“Eager to know, I began to read history. It became more and more interesting to me. The story of a brave deed excited me almost to a delirium. How many times I wept because I had not been born a Spartan or a Roman! As my horizon enlarged, I began to think about my creed, and my faith was overthrown. Humanity was dear to me, and I could not endure to see it condemned without distinction and without pity. I threw over the authority which would force me to believe a cruel absurdity. The first step taken, the rest of the route was soon travelled, and I examined all with the scrupulous defiance which one gives to a doctrine false in an essential point. The philosophic works that I read at this time aided me, but did not determine me to come to a decision. Each system seemed to me to have its weakness and its strength. I held to some of my brilliant chimeras; I became sceptical by an effort, and I took for my creed beneficence in conduct and tolerance in opinion. “These changes in my ideas had no influence on my morals. They are independent of all religious system because founded on the general interest which is the same everywhere. Harmony in the affections seem to me to constitute the individual goodness of a man; the justice of his relations with his kind, the wisdom of the social man. The multiplied relations of the civil life have also, without doubt, multiplied laws and duties, and those peculiar to each one should be the first subject of his study. “The place which my sex should occupy in the order of nature and of society very soon fixed my curious attention. I will not say what I thought of the question which has been raised as to the pre-eminence of one sex over the other. It has never seemed to me worthy of the attention of a serious mind. We differ essentially, and the superiority which in some respects is yours does not alter the reciprocal dependence in happiness which can only be the common work of both. “I appreciated the justice, the power, and the extent of the duties laid upon my sex. I trembled with joy on finding that I had the courage, the resolution, and the certainty of always fulfilling them.... I resolved to change my condition only for the sake of an object worthy of absolute devotion. In the number of those who solicited (my hand), one only of whom I have talked to you (M. de Sévelinges) merited my heart. For a long time I was silent, and it was only when I realized all the barriers between us that I asked him to leave me. I have had reason since to congratulate myself on this resolution, which was painful for me beyond expression.