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.
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