With respect to happiness and enjoyment, everything or nothing, was what was necessary to me.

The reason of these observations will hereafter appear.

At present I return to the thread of my narrative.
I imagined that I possessed treasures in the manuscripts given me by the Comte de St.Pierre.

On examination I found they were a little more than the collection of the printed works of his uncle, with notes and corrections by his own hand, and a few other trifling fragments which had not yet been published.

I confirmed myself by these moral writings in the idea I had conceived from some of his letters, shown me by Madam de Crequi, that he had more sense and ingenuity than at first I had imagined; but after a careful examination of his political works, I discerned nothing but superficial notions, and projects that were useful but impracticable, in consequence of the idea from which the author never could depart, that men conducted themselves by their sagacity rather than by their passions.