I have just opened a book in which I find a paragraph so suitable to our detention, and the close intimacy and dependence on each other which have followed it, that I cannot help transcribing—‘Quand on est parfaitement heureuse par ses affections, c’est peut-être une faveur de la Providence que certains revers resserrent encore vos liens par la force même des choses.’ This struck me as very just, and what ought to silence all our murmurs on the subject of our detention. It is really gratifying to find we have been happy without any of the usual interests of life, without society, without plan, without fixed occupation, without enjoying either the beauties of nature or the refined accommodations and luxuries of art, and, on my part, without even health. It seems a hint to us not to confide that happiness of which we are already sure in each other, to any other projects but those which arise from affection, and tend to make our children capable of the same species of enjoyment as ourselves. For my own part, I feel so strongly qu’il faut respecter le bonheur, that I never will again form a wish that you should pursue any scheme of ambition or advancement. A quoi bon? In living for ourselves position would be useless, and our fortune is already equal to our wishes, and of a nature which, without effort, will, in the common course of things, insensibly and moderately increase, so as to keep pace with the increasing advance around us. When absent from you, I exist only in my reflections, and all those I have made since we parted are of this stamp.
I have been asked for every evening to Mrs. Latten’s, and have never gone yet, which I mention to show you how little you need regret my retirement; for I am convinced that if I had opportunities of going out, I should not use them; yet I like the Lattens. She is pretty and civil, and he has the sort of animal spirits which always excite mine, and I think him remarkably clever, till he leaves the room, and then I find I cannot recollect one thing he has said which might not have come from any other person.
TO THE SAME.
Paris, May, 1804.
I have got an Annual Register for 1803, through Sir M. C., and am blinding myself over it day and night. I wish it was to be had, and I would send it to you. This is the night of the fête for the Emperor at the opera. I have been too miserly to take a box, and have been a little tempted to go to the orchestra, which is the resource of those who have not boxes; but I feel so strongly that it is not my place, that nothing I could see from thence would make up to me for that idea. So between my avarice and my pride I shall lose the only brilliant fête open to a stranger; but I have been formerly so used to find my pleasures come unsought, that when I am to purchase and look for them, I feel myself ill-used and inclined to bouder at home. I went muffled up last night with Mrs. Sheldon to see Mˡˡᵉ Duchesnois in Esther. The house very thin, though almost all the good actors appeared in tragedy or comedy. Mˡˡᵉ Duchesnois is the sweetest creature in Esther I can conceive—so innocent, so harmonious, so touchante, so timid, so animated, so young in mind as well as appearance. She gives me in that part the idea of a little white dove, and I have an extraordinary respect for talents which can so represent the flames of Phèdre and the purity of Esther.