I do not live, exist even, isolated from others; I am nothing when left to myself.
Understand that throughout my whole life I have passed every moment of my time in making friends, whom I hoped to render my stay and support.
In times of prosperity, all these cheerful, happy voices--rendered so through and by my means--formed in my honor a concert of praise and kindly actions.

In the least disfavor, these humbler voices accompanied in harmonious accents the murmur of my own heart.

Isolation I have never yet known.

Poverty (a phantom I have sometimes beheld, clad in rags, awaiting me at the end of my journey through life)--poverty has been the specter with which many of my own friends have trifled for years past, which they poetize and caress, and which has attracted me towards them.
Poverty! I accept it, acknowledge it, receive it, as a disinherited sister; for poverty is neither solitude, nor exile, nor imprisonment.
Is it likely I shall ever be poor, with such friends as Pelisson, as La Fontaine, as Moliere?
with such a mistress as--Oh! if you knew how utterly lonely and desolate I feel at this moment, and how you, who separate me from all I love, seem to resemble the image of solitude, of annihilation--death itself." "But I have already told you, Monsieur Fouquet," replied D'Artagnan, moved to the depths of his soul, "that you are woefully exaggerating.
The king likes you." "No, no," said Fouquet, shaking his head.
"M.

Colbert hates you." "M.