"But why should I say at my expense rather than to my advantage? What are two years of torture compared with the blessing of truth? When I returned to liberty and life, when I found that I readily recovered the vigor of youth, and that I had the necessary time and means to benefit by the ideas that had come to me, a great calmness overspread my heart, and I voluntarily adopted the habit, theretofore forced upon me, of self-denial and resolution. "I renounced forever all idea of love and marriage. The thought of that bliss was marred and sullied in my imagination; and as for the cravings of the heart, there was no longer anything individual in mine. They had extended beyond the circle of selfish passions; I had conceived in my suffering one genuine passion, the object of which was not the enjoyment and triumph of one human being standing apart from the general misery by virtue of her own prosperity. That passion, which consumed me like a fever, and I may say with feverish intensity, was the longing to fight for the weak against their oppressors, and to be as lavish of benefactions and consolation as my family had been of persecution and dread. I had been brought up to respect and fear the court, to detest and distrust my unhappy countrymen. Had it not been for my own catastrophe I should probably have followed those precepts and examples of hideous cruelty. My heedless nature, wherein I resembled the women of my country, might never have conceived anything better than the principles of my family, which was not one of those that were subjected to persecution, and in which exile and suffering have inspired horror of the foreign yoke and love of country. My kinsmen, being ardently devoted to the ruling powers, had always been overwhelmed with favors, and the renewed prosperity which we shall soon owe to the cardinal's inheritance makes us a shameful exception among the many illustrious families whom I have seen ground into the dust by exorbitant taxes and by outlawry.