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