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 pretenses, 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.
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