Let us turn to another side of his correspondence.  The way in which the sympathetic creature in the present case loved to hear his friend’s mistress talk of him, is interestingly shown in one or two passages from a letter to her; as when he cries, “Ah, how proud would even thy lover himself be of thy constancy, if he only knew how much it has surmounted....  I appeal to your sincerity.  You, the witness and the cause of this delirium, these tears, these ravishing ecstasies, these transports which were never made for mortal, say, have I ever tasted your favours in such a way that I deserve to lose them?...  Never once did my ardent desires nor my tender supplications dare to solicit supreme happiness, without my feeling stopped by the inner cries of a sorrow-stricken soul....  O Sophie, after moments so sweet, the idea of eternal privation is too frightful for one who groans that he cannot identify himself with thee.  What, are thy tender eyes never again to be lowered with a delicious modesty, intoxicating me with pleasure?  What, are my burning lips never again to lay my very soul on thy heart along with my kisses?  What, may I never more feel that heavenly shudder, that rapid and devouring fire, swifter than lightning?"[282]....  We see a sympathetic creature assuredly, and listen to the voice of a nature endowed with sensibility even more than enough, but with decency, loyalty, above all with self-knowledge, far less than enough.

One more touch completes the picture of the fallen desperate man.  He takes great trouble to persuade Saint Lambert that though the rigour of his principles constrains him to frown upon such breaches of social law as the relations between Madame d’Houdetot and her lover, yet he is so attached to the sinful pair that he half forgives them.  “Do not suppose,” he says, with superlative gravity, “that you have seduced me by your reasons; I see in them the goodness of your heart, not your justification.  I cannot help blaming your connection:  you can hardly approve it yourself; and so long as you both of you continue dear to me, I will never leave you in careless security as to the innocence of your state.  Yet love such as yours deserves considerateness....  I feel respect for a union so tender, and cannot bring myself to attempt to lead it to virtue along the path of despair” (p. 401).

Ignorance of the facts of the case hindered Saint Lambert from appreciating the strange irony of a man protesting about leading to virtue along the path of despair a poor woman whom he had done as much as he could to lead to vice along the path of highly stimulated sense.  Saint Lambert was as much a sentimentalist as Rousseau was, but he had a certain manliness, acquired by long contact with men, which his correspondent only felt in moods of severe exaltation.  Saint Lambert took all the blame on himself.  He had desired that his mistress and his friend should love one another; then he thought he saw some coolness in