spent in my customary dissipations.

Some of my friends indulged in considerable merriment at my expense when
they found out my constant attendance at mass. Accordingly, I disguised
myself as a boy, when I went to church, to escape observation. My
disguise was found out, and the jokes against me were redoubled. Upon
this, I began to think of the words of the Gospel, which declare the
impossibility of serving two masters. I determined to abandon the
service of Mammon.

The first vanity I gave up was the vanity of keeping a maid. By way of
further accustoming myself to the retreat from the world which I now
began to meditate, I declined all invitations to parties under the
pretext of indisposition. But the nearer the Easter time approached at
which I had settled in my own mind definitely to turn my back on worldly
temptations and pleasures, the more violent became my internal struggles
with myself. My health suffered under them to such an extent that I was
troubled with perpetual attacks of retching and sickness, which,
however, did not prevent me from writing my general confession,
addressed to the vicar of Saint Sulpice, the parish in which I lived.

Just Heaven! what did I not suffer some days afterwards, when I united
around me at dinner, for the last time, all the friends who had been
dearest to me in the days of my worldly life! What words can describe
the tumult of my heart when one of my guests said to me, "You are giving
us too good a dinner for a Wednesday in Passion Week;" and when another
answered, jestingly, "You forget that this is her farewell dinner to her
friends!" I felt ready to faint while they were talking, and rose from
table pretexting as an excuse, that I had a payment to make that
evening, which I could not in honour defer any longer. The company rose