I passed the autumn in an employment no person would suspect me of undertaking:  this was guarding the fruit of M. d’Epinay.  The Hermitage was the reservoir of the waters of the park of the Chevrette; there was a garden walled round and planted with espaliers and other trees, which produced M. d’Epinay more fruit than his kitchen-garden at the Chevrette, although three-fourths of it were stolen from him.  That I might not be a guest entirely useless, I took upon myself the direction of the garden and the inspection of the conduct of the gardener.  Everything went on well until the fruit season, but as this became ripe, I observed that it disappeared without knowing in what manner it was disposed of.  The gardener assured me it was the dormice which eat it all.  I destroyed a great number of these animals, notwithstanding which the fruit still diminished.  I watched the gardener’s motions so narrowly, that I found he was the great dormouse.  He lodged at Montmorency, whence he came in the night with his wife and children to take away the fruit he had concealed in the daytime, and which he sold in the market at Paris as publicly as if he had brought it from a garden of his own.  The wretch whom I loaded with kindness, whose children were clothed by Theresa, and whose father, who was a beggar, I almost supported, robbed us with as much ease as effrontery, not one of the three being sufficiently vigilant to prevent him:  and one night he emptied my cellar.

Whilst he seemed to address himself to me only, I suffered everything, but being desirous of giving an account of the fruit, I was obliged to declare by whom a great part of it had been stolen.  Madam d’Epinay desired me to pay and discharge him, and look out for another; I did so.  As this rascal rambled about the Hermitage in the night, armed with a thick club staff with an iron ferrule, and accompanied by other villains like himself, to relieve the governesses from their fears, I made his successor sleep in the house with us; and this not being sufficient to remove their apprehensions, I sent to ask M. d’Epinay for a musket, which I kept in the chamber of the gardener, with a charge not to make use of it except an attempt was made to break open the door or scale the walls of the garden, and to fire nothing but powder, meaning only to frighten the thieves.  This was certainly the least precaution a man indisposed could take for the common safety of himself and family, having to pass the winter in the midst of a wood, with two timid women.  I also procured a little dog to serve as a sentinel.  De Leyre coming to see me about this time, I related to him my situation, and we laughed together at my military apparatus.  At his return to Paris he wished to amuse Diderot with the story, and by this means the ‘Coterie d’Holbachique’ learned that I was seriously resolved to pass the winter at the Hermitage.  This perseverance, of which they had not imagined me to be capable, disconcerted