minutes about my books
and papers, to unpack and arrange them, rather than to read what they
contained; and this arrangement, which to me became the work of Penelope,
gave me the pleasure of musing for a while. I then grew weary, and
quitted my books to spend the three or four hours which remained to me of
the morning in the study of botany, and especially of the system of
Linnaeus, of which I became so passionately fond, that, after having felt
how useless my attachment to it was, I yet could not entirely shake it
off. This great observer is, in my opinion, the only one who, with
Ludwig, has hitherto considered botany as a naturalist, and a
philosopher; but he has too much studied it in herbals and gardens, and
not sufficiently in nature herself. For my part, whose garden was always
the whole island, the moment I wanted to make or verify an observation,
I ran into the woods or meadows with my book under my arm, and there laid
myself upon the ground near the plant in question, to examine it at my
ease as it stood. This method was of great service to me in gaining a
knowledge of vegetables in their natural state, before they had been
cultivated and changed in their nature by the hands of men. Fagon, first
physician to Louis XIV., and who named and perfectly knew all the plants
in the royal garden, is said to have been so ignorant in the country as
not to know how to distinguish the same plants. I am precisely the
contrary. I know something of the work of nature, but nothing of that of
the gardener.

I gave every afternoon totally up to my indolent and careless
disposition, and to following without regularity the impulse of the
moment. When the weather was calm, I frequently went immediately after
I rose from dinner, and alone got into the boat. The receiver had taught
me to row with one oar; I rowed out into the middle of the lake. The
moment I withdrew from the bank, I felt a secret joy which almost made me
leap, and of which it is impossible for me to tell or even comprehend the
cause, if it were not a secret congratulation on my being out of the
reach of the wicked. I afterwards rowed about the lake, sometimes
approaching the opposite bank, but never touching at it. I often let my
boat float at the mercy of the wind and water, abandoning myself to
reveries without object, and which were not the less agreeable for their
stupidity. I sometimes exclaimed, "O nature! O my mother! I am here
under thy guardi