Holbachaque', which publicly predicted I should not be able to support
solitude for three months, and that I should unsuccessfully return to
Paris, and live there as they did.  For my part, having for fifteen years
been out of my element, finding myself upon the eve of returning to it,
I paid no attention to their pleasantries.  Since contrary to my
inclinations, I have again entered the world, I have incessantly
regretted my dear Charmettes, and the agreeable life I led there.  I felt
a natural inclination to retirement and the country: it was impossible
for me to live happily elsewhere.  At Venice, in the train of public
affairs, in the dignity of a kind of representation, in the pride of
projects of advancement; at Paris, in the vortex of the great world, in
the luxury of suppers, in the brilliancy of spectacles, in the rays of
splendor; my groves, rivulets, and solitary walks, constantly presented
themselves to my recollection, interrupted my thought, rendered me
melancholy, and made me sigh with desire.  All the labor to which I had
subjected myself, every project of ambition which by fits had animated my
ardor, all had for object this happy country retirement, which I now
thought near at hand.  Without having acquired a genteel independence,
which I had judged to be the only means of accomplishing my views, I
imagined myself, in my particular situation, to be able to do without it,