had committed an incest, and two or three times, pressing her eagerly
in my arms, I deluged her bosom with my tears. On her part, as she had
never sought pleasure, she had not the stings of remorse. I repeat it,
all her failings were the effect of her errors, never of her passions.
She was well born, her heart was pure, her manners noble, her desires
regular and virtuous, her taste delicate; she seemed formed for that
elegant purity of manners which she ever loved, but never practised,
because instead of listening to the dictates of her heart, she followed
those of her reason, which led her astray: for when once corrupted by
false principles it will ever run counter to its natural sentiments.
Unhappily, she piqued herself on philosophy, and the morals she drew
from thence clouded the genuine purity of her heart. M. Tavel, her first
lover, was also her instructor in this philosophy, and the principles he
instilled into her mind were such as tended to seduce her. Finding her
cold and impregnable on the side of her passions, and firmly attached to
her husband and her duty, he attacked her by sophisms, endeavoring to
prove that the list of duties she thought so sacred, was but a sort of
catechism, fit only for children. That the kind of infidelity she
thought so terrible, was, in itself, absolutely indifferent; that all
the morality of conjugal faith consisted in opinion, the contentment of
husbands being the only reasonable rule of duty in wives; consequently
that concealed infidelities, doing no injury, could be no crime; in a
word, he persuaded her that the sin consisted only in the scandal, that
woman being really virtuous who took care to appear so. Thus the
deceiver obtained his end in the subverting the reason of a girl; whose
heart he found it impossible to corrupt, a
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