Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/347

322 return them; hence there is reciprocity, and consequently equality between us. But how could I return what they might do to increase my means? I should be, for the rest of my life, ill at ease with them; wherever my affection worked I should fear they saw only my gratitude. In short — and it is a secret of the human heart that I am about to tell you — be sure that, without accounting for it to themselves, without even perceiving it, they would love me less ; and as for me, I should feel oppressed by the sort of ascendency I had given them over me.

"If such has been my way of thinking towards him I loved best in the world and towards my friends in general, you can judge how my soul would revolt at the idea of soliciting, or even accepting the services of those who, not being my friends, desire to serve me from foolish conceit, for appearance' sake only, or, I am willing to say, from benevolence. But, in order not to give up my principles, and yet never find myself harassed between necessity and those principles, I have trained myself to order and economy. I, who was brought up in habits of prodigality, I, who from living always with others never knew the cost of anything, I, who through philosophy am led to consider gold as dust beneath my feet, I have subjected and trained myself to reckon incessantly. I manage to reach the end of each year without embarrassments and without debts ; hence my friends never hear me speak of my want of means; never does a complaint escape me in their presence, nor a wish — an indirect manner in which persons often solicit services they would not ask openly. My friends see me in such apparent security on this point, and with such freedom of mind, that they must now have forgotten that my means are paltry, and that is what I wish. Finally, whether it is that my delicacy attaches me to poverty, or that being so occupied with active