.

"There are few persons who have experienced the force of these special
workings of the mind. The generality of men are only sensible of five
or six passions, in the limited round of which they pass their lives,
and within which all their agitations are confined. Remove them from
the influence of love and hate, pleasure and pain, hope and fear, and
they have no further feeling. But persons of a finer cast can be
affected in a thousand different ways; it would almost seem that they
had more than five senses, and that they are accessible to ideas and
sensations which far exceed the ordinary faculties of human nature;
and, conscious that they possess a capacity which raises them above the
common herd, there is nothing of which they are more jealous. Hence
springs their impatience under contempt and ridicule; and hence it is
that a sense of debasement is perhaps the most violent of all their
emotions.

"I had this melancholy advantage at St. Lazare. My grief appeared to
the governor so excessive, that, dreading the consequences, he thought
he was bound to treat me with more mildness and indulgence. He visited
me two or three times a day; he often made me take a turn with him in
the garden, and showed his interest for me in his exhortations and good
advice. I listened always attentively; and warmly expressed my sense
of his kindness, from which he derived hopes of my ultimate conversion.

"'You appear to me,' said he one day, 'of a disposition so mild and
tractable, that I cannot comprehend the excesses into which you have
fallen. Two things astonish me: one is, how, with your good qualities,
you could have ever abandoned yourself to vice; and the other, which
amazes me still more, is, how you can receive with such perfect temper
my advice and instructions, after having lived so long in a course of
debauchery. If it be sincere repentance, you present a singular
example of the benign mercy of Heaven; if it proceed from the natural
goodness of your disposition, then you certainly have that within you
which warrants the hope that a protracted residence in this place will
not be required to bring you back to a regular and respectable life.'

"I was delighted to find that he had such an opinion of me. I resolved
to strengthen it by a continuance of good conduct, convinced that it
was the surest means of abridging the term of my confinement. I begged
of him to furnish me with books. He was agreeably surprised to f