When I was a young man, and learned the meaning of love, I was a mystery to myself.  All my days were adieux.  I could not see a woman without being troubled.  I blushed if one spoke to me.  My timidity, already excessive towards everyone, became so great with a woman that I would have preferred any torment whatsoever to that of remaining alone with one.  She was no sooner gone than I would have recalled her with all my heart.  Had anyone delivered to me the most beautiful slaves of the seraglio, I should not have known what to say to them.  Accident enlightened me.

Had I done as other men do, I should sooner have learned the pleasures and pains of passion, the germ of which I carried in myself; but everything in me assumed an extraordinary character.  The warmth of imagination, my bashfulness and solitude, caused me to turn back upon myself.  For want of a real object, by the power of my vague desires, I evoked a phantom which never quitted me more.  I know not whether the history of the human heart furnishes another example of this kind.

I pictured then to myself an ideal beauty, moulded from the various charms of all the women I had seen.  I gave her the eyes of one young village girl, and the rosy freshness of another.  This invisible enchantress constantly attended me; I communed with her as with a real being.  She varied at the will of my wandering fancy.  Now she was Diana clothed in azure, now Aphrodite unveiled, now Thalia with her laughing mask, now Hebe bearing the cup of eternal youth.

A young queen approaches, brilliant with diamonds and flowers—­this was always my sylph.  She seeks me at midnight, amidst orange groves, in the corridors of a palace washed by the waves, on the balmy shore of Naples or Messina; the light sound of her footsteps on the mosaic floor mingles with the scarcely heard murmur of the waves.

Awaking from these my dreams, and finding myself a poor little obscure Breton, who would attract the eyes of no one, despair seized upon me.  I no longer dared to raise my eyes to the brilliant phantom which I had attached to my every step.  This delirium lasted for two whole years.  I spoke little; my taste for solitude redoubled.  I showed all the symptoms of a violent passion.  I was absent, sad, ardent, savage.  My days passed on in wild, extravagant, mad fashion, which nevertheless had a peculiar charm.

I have now reached a period at which I require some strength of mind to confess my weakness.  I had a gun, the worn-out trigger of which often went off unexpectedly.  I loaded this gun with three balls, and went to a spot at a considerable distance from the great Mall.  I cocked the gun, put the end of the barrel into my mouth, and struck the butt-end against the ground.  I repeated the attempt several times, but unsuccessfully.  The appearance of a gamekeeper interrupted me in my design.  I was a fatalist, though without my own intention or knowledge.  Supposing that my hour was not yet come, I deferred the execution of my project to another day.