ity, hung or beaten to death by his attendants. Lord have mercy on my poor uncle! He really esteemed nothing in the world except the epistle to Zetulba.
Well, then, I had only just left college. I was full of dreams and illusions. I was as naïve as a rosière of Salency, perhaps more so. Delighted at having no more pensums to make, everything seemed to me for the best in the best of all possible worlds. I believed in an infinity of things. I believed in M. de Florian's shepherdess with her combed and powdered sheep. I never for a moment doubted the reality of Madame Deshoulière's flock. I believed that there were actually nine muses, as stated in Father Jouvency's Appendix de Diis et Heroïbus, My recollections of Berquin and of Gessner had created a little world for me in which everything was rose-colored, sky-blue, and apple-green. Oh, holy innocence!—sancta simplicitas! as Mephistopheles says.
When I found myself alone in this fine room—my own room, all to myself!—I felt superlatively overjoyed. I made a careful inventory of everything, even the smallest
