Another advantage this dinner procured me was its being spoken of in Paris, where it served as a refutation of the rumor spread by my enemies, that I had quarrelled with every person who partook of it, and especially with M. d’Epinay.  When I left the Hermitage I had written him a very polite letter of thanks, to which he answered not less politely, and mutual civilities had continued, as well between us as between me and M. de la Lalive, his brother-in-law, who even came to see me at Montmorency, and sent me some of his engravings.  Excepting the two sisters-in-law of Madam d’Houdetot, I have never been on bad terms with any person of the family.

My letter to D’Alembert had great success.  All my works had been very well received, but this was more favorable to me.  It taught the public to guard against the insinuations of the Coterie Holbachique.  When I went to the Hermitage, this Coterie predicted with its usual sufficiency, that I should not remain there three months.  When I had stayed there twenty months, and was obliged to leave it, I still fixed my residence in the country.  The Coterie insisted this was from a motive of pure obstinacy, and that I was weary even to death of my retirement; but that, eaten up with pride, I chose rather to become a victim of my stubbornness than to recover from it and return to Paris.  The letter to D’Alembert breathed a gentleness of mind which every one perceived not to be affected.  Had I been dissatisfied with my retreat, my style and manner would have borne evident marks of my ill-humor.  This reigned in all the works I had written in Paris; but in the first I wrote in the country not the least appearance of it was to be found.  To persons who knew how to distinguish, this remark was decisive.  They perceived I was returned to my element.

Yet the same work, notwithstanding all the mildness it breathed, made me by a mistake of my own and my usual ill-luck, another enemy amongst men of letters.  I had become acquainted with Marmontel at the house of M. de la Popliniere, and his acquaintance had been continued at that of the baron.  Marmontel at that time wrote the ‘Mercure de France’.  As I had too much pride to send my works to the authors of periodical publications, and wishing to send him this without his imagining it was in consequence of that title, or being desirous he should speak of it in the Mercure, I wrote upon the book that it was not for the author of the Mercure, but for M. Marmontel.  I thought I paid him a fine compliment; he mistook it for a cruel offence, and became my irreconcilable enemy.  He wrote against the letter with politeness, it is true, but with a bitterness easily perceptible, and since that time has never lost an opportunity of injuring me in society, and of indirectly ill-treating me in his works.  Such difficulty is there in managing the irritable self-love of men of letters, and so careful ought every person to be not to leave anything equivocal in the compliments they pay them.