that the day on which my father in a fashion emancipated me, brought
me under a most galling yoke. I entered on a conflict like a
battlefield; I must work day and night; seek interviews with
statesmen, surprise their convictions, try to interest them in our
affairs, and gain them over, with their wives and servants, and their
very dogs; and all this abominable business had to take the form of
pretty speeches and polite attentions. Then I knew the mortifications
that had left their blighting traces on my father's face. For about a
year I led outwardly the life of a man of the world, but enormous
labors lay beneath the surface of gadding about, and eager efforts to
attach myself to influential kinsmen, or to people likely to be useful
to us. My relaxations were lawsuits, and memorials still furnished the
staple of my conversation. Hitherto my life had been blameless, from
the sheer impossibility of indulging the desires of youth; but now I
became my own master, and in dread of involving us both in ruin by
some piece of negligence, I did not dare to allow myself any pleasure
or expenditure.

"While we are young, and before the world has rubbed off the delicate
bloom from our sentiments, the freshness of our impressions, the noble
purity of conscience which will never allow us to palter with evil,
the sense of duty is very strong within us, the voice of honor clamors
within us, and we are open and straightforward. At that time I was all
these things. I wished to justify my father's confidence in me. But
lately I would have stolen a paltry sum from him, with secret delight;
but now that I shared the burden of his affairs, of his name and of
his house, I would secretly have given up my fortune and my hopes for
him, as I was sacrificing my pleasures, and even have been glad of the
sacrifice! So when M. de Villele exhumed, for our special benefit, an
imperial decree concerning forfeitures, and had ruined us, I