to explain to me three days afterwards, compelled me to keep my word
through a much more serious motive than a simple dislike for the woman.

However, although I was deeply grieved to find myself in such a
disgraceful position, I did not think I had any right to complain. On the
contrary, I considered that my misfortune to be a just and well-deserved
punishment for having abandoned myself to a Lais, after I had enjoyed the
felicity of possessing a woman like Henriette.

My disease was not a case within the province of empirics, and I
bethought myself of confiding in M. de is Haye who was then dining every
day with me, and made no mystery of his poverty. He placed me in the
hands of a skilful surgeon, who was at the same time a dentist. He
recognized certain symptoms which made it a necessity to sacrifice me to
the god Mercury, and that treatment, owing to the season of the year,
compelled me to keep my room for six weeks. It was during the winter of
1749.

While I was thus curing myself of an ugly disease, De la Haye inoculated
me with another as bad, perhaps even worse, which I should never have
thought myself susceptible of catching. This Fleming, who left me only
for one hour in the morning, to go--at least he said so--to church to
perform his devotions, made a bigot of me! And to such an extent, that I
agreed with him that I was indeed fortunate to have caught a disease
which was the origin of the faith now taking possession of my soul. I
would thank God fervently and with the most complete conviction for
having employed Mercury to lead my mind, until then wrapped in darkness,
to the pure light of holy truth! There is no doubt that such an
extraordinary change in my reasoning system was the result of the
exhaustion brought on by the mercury. That impure and always injurious