Perceiving the bougees of Daran, the only ones that had any favorable effect, and without which I thought I could no longer exist, to give me a momentary relief, I procured a prodigious number of them, that, in case of Daran's death, I might never be at a loss.

During the eight or ten years in which I made such frequent use of these, they must, with what I had left, have cost me fifty louis.
It will easily be judged, that such expensive and painful means did not permit me to work without interruption; and that a dying man is not ardently industrious in the business by which he gains his daily bread.
Literary occupations caused another interruption not less prejudicial to my daily employment.

My discourse had no sooner appeared than the defenders of letters fell upon me as if they had agreed with each to do it.

My indignation was so raised at seeing so many blockheads, who did not understand the question, attempt to decide upon it imperiously, that in my answer I gave some of them the worst of it.

One M.Gautier, of Nancy, the first who fell under the lash of my pen, was very roughly treated in a letter to M.Grimm.