"‘Under what fatal star was I then born,’ I asked myself, ‘for it now to be impossible for me
even to think of following the smallest inclination to virtue without its being immediately
washed away by a tide of woe! And how can it be that enlightened Providence, whose justice I
willingly adore, punishing me for my virtues, simultaneously offers me the spectacle of those
whose vices brought me low being raised on high to pinnacles?"