“He will neglect nothing to come and repeat to me verbally the injuries with which he loads me in his letters; I will endure them all with patience—­he will return to Paris to be ill again; and, according to custom, I shall be a very hateful man.  What is to be done?  Endure it all.

“But do not you admire the wisdom of the man who would absolutely come to Saint Denis in a hackney-coach to dine there, bring me home in a hackney-coach, and whose finances, eight days afterwards, obliges him to come to the Hermitage on foot?  It is not possible, to speak his own language, that this should be the style of sincerity.  But were this the case, strange changes of fortune must have happened in the course of a week.

“I join in your affliction for the illness of madam, your mother, but you will perceive your grief is not equal to mine.  We suffer less by seeing the persons we love ill than when they are unjust and cruel.

“Adieu, my good friend, I shall never again mention to you this unhappy affair.  You speak of going to Paris with an unconcern, which, at any other time, would give me pleasure.”

I wrote to Diderot, telling him what I had done, relative to Madam le Vasseur, upon the proposal of Madam d’Epinay herself; and Madam le Vasseur having, as it may be imagined, chosen to remain at the Hermitage, where she enjoyed a good state of health, always had company, and lived very agreeably, Diderot, not knowing what else to attribute to me as a crime, construed my precaution into one, and discovered another in Madam le Vasseur continuing to reside at the Hermitage, although this was by her own choice; and though her going to Paris had depended, and still depended upon herself, where she would continue to receive the same succors from me as I gave her in my house.

This is the explanation of the first reproach in the letter of Diderot.  That of the second is in the letter which follows:  “The learned man (a name given in a joke by Grimm to the son of Madam d’Epinay) must have informed you there were upon the rampart twenty poor persons who were dying with cold and hunger, and waiting for the farthing you customarily gave them.  This is a specimen of our little babbling.....And if you understand the rest it will amuse you perhap.”

My answer to this terrible argument, of which Diderot seemed so proud, was in the following words: 

“I think I answered the learned man; that is, the farmer-general, that I did not pity the poor whom he had seen upon the rampart, waiting for my farthing; that he had probably amply made it up to them; that I appointed him my substitute, that the poor of Paris would have no reason to complain of the change; and that I should not easily find so good a one for the poor of Montmorency, who were in much greater need of assistance.  Here is a good and respectable old man, who, after having worked hard all his lifetime, no longer being able to continue his labors, is in