to prevent him: and one night he emptied my cellar.

Whilst he seemed to address himself to me only, I suffered everything,
but being desirous of giving an account of the fruit, I was obliged to
declare by whom a great part of it had been stolen. Madam d'Epinay
desired me to pay and discharge him, and look out for another; I did so.
As this rascal rambled about the Hermitage in the night, armed with a
thick club staff with an iron ferrule, and accompanied by other villains
like himself, to relieve the governesses from their fears, I made his
successor sleep in the house with us; and this not being sufficient to
remove their apprehensions, I sent to ask M. d'Epinay for a musket, which
I kept in the chamber of the gardener, with a charge not to make use of
it except an attempt was made to break open the door or scale the walls
of the garden, and to fire nothing but powder, meaning only to frighten
the thieves. This was certainly the least precaution a man indisposed
could take for the common safety of himself and family, having to pass
the winter in the midst of a wood, with two timid women. I also procured
a little dog to serve as a sentinel. De Leyre coming to see me about
this time, I related to him my situation, and we laughed together at my
military apparatus. At his return to Paris he wished to amuse Diderot
with the story, and by this means the 'Coterie d'Holbachique' learned
that I was seriously resolved to pass the winter at the Hermitage. This
perseverance, of which they had not imagined me to be capable,
disconcerted them, and, until they could think of some other means of
making my residence disagreeable to me, they sent back, by means of
Diderot, the same De Leyre, who, though at first he had thought my
precautions quite natural, now pretended to discover that they were
inconsistent with my principles, and styled them more than ridiculous in
his letters, in which he overwhelmed me with pleasantries sufficiently
bitter and satirical to offend me had I been the least disposed to take