odging for a whole year, so that, though absent, he still
extended to me his brotherly hospitality. It was with sorrow I saw him
depart; none remained to whom I could speak of Julie. The burden of my
feelings would now be doubly heavy, when I could no longer relieve
myself by resting it on the heart of another; but it was a weight of
happiness,--I could still uphold it. It was soon to become a load of
anguish, which I could confide to no living being, and least of all to
her whom I loved.

My mother wrote me, that straightened means, caused by unexpected
reverses of fortune, which had fallen on my father in quick and harsh
succession, had reduced to comparative indigence our once open and
hospitable paternal home, obliging my poor father to withhold the half
of my allowance, to enable him to meet, and that only with much
difficulty, the expense of maintaining and educating six other
children. It was therefore incumbent upon me, she said, either by my
own unaided efforts to maintain myself honorably in Paris, or to return
home and live with resignation in the country, sharing the common
pittance of all. My mother's tenderness sought beforehand to comfort me
under this sad necessity; she dwelt on the joy it would be to her to
see me again, and placed before me, in most attractive colors, the
prospect of the labors and simple pleasures of a rural life. On the
other hand, some of the associates of my early years of gambling and
dissipation, who had now fallen into poverty, having met me in Paris,
reminded me of sundry trifling obligations which I had contracted
towards them, and begged me to come to their assistance. They stripped
me thus, by degrees, of the greater part of that little hoard which I
had saved by strict economy, to enable me to live longer in Paris. My
purse was well-nigh empty, and I began to think of courting fortune
through fame. One morning, after a desperate struggle between timidity
and love, love triumphed. I concealed beneath my coat my small
manuscript, bound in green, containing my verses, my last hope; and
though wavering and uncertain in my design, I turned my steps towards
the house of a celebrated publisher whose name is associated with the
progress of literature and typography in France, Monsieur Didot. I was
first attracted to this name because M. Didot, independently of his
celebrity as a publisher, enjoyed at that time some reputation as an
author. He had published his own verses with all t