If envy, pride, or covetousness are your predominating characteristics, you should attempt to appear modest, kind, and disinterested, as compassionate and generous persons sometimes hide their kindliness under a rough exterior; for through education we instinctively conceal our vices and our virtues, as nature gives to certain animals the means of protecting themselves when attacked in their weakest place. I had therefore pretended to the count that I was a terrible egotist and cynic, simply because I still felt an unconquerable yearning towards virtue and generosity. But, alas! it was only a yearning. The terrible lessons my father had taught me, besides filling my mind with distrust of all good motives, had developed to the highest degree my vanity and susceptibility. In fact, what I most dreaded, was to be taken for a fool, should I follow the enthusiastic instincts of my nature. But though day by day suspicion and vanity were drying up the germs of these noble instincts, their souvenir still remained with me, and, like fallen man, I remembered the lost Eden. I could understand, though I felt it not, all the divine ravishment there must be in self-sacrifice and confidence. On my part there was a continual aspiration towards an ethereal, radiant sphere, from the midst of which the most devoted friendships, the most passionate loves, smiled on me. But, alas! my implacable, shameful, distrusting spirit would whisper in my ear that all these adorable apparitions were but deceitful appearances, and his icy breath would dispel in an instant the enchanting visions. I knew that I did not deceive myself as to my own nature. What was mean, selfish, and weak in it, was stronger than what still remained of noble and generous sentiments. My conduct towards Hélène had proved this to be the case. The man who can calculate and meanly weigh the result of his impulses, who refuses a generous feeling of attraction, for fear of being repulsed, is devoid of strength of purpose, liberality, and kindness. Distrust is the next thing to cowardice. From cowardice to cruelty there is only one more step. I was to suffer miserably for my distrust of others, and to cause others to suffer as well.