188 HOUSSEATJ. 



full and specific, instead of being any defence to ward 

 off the punishment of universal reprobation, was a vir- 

 tue of an equivocal kind, and might be taken as easily 

 for callous impudence as for sincere penitence. 



The natural result of the system on which his moral 

 feelings were built, was that the most undeviating self- 

 ishness took possession of his whole soul. Self- 

 indulgence was his rule self-restraint his abhorrence. 

 The sophistry with which he so constantly seeks to 

 cover over this vice is pitiable when it is not ridiculous. 

 For many years he had almost ceased even to write to 

 Madame de Warens ; and for above two years after his 

 removal to Neufchatel, the last years of her miserable 

 life, she was, as he too well knew, plunged in the 

 depths of misery she who had supported him while 

 she had a farthing to give she to whom he owed his 

 whole existence for the first ten years and the most des- 

 titute of his life she for whom he had so often avowed, 

 and also felt, the most tender affection, and who had 

 ever treated him like an anxious mother not only did 

 he remain for those two years a day's journey from her 

 residence without ever repairing to see and to console, 

 if he could not relieve and reclaim her, but he never 

 gave her the comfort of a letter to show he still bore 

 her image in his heart and why ? " because he feared 

 to sadden her heart (contrister son cceur) with the 

 story of his disasters !"* As if she had not real disas- 

 ters of her own as if the straw on which she was 

 perishing of want offered not wherewithal to touch 

 her more nearly than the tale of his fancied wrongs 



* Conf. and Cor., 600. 



