for creatures of his imagination.

  All this considered, I was in some doubt as to what form I was to give to my work. If I were to allow my author his visions I should be doing no useful service. Were I to refute them vigorously I should be acting dishonourably because my possession of the manuscripts, which I had accepted and even asked for, put me under the obligation of treating the author kindly. In the end I took the line that seemed the most honest, the most judicious, and the most useful. This was to give the author’s views and my own separately and, with this object, to enter into his views, explain them and extend them, and spare no pains to show them off at their best.

  My work, therefore, had to be made up of two absolutely separate parts, one intended to display the author’s various schemes in the way I have just described, while in the other, which was not intended to appear until the first had had its effect, I should have delivered my own judgement on those same schemes, which, I admit, would have meant exposing them at times to the treatment of the sonnet in Le Misanthrope.* As an introduction to the whole work there was to be a life of the author, for which I had collected some fairly good material which I flattered myself I should not spoil by my treatment. I had occasionally seen the Abbé de Saint-Pierre in his old age; and the respect I had for his memory guaranteed me that, on the whole, the Count would not be displeased with the way I treated his relative.

  I tried my hand out on the Perpetual Peace,† the most considerable and the most elaborate of all the works in his collection; and before going over to my own reflections I had the courage to read absolutely all that the Abbé had written on this great subject, without ever being put off by his prolixity or his repetitions. The public has seen the selection I took from it, so I have nothing more to say. As for my judgement of it, it has not been printed, and I do not know whether it ever will be; but it was made at the same
time as the selection. I went on from that to the Polysynody,‡ or plurality of Councils, a work which he had written in the Regent’s time to support the form of administration he had introduced, and which had led to the Abbé’s expulsion from the French Academy for some shafts against the preceding administration, which annoyed the Duchess de Maine and the Cardinal de Polignac. I finished this work in the same way as the preceding one, made my selection, and wrote my judgement; but I stopped there, unwilling to continue with an enterprise I should never have embarked on.

  The reflection which made me abandon the project occurred to me spontaneously, and it is astonishing that it had not occurred earlier. The majority of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre’s writings were, or contained, critical observations upon certain features of the government of France, and some of them were so outspoken that he was lucky not to have got into trouble. But in ministerial offices the Abbé de Saint-Pierre had always been regarded as a kind of preacher rather than as a true politician, and they let him say just what he pleased because it was well known that nobody listened to him. If I had succeeded in gaining him a hearing the case would have been different. He was a Frenchman, I was not; and by venturing to repeat his criticisms, even over his signature, I was taking the risk of being asked, rather roughly but not unjustly, what all this had to do with me. Fortunately, before going any further I saw what a hold I should be giving them over me and very speedily retired. I knew that, living alone in the midst of men – and of men all more powerful than myself – I could not protect myself, whatever I did, from any injury they might choose to do me. There was only one course of action that I could take: to behave in such a way that if they chose to injure me they should at least be in the wrong. This principle, which led me to abandon the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, has often made me renounce projects that have been far dearer to me. Those people who are always ready to construe adversity into crime would be very surprised if they knew all the pains I have taken in my life to prevent anyone’s having the excuse for saying to me in my misfortunes: ‘That served you right.’

  The relinquishing of this work left me for some time uncertain of what should be my next project; and this period of idleness was my undoing, for it led me to turn my reflections on myself, through lack of any external object to occupy them. I had no longer any scheme for the future with which to entertain my imagination. It was not even possible for me to invent one, since my present situation was precisely the one which fulfilled all my desires at once. I could not conceive of anything more to wish, and yet my heart was empty. My state indeed was all the more cruel because I could see none that I should prefer to it. I had concentrated all my tenderest affections upon a person after my own heart, who returned them.

  My life with her was unconstrained and, as you might say, subject to no conditions. Nevertheless I was never free from a secret heartache, whether I was with her or away from her. When I possessed her I felt that she was still not mine; and the single idea that I was not everything to her caused her to be almost nothing to me.

  I had friends of both sexes to whom I was attached by the purest of friendship and the most perfect of respect. I counted on a genuine reciprocation on their part, and it never once occurred to me to doubt their sincerity. These friendships, however, were more of a pain than a pleasure to me owing to my friends’ obstinate, or even perverse, habit of opposing all my tastes, my inclinations, and my way of life to such an extent that I had only to appear to want something affecting myself alone, and in no way depending on them, for me to find them all immediately banded together to compel me to renounce it. Their stubborn attempts to control me in my every whim were all the more unfair because, far from opposing theirs, I did not even find out what they were. It became, however, so cruelly burdensome to me that in the end I never received a letter from any of them without feeling, as I opened it, a certain alarm which was only too well justified by the contents. I felt that for people all younger than myself and all standing in great need themselves of the advice they lavished on me, they were treating me too much like a child. ‘Love me’, I said to them, ‘as I love you. Otherwise do not interfere in my affairs any more than I interfere in yours. That is all that I ask of you.’ If they conceded one of my two demands it certainly was not the second.

  I had a retired dwelling-place in a charming solitude, and there I could live after my own fashion without requiring anyone to control me. This dwelling-place imposed on me, however, duties which were pleasant to fulfil but which could not be ignored. My whole liberty was no more than precarious. I was in a state of greater subjection than if I had been under orders because I had to submit of my own free will. I had not a single day on which I could say as I got up: ‘This day I will spend just as I please.’ Besides being dependent on Mme d’Épinay’s arrangements I was still more tiresomely subject to the public and chance visitors. My distance from Paris did not prevent crowds of idle people who had no idea what to do with their time from coming every day to waste mine quite unscrupulously. Without the least warning I found myself pitilessly assailed, and scarcely did I make a pleasant plan for my day that I did not have it upset by some caller. In short, amidst the blessings I had most eagerly desired, I found no pure enjoyment, and I turned my thoughts back by fits and starts to the clear skies of my youth, exclaiming to myself sometimes with a sigh: ‘Ah, this is not what life was like at Les Charmettes!’

  Recollection of the different periods in my life led me to reflect on the point I had now reached, and I found myself already in my declining years a prey to painful afflictions. I believed that I was approaching the end of my days almost without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted, without having given vent to the strong emotions which I felt it had in reserve, without having even tasted that intoxicating passion, the power of which I felt in my soul -a passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed and could express itself in no other way but through my sighs.

  How could it be that, with a naturally expansive nature for which to live was to love, I had not hitherto found a friend entirely my own, a true friend - I who felt so truly formed to be a friend? How could it be that with such inflammable feelings, with a heart entirely moulded for love, I had not at least once burned with love for a definite object? Devoured by a need to love that I had never been able to satisfy, I saw myself coming to the gates of old age, and dying without having lived.

  These melancholy but moving reflections drove me back upon myself with a regret that was not without its own pleasure. It seemed to me that fate owed me something she had never given me. To what purpose had she sent me into the world with delicate faculties, if they were to remain to the end unused? This consciousness of my internal worth gave me a feeling of injustice, which afforded me some form of compensation and caused me to weep tears that pleased me as they flowed.

  I was meditating on this subject in the finest season of the year, in the month of June, beneath cool groves, to the song of the nightingale and the murmuring of the streams. Everything combined to plunge me once more into that too seductive indolence to which I was naturally inclined, but from which I ought to have been delivered for ever by the firm and austere state of mind that my long inner ferment had just brought me to. Unfortunately I started remembering the dinner at the Château de Toune and my meeting with those two charming girls, at the same season and in country more or less similar to the country I was in at that moment. This memory, which was the sweeter for the innocence associated with it, recalled others of the same kind to me. Soon I saw all around me the persons I had felt emotion for in my youth: Mlle Galley, Mlle de Graffenried, Mlle de Breil, Mme Basile, Mme de Larnage, my pretty music pupils, and even the enticing Giulietta, whom my heart can never forget. I saw myself surrounded by a seraglio of houris, by my old acquaintances a strong desire for whom was no new sensation to me. My blood caught fire, my head turned despite its grey hairs, and there was the grave citizen of Geneva, the austere Jean-Jacques at almost for
ty-five, suddenly become once more the love-sick swain. The intoxication that seized me, although so sudden and so foolish, was so strong and lasting that it took nothing less than the unforeseen and terrible crisis it brought upon me to cure me of it.

  Whatever the intensity of this intoxication, however, it was not sufficient to make me forget my age and situation, to flatter me that I could still arouse love, or to make me try at last to communicate this devouring but barren flame by which ever since my childhood I had felt my heart to be consumed in vain. I had no hope of this, nor did I even desire it. I knew that the time for love was past. I was too conscious of the ridicule heaped upon aged beaux to incur it myself. I was not the man to become presumptuous and over-confident in my declining years, after having been so little so in my prime. Besides, being a peaceable man, I should have been too frightened of domestic storms; and I loved Thérèse too sincerely to expose her to the grief of seeing me carried away by other and stronger feelings than those she inspired in me.