You doubtless think that I live at my ease in the world, that I can feel no anxiety for the future about my bodily necessities.

What would you say were I to tell you that if I want another meal, a lodging for to-night, a fresh robe for tomorrow, I must rob or flatter some great man to gain them?
Yet so it is.

I am hopeless, friendless, destitute.

In the whole of the Empire there is not an honest calling in which I can take refuge.

I must become a pander or a parasite--a hired tyrant over slaves, or a chartered groveller beneath nobles--if I would not starve miserably in the streets, or rob openly in the woods! This is what I am.