I was no longer myself for a moment, my delirium never left me.

After many useless efforts to banish all fictions from my mind, they at length seduced me, and my future endeavors were confined to giving them order and coherence, for the purpose of converting them into a species of novel.
What embarrassed me most was, that I had contradicted myself so openly and fully.

After the severe principles I had just so publicly asserted, after the austere maxims I had so loudly preached, and my violent invectives against books, which breathed nothing but effeminacy and love, could anything be less expected or more extraordinary, than to see me, with my own hand, write my name in the list of authors of those books I had so severely censured?
I felt this incoherence in all its extent.

I reproached myself with it, I blushed at it and was vexed; but all this could not bring me back to reason.

Completely overcome, I was at all risks obliged to submit, and to resolve to brave the What will the world say of it?
Except only deliberating afterwards whether or not I should show my work, for I did not yet suppose I should ever determine to publish it.
This resolution taken, I entirely abandoned myself to my reveries, and, by frequently resolving these in my mind, formed with them the kind of plan of which the execution has been seen.