I made more than one unfortunate experiment.  I committed more than one error, but at last I got our establishment under way.  Guldberg had suffered patiently, and never complained of the mistakes I had made, and now appeared most grateful for my success.  He very generously offered me a share of the profits of an enterprise which from the very commencement promised the most favorable results.  From this time commences a series of derogations I now look on as so many wise resolutions, but which many would look on as acts of apostasy.  Here I am, a French noble, with I know not how many illustrious quarters, compromising my escatcheon in an industrial occupation.  This was the first derogation.  Guldberg had an only daughter, very interesting, and who pleased me.  She had the kindness to show that I was not disagreeable; she however had not a drop of noble blood, not even a single quartering.  I married her, much to your father’s discontent.  That was my second derogation.  This woman during her life was the very impersonation of virtue, but was a protestant, and asked me as a favor that if our children were female, they might be educated in her faith.  My two daughters believe as their mother did.  That is the third derogation.

“An honest young fellow has courted the eldest of these girls.  He is the son of a priest, and will go into orders himself if he does not become professor of a college.  I saw my dear Alete had confidence in him.  I consented that she should marry a plebeian and a heretic.  In this was comprised the fourth and fifth derogation.  I suffered the revolutionary crisis of France to pass without exciting me:  I have learned through the papers that our dear country, the most intelligent in the world, has successively adulated and cursed the bloody tyranny of Robespiere, the gallantry of Barras, the Consulate, Empire and the Revolution.

“When the lilies replaced the tricolor, and the amiable people of Paris cast themselves before the troops of the white-horse of Monsieur, with the same enthusiasm they had a few years before manifested at the appearance of the proud charger of the conqueror of Wagram and Jena, I remained here and never changed my colors:  I never cried ’down with the Corsican Ogre.’  Smoking my pipe in peace, I watched my furnace, smiled on my children and my harvests, in the sunlight of Sweden, which would be so delightful if it were a little less rare.  This was another and a terrible derogation.

“Gradually, however, dear Ireneus, I built up a faith to suit myself, found, I think, in the works of no philosopher (I read but little), but which yet seems to me a very good rule of conduct, inasmuch as it leaves the conscience at ease and makes me as happy as any one can be in this valley of tears.  I therefore think, dear Ireneus, that in our benevolence we make monsters of certain ideas which we imbibe when we are children, and to which, without examination, we always submit ourselves.  I think that without