Pagina 378 di 483

My father tried to awaken in me the feelings of affection. He

talked of Geneva, which I should soon visit, of Elizabeth and

Ernest; but these words only drew deep groans from me. Sometimes,

indeed, I felt a wish for happiness and thought with melancholy

delight of my beloved cousin or longed, with a devouring maladie

du pays, to see once more the blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had

been so dear to me in early childhood; but my general state of

feeling was a torpor in which a prison was as welcome a residence

as the divinest scene in nature; and these fits were seldom

interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair. At these

moments I often endeavoured to put an end to the existence I

loathed, and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance to

restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence.