my tenderness for you go with it." I took the ring, and kissed my
mother's hand; a tear fell upon the diamond. Alas, it served not to
allow me to seek or to await the favor of great men or princes who
turned away from my obscurity, but to live three months of that divine
life of the heart worth centuries of greatness. This sacred diamond was
to me as Cleopatra's pearl dissolved in my cup of life, from which I
drank happiness and love for a short time.




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.
The whole had been copied out with care in my best handwriting, and