ng more of my letter. As I dressed myself, it caught my
eye; I broke the seal very leisurely, and found under the envelope a bill
of exchange. I felt a variety of pleasing sensations at the same time:
but I can assert, upon my honor, that the most lively of them all was
that proceeding from having known how to be master of myself.

I could mention twenty such circumstances in my life, but I am too much
pressed for time to say everything. I sent a small part of this money to
my poor mamma; regretting, with my eyes suffused with tears, the happy
time when I should have laid it all at her feet. All her letters
contained evident marks of her distress. She sent me piles of recipes,
and numerous secrets, with which she pretended I might make my fortune
and her own. The idea of her wretchedness already affected her heart and
contracted her mind. The little I sent her fell a prey to the knaves by
whom she was surrounded; she received not the least advantage from
anything. The idea of dividing what was necessary to my own subsistence
with these wretches disgusted me, especially after the vain attempt I had
made to deliver her from them, and of which I shall have occasion to
speak. Time slipped away, and with it the little money I had; we were
two, or indeed, four persons; or, to speak still more correctly, seven or
eight. Although Theresa was disinterested to a degree of which there are
but few examples, her mother was not so. She was no sooner a little
relieved from her necessities by my cares, than she sent for her whole
family to partake of the fruits of them. Her sisters, sons, daughters,
all except her eldest daughter, married to the director of the coaches of
Augers, came to Paris. Everything I did for Theresa, her mother diverted
from its original destination in favor of these people who were starving.
I had not to do with an avaricious person; and, not being under the
influence of an unruly passion, I was not guilty of follies. Satisfied
with genteelly supporting Theresa without luxury, and unexposed to
pressing wants, I readily consented to let all the earnings of her
industry go to the profit of her mother; and to this even I did not
confine myself; but, by a fatality by which I was pursued, whilst mamma
was a prey to the rascals about her Theresa was the same to her family;
and I could not do anything on either side for the benefit of her to whom
the succor I gave was destined. It was odd enough the young