Then she touched a spring, which must have been in
connection with a bell, and implored De Marsay to permit his eyes to
be bandaged.
"And if I would not--and if I wished to stay here?"
"You would be the death of me more speedily," she said, "for now I
know I am certain to die on your account."
Henri submitted. In the man who had just gorged himself with pleasure
there occurs a propensity to forgetfulness, I know not what
ingratitude, a desire for liberty, a whim to go elsewhere, a tinge of
contempt and, perhaps, of disgust for his idol; in fine, indescribable
sentiments which render him ignoble and ashamed. The certainty of this
confused, but real, feeling in souls who are not illuminated by that
celestial light, nor perfumed with that holy essence from which the
performance of sentiment springs, doubtless suggested to Rousseau the
adventures of Lord Edward, which conclude the letters of the _Nouvelle
Heloise_. If Rousseau is obviously inspired by the work of Richardson,
he departs from it in a thousand details, which leave his achievement
magnificently original; he has recommended it to posterity by great
ideas which it is difficult to liberate by analysis, when, in one's
youth, one reads this work with the object of finding in it the lurid
representation of the most physical of our feelings, whereas serious
and philosophical writers never employ its images except as the
consequence or the corollary of a vast thought; and the adventures of
Lord Edward are one of the most Europeanly delicate ideas of the whole
work.
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