After exhausting my
imagination more than my body for my Zulietta, I enjoyed better health
than ever. It was not until after the imprisonment of Diderot that the
heat of blood, brought on by my journeys to Vincennes during the
terrible heat of that summer, gave me a violent nephritic colic, since
which I have never recovered my primitive good state of health.
At the time of which I speak, having perhaps fatigued myself too
much in the filthy work of the cursed receiver-general's office, I
fell into a worse state than ever, and remained five or six weeks in
my bed in the most melancholy state imaginable. Madam Dupin sent me
the celebrated Morand who, notwithstanding his address and the
delicacy of his touch, made me suffer the greatest torments. He
advised me to have recourse to Daran, who managed to introduce his
bougies: but Morand, when he gave Madam Dupin an account of the
state I was in, declared to her I should not be alive in six months.
This afterwards came to my ear, and made me reflect seriously on my
situation and the folly of sacrificing the repose of the few days I
had to live to the slavery of an employment for which I felt nothing
but disgust. Besides, how was it possible to reconcile the severe
principles I had just adopted to a situation with which they had so
little relation? Should not I, the cash-keeper of a receiver-general
of finances, have preached poverty and disinterestedness with a very
ill grace? These ideas fermented so powerfully in my mind with the
fever, and were so strongly impressed, that from that time nothing
could remove them; and, during my convalescence, I confirmed myself
with the greatest coolness in the resolutions I had taken during my
delirium.
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