"You tell me, madam, you have not well explained yourself, in order to
make me understand I have explained myself ill. You speak of your
pretended stupidity for the purpose of making me feel my own. You boast
of being nothing more than a good kind of woman, as if you were afraid to
being taken at your word, and you make me apologies to tell me I owe them
to you. Yes, madam, I know it; it is I who am a fool, a good kind of
man; and, if it be possible, worse than all this; it is I who make a bad
choice of my expressions in the opinion of a fine French lady, who pays
as much attention to words, and speak as well as you do. But consider
that I take them in the common meaning of the language without knowing or
troubling my head about the polite acceptations in which they are taken
in the virtuous societies of Paris. If my expressions are sometimes
equivocal, I endeavored by my conduct to determine their meaning," etc.
The rest of the letter is much the same.

Coindet, enterprising, bold, even to effrontery, and who was upon the
watch after all my friends, soon introduced himself in my name to the
house of Madam de Verdelin, and, unknown to me, shortly became there more
familiar than myself. This Coindet was an extraordinary man. He
presented himself in my name in the houses of all my acquaintance, gained
a footing in them, and eat there without ceremony. Transported with zeal
to do me service, he never mentioned my name without his eyes being
suffused with tears; but, when he came to see me, he kept the most
profound silence on the subject of all these connections, and especially
on that in which he knew I must be interested. Instead of telling me
what he had heard, said, or seen, relative to my affairs, he waited for
my speaking to him, and even interrogated me. He never knew anything of
what passed in Paris, except that which I told him: finally, although
everybody spoke to me of him, he never once spoke to me of any person; he
was secret and mysterious with his friend only; but I will for the