Could I But Carry My Family Along With Me, I Would
Winter At Pello, Or Tobolsky, In Order To Enjoy The Peace And
Innocence Of That Country.
But let me arrive under the pole, or
reach the antipodes, I never can leave behind me the remembrance of
the dreadful scenes to which I have been a witness; therefore never
can I be happy!
Happy, why would I mention that sweet, that
enchanting word? Once happiness was our portion; now it is gone from
us, and I am afraid not to be enjoyed again by the present
generation! Whichever way I look, nothing but the most frightful
precipices present themselves to my view, in which hundreds of my
friends and acquaintances have already perished: of all animals that
live on the surface of this planet, what is man when no longer
connected with society; or when he finds himself surrounded by a
convulsed and a half dissolved one? He cannot live in solitude, he
must belong to some community bound by some ties, however imperfect.
Men mutually support and add to the boldness and confidence of each
other; the weakness of each is strengthened by the force of the
whole. I had never before these calamitous times formed any such
ideas; I lived on, laboured and prospered, without having ever
studied on what the security of my life and the foundation of my
prosperity were established: I perceived them just as they left me.
Never was a situation so singularly terrible as mine, in every
possible respect, as a member of an extensive society, as a citizen
of an inferior division of the same society, as a husband, as a
father, as a man who exquisitely feels for the miseries of others as
well as for his own!
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