sentiment ; her soul is so grasped, so ardent that she cannot
keep from transports, as it were, of intoxication : " I live, I
exist with such force that there are moments when I find
myself loving to madness and to my own misery."
So long as M. de Guibert is absent she restrains herself a little — if it can be called restraint. He returns, however, at the end of October, 1773, after being distinguished by the great Frederick and taking part in the manoeuvres of the camp in Silesia ; thus acquiring a fresh resplendency. Here, with a little attention, it is impossible not to note a decisive moment, a moment we must veil, which corresponds to that of the grotto in Dido's episode.[1] A year later, in a letter from Mile, de Lespinasse dated midnight (1775) we find these words, which leave but little room for doubt : " It was on the 10th of February of last year (1774) that I was intoxicated by a poison the effect of which lasts to this day. . . ." She contuiues this delirious and doleful commemoration, in which the image, the spectre, of M. de Mora, dying on his way to her, mingles with the nearer and more charming image which wraps her in a fatal attraction.
From this moment passion is at its height, and there is scarcely a page in the Letters that is not all fiame. Scrupulous persons, though they read and relish them, blame M. de Guibert severely for not having returned them to Mile, de Lespinasse, who frequently asked for them. It appears, in
- ↑ Her letters do not seem to bear out this conclusion. The close intimacy with the personality of a writer that comes, in the work of translation, from the necessary scrutiny of his or her words and thoughts and habitual method of expressing them gives — to the translator at least — ground for doubting this opinion. It may be true; but a Frenchman's mind, even that of Sainte-Beuve, seems unable to escape from this line of judgment. If it is not true, the soul's tragedy is far greater. Mile, de Lespinasse uses plain, clear language, which reveals the passion of her nature simply; when she speaks of " remorse " for her infidelity to M. de Mora, she is expressing the extreme, perhaps excessive, honour, delicacy, and sensitiveness of her spirit. — Tr.
