To avoid continual mortifications, I shut myself up with my books, or else wept and sighed unnoticed in the woods.

This life soon became insupportable; I felt that the presence of a woman so dear to me, while estranged from her heart, increased my unhappiness, and was persuaded, that, ceasing to see her, I should feel myself less cruelly separated.
I resolved, therefore, to quit the house, mentioned it to her, and she, far from opposing my resolution, approved it.

She had an acquaintance at Grenoble, called Madam de Deybens, whose husband was on terms of friendship with Monsieur Malby, chief Provost of Lyons.

M.Deybens proposed my educating M.Malby's children; I accepted this offer, and departed for Lyons without causing, and almost without feeling, the least regret at a separation, the bare idea of which, a few months before, would have given us both the most excruciating torments.
I had almost as much knowledge as was necessary for a tutor, and flattered myself that my method would be unexceptionable; but the year I passed at M.Malby's was sufficient to undeceive me in that particular.
The natural gentleness of my disposition seemed calculated for the employment, if hastiness had not been mingled with it.

While things went favorably, and I saw the pains (which I did not spare) succeed, I was an angel; but a devil when they went contrary.