rd it returns to my remembrance; I recollect the place, the
time, the manner, the look, and gesture, not a circumstance escapes me;
it is then, from what has been done or said, that I imagine what has
been thought, and I have rarely found myself mistaken.

So little master of my understanding when alone, let any one judge what
I must be in conversation, where to speak with any degree of ease you
must think of a thousand things at the same time: the bare idea that I
should forget something material would be sufficient to intimidate me.
Nor can I comprehend how people can have the confidence to converse in
large companies, where each word must pass in review before so many,
and where it would be requisite to know their several characters and
histories to avoid saying what might give offence. In this particular,
those who frequent the world would have a great advantage, as they know
better where to be silent, and can speak with greater confidence; yet
even they sometimes let fall absurdities; in what predicament then must
he be who drops as it were from the clouds? It is almost impossible he
should speak ten minutes with impunity.

In a tete-a-tete there is a still worse inconvenience; that is, the
necessity of talking perpetually, at least, the necessity of answering
when spoken to, and keeping up the conversation when the other is
silent. This insupportable constraint is alone sufficient to disgust
me with variety, for I cannot form an idea of a greater torment than
being obliged to speak continually without time for recollection. I
know not whether it proceeds from my mortal hatred of all constraint;
but if I am obliged to speak, I infallibly talk nonsense. What is
still worse, instead of learning how to be silent when I have
absolutely nothing to say, it is generally at such times that I have a
violent inclination; and, endeavoring to pay my debt of conversation as
speedily as possible, I hastily gabble a number of words without ideas,
happy when they only chance to mean nothing; thus endeavoring to
conquer or hide my incapacity, I rarely fail to show it.

I think I have said enough to show that, though not a fool, I have
frequently passed for one, even among people capable of judging; this
was the more vexatious, as my physiognomy and eyes promised otherwise,
and expectation being frustrated, my stupidity appeared the more
shocking. This detail, which a particular occasion gave birth to, will
not be useless in