I longed for a change: behold, a change was at hand! Then, to say truth, I was heartily glad of a pretence of escaping from a numerous cohort of folles amours, with Madame D'Anville at the head; and the very circumstance which men who play the German flute and fall in love, would have considered the most vexatious, I regarded as the most consolatory.
There was yet another reason which reconciled me more than any other to my departure.

I had, in my residence at Paris, among half wits and whole roues, contracted a certain--not exactly grossierete--but want of refinement--a certain coarseness of expression and idea which, though slight, and easily thrown off, took in some degree from my approach to that character which I wished to become.

I know nothing which would so polish the manners as continental intercourse, were it not for the English debauches with which that intercourse connects one.

English profligacy is always coarse, and in profligacy nothing is more contagious than its tone.

One never keeps a restraint on the manner when one unbridles the passions, and one takes from the associates with whom the latter are indulged, the air and the method of the indulgence.
I was, the reader well knows, too solicitous for improvement, not to be anxious to escape from such chances of deterioration, and I therefore consoled myself with considerable facility for the pleasures and the associates I was about to forego.