"Thanks to your cares, my dear philosopher, the abbe has left the
Bastile, and his imprisonment will have no other consequence. He is
setting off for the country, and, as well as myself, returns you a
thousand thanks and compliments. 'Vale et me ama'."

The abbe also wrote to me a few days afterwards a letter of thanks, which
did not, in my opinion, seem to breathe a certain effusion of the heart,
and in which he seemed in some measure to extenuate the service I had
rendered him. Some time afterwards, I found that he and D'Alembert had,
to a certain degree, I will not say supplanted, but succeeded me in the
good graces of Madam de Luxembourg, and that I Had lost in them all they
had gained. However, I am far from suspecting the Abbe Morrellet of
having contributed to my disgrace; I have too much esteem for him to
harbor any such suspicion. With respect to D'Alembert, I shall at
present leave him out of the question, and hereafter say of him what may
seem necessary.

I had, at the same time, another affair which occasioned the last letter
I wrote to Voltaire; a letter against which he vehemently exclaimed, as
an abominable insult, although he never showed it to any person. I will
here supply the want of that which he refused to do.

The Abbe Trublet, with whom I had a slight acquaintance, but whom I had
but seldom seen, wrote to me on the 13th of June, 1760, informing me that
M. Formey, his friend and correspondent, had printed in his journal my
letter to Voltaire upon the disaster at Lisbon. The abbe wished to know
how the letter came to be printed, and in his jesuitical manner, asked me
my opinion, without giving me his own on the necessity of reprinting it.
As I most sovereignly hate this kind of artifice and strategem, I
returned such thanks as were proper, but in a manner so reserved as to