All this controversy employed me a good deal, and caused me a great loss of my time in my copying, without much contributing to the progress of truth, or the good of my purse.  Pissot, at that time my bookseller, gave me but little for my pamphlets, frequently nothing at all, and I never received a farthing for my first discourse.  Diderot gave it him.  I was obliged to wait a long time for the little he gave me, and to take it from him in the most trifling sums.  Notwithstanding this, my copying went on but slowly.  I had two things together upon my hands, which was the most likely means of doing them both ill.

They were very opposite to each other in their effects by the different manners of living to which they rendered me subject.  The success of my first writings had given me celebrity.  My new situation excited curiosity.  Everybody wished to know that whimsical man who sought not the acquaintance of any one, and whose only desire was to live free and happy in the manner he had chosen; this was sufficient to make the thing impossible to me.  My apartment was continually full of people, who, under different pretences, came to take up my time.  The women employed a thousand artifices to engage me to dinner.  The more unpolite I was with people, the more obstinate they became.  I could not refuse everybody.  While I made myself a thousand enemies by my refusals, I was incessantly a slave to my complaisance, and, in whatever manner I made my engagements, I had not an hour in a day to myself.

I then perceived it was not so easy to be poor and independent, as I had imagined.  I wished to live by my profession:  the public would not suffer me to do it.  A thousand means were thought of to indemnify me for the time I lost.  The next thing would have been showing myself like Punch, at so much each person.  I knew no dependence more cruel and degrading than this.  I saw no other method of putting an end to it than refusing all kinds of presents, great and small, let them come from whom they would.  This had no other effect than to increase the number of givers, who wished to have the honor of overcoming my resistance, and to force me, in spite of myself, to be under an obligation to them.

Many, who would not have given me half-a-crown had I asked it from them, incessantly importuned me with their offers, and, in revenge for my refusal, taxed me with arrogance and ostentation.

It will naturally be conceived that the resolutions I had taken, and the system I wished to follow, were not agreeable to Madam le Vasseur.  All the disinterestedness of the daughter did not prevent her from following the directions of her mother; and the governesses, as Gauffecourt called them, were not always so steady in their refusals as I was.  Although many things were concealed from me, I perceived so many as were necessary to enable me to judge that I did not see all, and this tormented me less by the accusation