“Eager to know, I began to read history. It became more and more interesting to me. The story of a brave deed excited me almost to a delirium. How many times I wept because I had not been born a Spartan or a Roman! As my horizon enlarged, I began to think about my creed, and my faith was overthrown. Humanity was dear to me, and I could not endure to see it condemned without distinction and without pity. I threw over the authority which would force me to believe a cruel absurdity. The first step taken, the rest of the route was soon travelled, and I examined all with the scrupulous defiance which one gives to a doctrine false in an essential point. The philosophic works that I read at this time aided me, but did not determine me to come to a decision. Each system seemed to me to have its weakness and its strength. I held to some of my brilliant chimeras; I became sceptical by an effort, and I took for my creed beneficence in conduct and tolerance in opinion.
“These changes in my ideas had no influence on my morals. They are independent of all religious system because founded on the general interest which is the same everywhere. Harmony in the affections seem to me to constitute the individual goodness of a man; the justice of his relations with his kind, the wisdom of the social man. The multiplied relations of the civil life have also, without doubt, multiplied laws and duties, and those peculiar to each one should be the first subject of his study.
“The place which my sex should occupy in the order of nature and of society very soon fixed my curious attention. I will not say what I thought of the question which has been raised as to the pre-eminence of one sex over the other. It has never seemed to me worthy of the attention of a serious mind. We differ essentially, and the superiority which in some respects is yours does not alter the reciprocal dependence in happiness which can only be the common work of both.
“I appreciated the justice, the power, and the extent of the duties laid upon my sex. I trembled with joy on finding that I had the courage, the resolution, and the certainty of always fulfilling them.... I resolved to change my condition only for the sake of an object worthy of absolute devotion. In the number of those who solicited (my hand), one only of whom I have talked to you (M. de Sévelinges) merited my heart. For a long time I was silent, and it was only when I realized all the barriers between us that I asked him to leave me. I have had reason since to congratulate myself on this resolution, which was painful for me beyond expression.
“Many changes have come since, but I have steadily refused to marry except for love. I have lost my fortune and my pride has increased. I would not enter a family which did not appreciate me enough to be proud of the alliance or which would think it was honoring me in receiving me. I have felt in this way a long time, and have looked upon a single life as my lot. My duties, true, would be fewer and not so sweet, perhaps, but none the less severe and exacting. Friendship I have regarded as my compensation, and I have wished to taste it with all the abandon of confidence. But you are leading me too far, and it is against that that I would protect myself.
ROLAND DE LA PLATIÈRE.
After the painting by Hesse.
“I have seen in your strong, energetic, enlightened, practical soul, the stuff for a friend of first rank. I have been delighted to regard you as such, and to all the seriousness of friendship I wanted to add all the fervor of which a tender soul is capable. But you have awakened in my heart a feeling against which I believed myself armed. I have not concealed it. I showed it unreservedly and I expected you to give me the generous support which I needed. But far from sparing my weakness, you became each day rasher, and you have dared ask me the cause of my pensiveness, my silence, my pain. Sir, I may be the victim of my sentiments, but I will never be the plaything of any man.... I cannot make an amusement of love. For me it is a terrible passion which would submerge my whole being and which would influence all my life. Give me back friendship or fear—to force me to see you no more.
“O my friend, why disturb the beautiful relation between us? My heart is rich enough to repay you in tenderness for all the privations it imposes upon you.... Spare me the greatest good that I know, the only one which makes life tolerable to me,—a friend sincere and faithful. I have not enough of your philosophy or I have too much of another which does not resemble yours in this point only, to give myself up inconsiderately to a passion which for me would be transport and delirium.
“My friend, come back more moderate, more reserved, let us cherish zealously, joyfully, and confidently the tastes which can strengthen the sweet tie which unites us....”