Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/172

1774] Before returning to the salon I had read the letter through, and I am now going to reply to it — though I must do it hastily, for I am very tired with the great exertions that I made to-day. I have seen at least a hundred persons, and as your letter had done good to my soul, I talked, I forgot I was dead, and I have really extinguished myself. The truth is I had a " great success " because I brought out the charms and the intellects of the persons with whom I was ; and it is to you, mon ami, that they owe that pastime, so sweet to their self-love. As for mine, it is not intoxicated by your praises ; I reply to you, like Couci : " Love me, my prince, and praise me not."

Mon ami, keep yourself from ever again having the kindness to set forth my blessings and display my gifts; never did I feel myself so poor, so ruined, so poverty-stricken; in estimating what I have, in making me see my resources, you only show me that all is lost. One means alone remains to me, — I have long foreboded it, I even think it a necessity, — namely, to make total bankruptcy ; but I postpone, I delay, I rock myself with hopes, with chimeras ; I know them to be such, and yet they sustain me a little — but you destroy all by the horrible enumeration that you make of them. Ah! what a deplorable inventory ! if any other than you had attempted to console me, to reconcile me to life by these hopeless consolations, I should say to him, like Agnes, " Horace, with two words, could do more than you " — but it is Horace who speaks to me ! Oh ! mon ami, my soul is sinking. What more will you invent to torture me ? I shall be, you say, sustained, guaranteed, defended, etc. Well! never have I been all that; if you set your friendship at that value, I ask none of it. I have been weak, inconsistent, unhappy, very unhappy ; I have feared for you; I have wandered in the wilderness ; I have done wrong, no