My arrival caused a sensation.  I never met a better reception.  An observer would have thought the whole company felt how much I stood in need of encouragement.  None but French hearts are susceptible of this kind of delicacy.  However, I found more people than I expected to see.  Amongst others the Comte d’ Houdetot, whom I did not know, and his sister Madam de Blainville, without whose company I should have been as well pleased.  She had the year before came several times to Eaubonne, and her sister-in-law had left her in our solitary walks to wait until she thought proper to suffer her to join us.  She had harbored a resentment against me, which during this dinner she gratified at her ease.  The presence of the Comte d’ Houdetot and Saint Lambert did not give me the laugh on my side, and it may be judged that a man embarrassed in the most common conversations was not very brilliant in that which then took place.  I never suffered so much, appeared so awkward, or received more unexpected mortifications.  As soon as we had risen from table, I withdrew from that wicked woman; I had the pleasure of seeing Saint Lambert and Madam de’Houdetot approach me, and we conversed together a part of the afternoon, upon things very indifferent it is true, but with the same familiarity as before my involuntary error.  This friendly attention was not lost upon my heart, and could Saint Lambert have read what passed there, he certainly would have been satisfied with it.  I can safely assert that although on my arrival the presence of Madam d’Houdetot gave me the most violent palpitations, on returning from the house I scarcely thought of her; my mind was entirely taken up with Saint Lambert.

Notwithstanding the malignant sarcasms of Madam de Blainville, the dinner was of great service to me, and I congratulated myself upon not having refused the invitation.  I not only discovered that the intrigues of Grimm and the Holbachiens had not deprived me of my old acquaintance,

     [Such is the simplicity of my heart was my opinion when I wrote
     these confessions.]

but, what flattered me still more, that Madam d’Houdetot and Saint Lambert were less changed than I had imagined, and I at length understood that his keeping her at a distance from me proceeded more from jealousy than from disesteem.  This was a consolation to me, and calmed my mind.  Certain of not being an object of contempt in the eyes of persons whom I esteemed, I worked upon my own heart with greater courage and success.  If I did not quite extinguish in it a guilty and an unhappy passion, I at least so well regulated the remains of it that they have never since that moment led me into the most trifling error.  The copies of Madam d’ Houdetot, which she prevailed upon me to take again, and my works, which I continued to send her as soon as they appeared, produced me from her a few notes and messages, indifferent but obliging.  She did still more, as will hereafter appear, and the reciprocal conduct of her lover and myself, after our intercourse had ceased, may serve as an example of the manner in which persons of honor separate when it is no longer agreeable to them to associate with each other.