another, I took a walk, alone, and reflected on my grand system,
something of which I committed to paper, bound up between two covers,
which, with a pencil, I always had in my pocket. In this manner, the
unforeseen disagreeableness of a situation I had chosen entirely led me
back to literature, to which unsuspectedly I had recourse as a means of
releaving my mind, and thus, in the first works I wrote, I introduced the
peevishness and ill-humor which were the cause of my undertaking them.
There was another circumstance which contributed not a little to this;
thrown into the world despite of myself, without having the manners of
it, or being in a situation to adopt and conform myself to them, I took
it into my head to adopt others of my own, to enable me to dispense with
those of society. My foolish timidity, which I could not conquer, having
for principle the fear of being wanting in the common forms, I took, by
way of encouraging myself, a resolution to tread them under foot. I
became sour and cynic from shame, and affected to despise the politeness
which I knew not how to practice. This austerity, conformable to my new
principles, I must confess, seemed to ennoble itself in my mind; it
assumed in my eyes the form of the intrepidity of virtue, and I dare
assert it to be upon this noble basis, that it supported itself longer
and better than could have been expected from anything so contrary to my
nature. Yet, not withstanding, I had the name of a misanthrope, which my
exterior appearance and some happy expressions had given me in the world:
it is certain I did not support the character well in private, that my
friends and acquaintance led this untractable bear about like a lamb, and
that, confining my sarcasms to severe but general truths, I was never
capable of saying an uncivil thing to any person whatsoever.

The 'Devin du Village' brought me completely into vogue, and presently
after there was not a man in Paris whose company was more sought after
than mine. The history of this piece, which is a kind of era in my life,