My sister immediately associated herself with me, and as previously, from her letters, so I could now more in detail and accurately understand the circumstances and situation of the family.  My father had, after my departure, applied all his didactic taste to my sister; and in a house completely shut up, rendered secure by peace, and even cleared of lodgers, he had cut off from her almost every means of looking about and finding some recreation abroad.  She had by turns to pursue and work at French, Italian, and English; besides which he compelled her to practise a great part of the day on the harpsichord.  Nor was her writing to be neglected; and I had already remarked that he had directed her correspondence with me, and had let his doctrines come to me through her pen.  My sister was and still continued to be an undefinable being, the most singular mixture of strength and weakness, of stubbornness and pliability, which qualities operated now united, now isolated by will and inclination.  Thus she had, in a manner which seemed to me fearful, turned the hardness of her character against her father, whom she did not forgive for having, in these three years, hindered, or embittered to her, so many innocent joys; and of his good and excellent qualities she would not acknowledge even one.  She did all he commanded and arranged, but in the most unamiable manner in the world.  She did it in the established routine, but nothing more and nothing less.  Not from love or a desire to please did she accommodate herself to any thing, so that this was one of the first things about which my mother complained to me in private.  But, since love was as essential to my sister as to any human being, she turned her affection wholly on me.  Her care in nursing and entertaining me absorbed all her time:  her female companions, who were swayed by her without her intending it, had likewise to contrive all sorts of things to be pleasing and consolatory to me.  She was inventive in cheering me up, and even developed some germs of comical humor which I had never known in her, and which became her very well.  There soon arose between us a coterie-language, by which we could converse before all people without their understanding us; and she often used this gibberish with great pertness in the presence of our parents.

My father was personally tolerably comfortable.  He was in good health, spent a great part of the day in the instruction of my sister, went on with the description of his travels, and was longer in tuning his lute than in playing on it.  He concealed at the same time, as well as he could, his vexation at finding, instead of a vigorous, active son, who ought now to take his degree and run through the prescribed course of life, an invalid who seemed to suffer still more in soul than in body.  He did not conceal his wish that they would be expeditious with my cure; but one was forced to be specially on one’s guard in his presence against hypochondriacal expressions, because he could then become passionate and bitter.