However great the love of life, my dear Aza, pain diminishes, despair extinguishes it. The indifference with which Nature seems to hold our being, by abandoning us to that despair, shocks us at first, and afterwards, the impossibility of working out our own deliverance is such an humiliating circumstance, that it leads us to despise ourselves.

I live no longer in, or for myself; every breath which I take is a sacrifice which I make to love, and every day becomes more painful. If time brings some solace to the ills that consume me, far from clearing my fate, it seems only to render it more obscure. All that surrounds me is unknown, all is new, all engages my curiosity, and nothing satisfies it. In vain I endeavour to understand, or to be understood, both are equally impossible to me.

Tired with so many fruitless endeavours, I thought to dry up the source of them, by depriving my eyes of the impressions they received from external objects. I persisted, for some time, in keeping them shut; but the voluntary darkness to which I condemned myself, only served to preserve my modesty from being continually offended by the presence of these strange men, whose kindnesses are so many torments. My soul, shut up in myself, was not the less agitated: thus my inquietudes were not the less sharp; and the desire to express them was still more violent. On the other side, the impossibility of making myself understood, spread an anguish over my senses, which was not less insupportable than the pain which an apparent reality would cause. How dreadful is this situation?

Alas! I thought I had begun to understand some words of the savage Spaniards; I found a resemblance to our august language in them. I flattered myself, that in a little time, I should be able to explain myself, so as to make myself understood. But I was far from finding the same advantage among my new tyrants; they expressed themselves in so rapid a manner, that I could not so much as distinguish the inflexions of their voices.