LVIII.
I completely altered my habits from that day, from respect for my poor
mother's repeated sacrifices, and the concentration of all my thoughts
in this one desire,--to see once more my love, and to prolong, as much
as possible, by the strictest economy, the allotted time I was to spend
with Julie. I became as calculating and as sparing of the little gold I
took with me as an old miser. It seemed as though the most trifling sum
I spent was an hour of my happiness, or a drop of my felicity that I
wasted. I resolved to live like Jean Jacques Rousseau, on little or
nothing, and to retrench from my vanity, my dress, or my food, all that
I wished to bestow on the rapture of my soul. I was not, however,
without an undefined hope of making some use of my talents in the cause
of my love. These were as yet made known to a few friends only by some
verses; but in the last three months I had written during my sleepless
nights a little volume of poetry, amatory, melancholy, or pious,
according as my imagination spoke to me in tender or in serious notes.
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