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BookW [l.]i.2 My impatience to begin living in the hermitage3 did not allow me to wait for the return of the fine weather, and as soon as my lodging was ready, I hastened to make my way there, to the great hoots of the Holbachic coterie, who loudly predicted that I would not bear three months of solitude, and that in a little while they would see me return with my tail between my legs to live like them in Paris. As for myself who, after having been out of my element for fifteen years, saw myself about to return to it, I did not even pay attention to their jokes. Since I had been thrown into the world in spite of myself I had not ceased to regret my dear Charmettes and the sweet life I had led there. I felt myself made for retirement and the country; it was impossible for me to live happily anywhere else. At Venice in the course of public affairs, in the dignity of a position as a sort of representative, in the pride of projects for advancement ; at Paris in the whirlwind of high society, in the sensuality of suppers, in the brilliance of spectacles, in the fumes of vainglory; always the remembrance of my groves, my streams, my solitary walks, came to distract me, to sadden me, to wring sighs and desires from me. All the labors to which I had been able to subject myself, all the projects of ambition which had animated my zeal by fits and starts, had no goal other than someday to attain the blessed rustic leisure that I was congratulating myself upon reaching at this moment. Although I had not put myself into the decent easy circumstances which I had believed were the only thing that could lead me there, I judged that I was in a position to do without them because of my peculiar situation, and that I could reach the same goal by an entirelyopposite road. I did not have a sou of income, but I had a name, some talents, I was sober, and I had gotten away from the most expensive needs, all those of opinion. Aside from that, even though I was lazy, I was industrious when I wanted to be, and my laziness was less that of a sluggard than that of an independent man who likes to work4 only on his own schedule. My profession of music copyist was neither brilliant nor lucrative, but it was reliable. In high society they approved of me for having had the courage to choose it. I could count on work not being lacking and it could be enough for me to live on if I worked well. Two thousand francs that I had left from the yield from the Village Soothsayer and my other Writings gave me an advance so I would not be in financial 337 338 Confessions straits, and, even without fleecing the publishers, several works that I had on the loom promised me sufficient supplements for me to be able to work at my ease without wearing myself out, and even while turning my leisure walks to advantage. My little household, composed of three persons who were all occupied usefully, was not very costly to keep up. In sum, my resources, proportioned to my needs and my desires, could reasonably promise me a happy and durable life in the one my inclination had made me choose. 2.1 could have thrown myself completely toward the most lucrative direction , and, instead of enslaving my pen to copying, devoted it entirely to Writings, which, from the flight I had taken and which I felt myself in a condition to sustain, could make me live in abundance and even in opulence if only I wanted to join the maneuvers of an author to the effort of publishing good books. But5 1 felt that writing in order to have bread might soon stifle my genius and kill my talent which was less in my pen than in my heart, and had been born solely out of an elevated and proud wayof thinking which alone could nourish it. Nothing vigorous, nothing great can come from an entirely venal pen. Necessity, greediness perhaps, might have made me write more quickly than well. If the need for success had not plunged6 me into cabals it might have made me seek to say fewer things that were useful and true than things that...

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