In a word, I wanted a successor to mamma: since I was never again to live with her, it was necessary some person should live with her pupil, and a person, too, in whom I might find that simplicity and docility of mind and heart which she had found in me.

It was, moreover, necessary that the happiness of domestic life should indemnify me for the splendid career I had just renounced.

When I was quite alone there was a void in my heart, which wanted nothing more than another heart to fill it up.

Fate had deprived me of this, or at least in part alienated me from that for which by nature I was formed.

From that moment I was alone, for there never was for me the least thing intermediate between everything and nothing.