[The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau by Jean Jacques Rousseau]@TWC D-Link bookThe Confessions of J. J. Rousseau BOOK VIII 105/108
My eyes deceived me, or either debauchery had stupefied his mind, or all his first splendor was the effect of his youth, which was past.
I saw him almost with indifference, and we parted rather coolly.
But when he was gone, the remembrance of our former connection so strongly called to my recollection that of my younger days, so charmingly, so prudently dedicated to that angelic woman (Madam de Warrens) who was not much less changed than himself; the little anecdotes of that happy time, the romantic day of Toune passed with so much innocence and enjoyment between those two charming girls, from whom a kiss of the hand was the only favor, and which, notwithstanding its being so trifling, had left me such lively, affecting and lasting regrets; and the ravishing delirium of a young heart, which I had just felt in all its force, and of which I thought the season forever past for me.
The tender remembrance of these delightful circumstances made me shed tears over my faded youth and its transports for ever lost to me.
Ah! how many tears should I have shed over their tardy and fatal return had I foreseen the evils I had yet to suffer from them. Before I left Paris, I enjoyed during the winter which preceded my retreat, a pleasure after my own heart, and of which I tasted in all its purity.
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