His frequent absence of mind only made him the more amusing.  He always roused himself to reanimate the conversation.  The fire of his genius, his prodigality of ideas, gave rise to flashes of speech; but he never interrupted an interesting conversation; and he was attentive without affectation and without constraint.  His conversation not only resembled his character and his genius, but had the method which he observed in his study.  Though capable of long-continued meditation, he never exhausted his strength; he always left off application before he felt the least symptom of fatigue.

He was sensible to glory, but wished only to deserve it, and never tried to augment his own fame by underhand practices.

Worthy of all distinctions, he asked none, and he was not surprised that he was forgot; but he has protected at court men of letters who were persecuted, celebrated, and unfortunate, and has obtained favors for them.

Though he lived with the great, their company was not necessary to his happiness.  He retired whenever he could to the country; there again with joy to welcome his philosophy, his books, and his repose.  After having studied man in the commerce of the world, and in the history of nations, he studied him also among those simple people whom nature alone has instructed.  From them he could learn something; he endeavored, like Socrates, to find out their genius; he appeared as happy thus as in the most brilliant assemblies, especially when he made up their differences, and comforted them by his beneficence.

Nothing does greater honor to his memory than the economy with which he lived, and which has been blamed as excessive in a proud and avaricious age.  He would not encroach on the provision for his family, even by his generosity to the unfortunate, or by those expenses which his travels, the weakness of his sight, and the printing of his works made necessary.  He transmitted to his children, without diminution or augmentation, the estate which he received from his ancestors, adding nothing to it but the glory of his name and the example of his life.  He had married, in 1715, dame Jane de Lartigue, daughter of Peter de Lartigue, lieutenant-colonel of the regiment of Molevrier, and had by her two daughters and one son.

Those who love truth and their country will not be displeased to find some of his maxims here.  He thought:  That every part of the State ought to be equally subject to the laws, but that the privileges of every part of the State ought to be respected when they do not oppose the natural right which obliges every citizen equally to contribute to the public good; that ancient possession was in this kind the first of titles, and the most inviolable of rights, which it was always unjust and sometimes dangerous to shake; that magistrates, in all circumstances, and notwithstanding their own advantage, ought to be magistrates without partiality and without passion, like the laws