Perhaps Nature sported or blundered, and this combination ought not to have existed; I only know it did exist.

All those who know Madam de Warrens (a great number of whom are yet living) have had opportunities of knowing this was a fact; I dare even aver she had but one pleasure in the world, which was serving those she loved.

Let every one argue on the point as he pleases, and gravely prove that this cannot be; my business is to declare the truth, and not to enforce a belief of it.
I became acquainted with the particulars I have just related, in those conversations which succeeded our union, and alone rendered it delicious.
She was right when she concluded her complaisance would be useful to me; I derived great advantages from it in point of useful instruction.
Hitherto she had used me as a child, she now began to treat me as a man, and entertain me with accounts of herself.

Everything she said was so interesting, and I was so sensibly touched with it, that, reasoning with myself, I applied these confidential relations to my own improvement and received more instruction from them than from her teaching.

When we truly feel that the heart speaks, our own opens to receive its instructions, nor can all the pompous morality of a pedagogue have half the effect that is produced by the tender, affectionate, and artless conversation of a sensible woman on him who loves her.
The intimacy in which I lived with Madam de Warrens, having placed me more advantageously in her opinion than formerly, she began to think (notwithstanding my awkward manner) that I deserved cultivation for the polite world, and that if I could one day show myself there in an eligible situation, I should soon be able to make my way.