At length, I was sent for to a house, where a little serpent of a girl amused herself by showing me a parcel of music that I could not read a note of, and which she had the malice to sing before her master, to teach him how it should be executed; for I was so unable to read an air at first sight, that in the charming concert I have just described, I could not possibly follow the execution a moment, or know whether they played truly what lay before them, and I myself had composed.

In the midst of so many humiliating circumstances, I had the pleasing consolation, from time to time, of receiving letters from my two charming friends.  I have ever found the utmost consolatory virtue in the fair; when in disgrace, nothing softens my affliction more than to be sensible that an amiable woman is interested for me.  This correspondence ceased soon after, and was never renewed:  indeed it was my own fault, for in changing situations I neglected sending my address, and forced by necessity to think perpetually of myself, I soon forgot them.

It is a long time since I mentioned Madam de Warrens, but it should not be supposed I had forgotten her; never was she a moment absent from my thoughts.  I anxiously wished to find her, not merely because she was necessary to my subsistence, but because she was infinitely more necessary to my heart.  My attachment to her (though lively and tender, as it really was) did not prevent my loving others, but then it was not in the same manner.  All equally claimed my tenderness for their charms, but it was those charms alone I loved, my passion would not have survived them, while Madam de Warrens might have become old or ugly without my loving her the less tenderly.  My heart had entirely transmitted to herself the homage it first paid to her beauty, and whatever change she might experience, while she remained herself, my sentiments could not change.  I was sensible how much gratitude I owed to her, but in truth, I never thought of it, and whether she served me or not, it would ever have been the same thing.  I loved her neither from duty, interest, nor convenience; I loved her because I was born to love her.  During my attachment to another, I own this affection was in some measure deranged; I did not think so frequently of her, but still with the same pleasure, and never, in love or otherwise, did I think of her without feeling that I could expect no true happiness in life while in a state of separation.

Though in so long a time I had received no news from Madam de Warrens, I never imagined I had entirely lost her, or that she could have forgotten me.  I said to myself, she will know sooner or later that I am wandering about, and will find some means to inform me of her situation:  I am certain I shall find her.  In the meantime, it was a pleasure to live in her native country, to walk in the streets where she had walked, and before the houses that she had lived in; yet all this was the work of conjecture,