As soon as I had regained my usual strength, I went to take leave of the Marquis d’Argens and his brother.  I dined with them, pretending not to observe the presence of the Jesuit, and I then spent three delightful hours in conversation with the learned and amiable Marquis d’Argens.  He told me a number of interesting anecdotes about the private life of Frederick II.  No doubt the reader would like to have them, but I lack the energy to set them down.  Perhaps some other day when the mists about Dux have dispersed, and some rays of the sun shine in upon me, I shall commit all these anecdotes to paper, but now I have not the courage to do so.

Frederick had his good and his bad qualities, like all great men, but when every deduction on the score of his failings has been made, he still remains the noblest figure in the eighteenth century.

The King of Sweden, who has been assassinated, loved to excite hatred that he might have the glory of defying it to do its worst.  He was a despot at heart, and he came to a despot’s end.  He might have foreseen a violent death, for throughout his life he was always provoking men to the point of despair.  There can be no comparison between him and Frederick.

The Marquis d’Argens made me a present of all his works, and on my asking him if I could congratulate myself on possessing the whole number, he said yes, with the exception of a fragment of autobiography which he had written in his youth, and which he had afterwards suppressed.

“Why so?” I asked.

“Because I was foolish enough to write the truth.  Never give way to this temptation, if it assails you.  If you once begin on this plan you are not only compelled to record all your vices and follies, but to treat them in the severe tone of a philosophical historian.  You must not, of course, omit the good you may have done; and so praise and blame is mingled on every page.  All the evil you say of yourself will be held for gospel, your peccadilloes will be made into crimes, and your good deeds will not only be received with incredulity, but you will be taxed with pride and vanity for having recorded them.  Besides, if you write your memoirs, you make an enemy in every chapter if you once begin to tell the truth.  A man should neither talk of himself nor write of himself, unless it be to refute some calumny or libel.”

I was convinced, and promised never to be guilty of such a folly, but in spite of that I have been writing memoirs for the last seven years, and though I repent of having begun, I have sworn to go on to the end.  However, I write in the hope that my Memoirs may never see the light of day; in the first place the censure would not allow them to be printed, and in the second I hope I shall be strong-minded enough, when my last illness comes, to have all my papers burnt before my eyes.  If that be not the case I count on the indulgence of my readers, who should remember that I have only written my story to prevent my going mad in the midst of all the petty insults and disagreeables which I have to bear day by day from the envious rascals who live with me in this castle of Count Waldstein, or Wallenstein, at Dux.