has ever been my destiny:  the moment I had united two friends who were separately mine, they never failed to combine against me.  Although, in the conspiracy then formed by the Tronchins, they must all have borne me a mortal hatred.  He still continued friendly to me:  he even wrote me a letter after his return to Geneva, to propose to me the place of honorary librarian.  But I had taken my resolution, and the offer did not tempt me to depart from it.

About this time I again visited M. d’Holbach.  My visit was occasioned by the death of his wife, which, as well as that of Madam Francueil, happened whilst I was at Geneva.  Diderot, when he communicated to me these melancholy events, spoke of the deep affliction of the husband.  His grief affected my heart.  I myself was grieved for the loss of that excellent woman, and wrote to M. d’Holbach a letter of condolence.  I forgot all the wrongs he had done me, and at my return from Geneva, and after he had made the tour of France with Grimm and other friends to alleviate his affliction, I went to see him, and continued my visits until my departure for the Hermitage.  As soon as it was known in his circle that Madam D’Epinay was preparing me a habitation there, innumerable sarcasms, founded upon the want I must feel of the flattery and amusement of the city, and the supposition of my not being able to support the solitude for a fortnight, were uttered against me.  Feeling within myself how I stood affected, I left him and his friends to say what they pleased, and pursued my intention.  M. d’Holbach rendered me some services—­

[This is an instance of the treachery of my memory.  A long time after I had written what I have stated above, I learned, in conversing with my wife, that it was not M. d’Holbach, but M. de Chenonceaux, then one of the administrators of the Hotel Dieu, who procured this place for her father.  I had so totally forgotten the circumstance, and the idea of M. d’Holbach’s having done it was so strong in my mind that I would have sworn it had been him.]

in finding a place for the old Le Vasseur, who was eighty years of age and a burden to his wife, from which she begged me to relieve her.  He was put into a house of charity, where, almost as soon as he arrived there, age and the grief of finding himself removed from his family sent him to the grave.  His wife and all his children, except Theresa, did not much regret his loss.  But she, who loved him tenderly, has ever since been inconsolable, and never forgiven herself for having suffered him, at so advanced an age, to end his days in any other house than her own.