“At the theatre you used to see heroes, abandoned to depths of woe, making the stage re-echo with their wild cries, lamenting like women, weeping like children, and thus securing the applause of the audience.  Do you remember how shocked you were by those lamentations, cries, and groans, in men from whom one would only expect deeds of constancy and heroism.  ‘Why,’ said you, ’are those the patterns we are to follow, the models set for our imitation!  Are they afraid man will not be small enough, unhappy enough, weak enough, if his weakness is not enshrined under a false show of virtue.’  My young friend, henceforward you must be more merciful to the stage; you have become one of those heroes.

“You know how to suffer and to die; you know how to bear the heavy yoke of necessity in ills of the body, but you have not yet learnt to give a law to the desires of your heart; and the difficulties of life arise rather from our affections than from our needs.  Our desires are vast, our strength is little better than nothing.  In his wishes man is dependent on many things; in himself he is dependent on nothing, not even on his own life; the more his connections are multiplied, the greater his sufferings.  Everything upon earth has an end; sooner or later all that we love escapes from our fingers, and we behave as if it would last for ever.  What was your terror at the mere suspicion of Sophy’s death?  Do you suppose she will live for ever?  Do not young people of her age die?  She must die, my son, and perhaps before you.  Who knows if she is alive at this moment?  Nature meant you to die but once; you have prepared a second death for yourself.

“A slave to your unbridled passions, how greatly are you to be pitied!  Ever privations, losses, alarms; you will not even enjoy what is left.  You will possess nothing because of the fear of losing it; you will never be able to satisfy your passions, because you desired to follow them continually.  You will ever be seeking that which will fly before you; you will be miserable and you will become wicked.  How can you be otherwise, having no care but your unbridled passions!  If you cannot put up with involuntary privations how will you voluntarily deprive yourself?  How can you sacrifice desire to duty, and resist your heart in order to listen to your reason?  You would never see that man again who dared to bring you word of the death of your mistress; how would you behold him who would deprive you of her living self, him who would dare to tell you, ‘She is dead to you, virtue puts a gulf between you’?  If you must live with her whatever happens, whether Sophy is married or single, whether you are free or not, whether she loves or hates you, whether she is given or refused to you, no matter, it is your will and you must have her at any price.  Tell me then what crime will stop a man who has no law but his heart’s desires, who knows not how to resist his own passions.