Weimar, I was seized with a mingled sensation of inexpressible terror and despair.  I saw myself without support in the world, and compelled to rely entirely on myself for sustaining my soul against misfortune.  Many objects of attachment still remained to me, but the sentiment of affectionate admiration which I felt for my father, exercised a sway over me with which no other could come in competition.  Grief, which is the truest of prophets, predicted to me that I should never more be happy at heart, as I had been, whilst this man of all-powerful sensibility watched over my fate; and not a single day has elapsed since the month of April 1804, in which I have not connected all my troubles with his loss.  So long as my father lived, I suffered only from imagination; for in the affairs of real life, he always found means to be of service to me; after I lost him, I came in direct communication with destiny.  It is nevertheless still to the hope that he is praying for me in heaven, that I am indebted for the fortitude I retain.  It is not merely the affection of a daughter, but the most intimate knowledge of his character which makes me affirm that I have never seen human nature carried nearer to perfection than it was in his soul; if I was not convinced of the truth of a future state, I should become mad with the idea that such a being could have ceased to exist.  There was so much of immortality in his thoughts and feelings, that it happens to me a hundred times, whenever I feel emotions that elevate me above myself, I believe I still hear him.

During my melancholy journey from Weimar to Coppet, I could not help envying the existence of every object that circulated in nature, even the birds and insects which were flying round me; I asked only a day, a single day, to talk to him once more, to excite his compassion; I envied those forest trees whose existence is prolonged for centuries; but the inexorable silence of the grave has something in it which confounds the human intellect; and although it is the truth of all others the best known to us, the strength of the impression it leaves can never be effaced.  As I approached my father’s residence, one of my friends pointed out to me on the mountain some clouds which bore the resemblance of an immense human figure, which would disappear towards the evening:  it seemed to me that the heavens thus offered me the symbol of the loss I had just sustained.  He was a man truly great:  a man, who in no circumstances of his life ever preferred the most important of his interests to the least of his duties;—­a man, whose virtues were inspired to that degree by his goodness, that he could have dispensed with principles, and whose principles were so strict that he might have dispensed with goodness.