A precious liquid, a poison dearer than that of the Borgias — because it is made from our blood, our health, our sleep, and two-thirds of our love — we must be stingy with it.

Baudelaire treats “time” (or the inner substance we spend to create) as a distilled liquid: precious, intoxicating, and dangerous. By likening it to a Borgia poison, he stresses that what we squander is not an abstract commodity but something compounded from our own bodily and emotional reserves—blood, health, sleep, and love. The image captures a central Baudelairean tension: modern life tempts us to dissipate ourselves in distractions and vice, yet the very act of living and desiring is what fuels art and meaning. The concluding imperative—“we must be stingy with it”—urges a severe economy of self, a refusal to let others or habit consume what is most vital.