There is but one thing in which I set them at defiance: which is in
tormenting themselves about me, to force me to give myself the least
trouble about them.

The day after my departure I had so perfectly forgotten what had passed,
the parliament, Madam de Pompadour, M. de Choiseul, Grimm, and
D'Alembert, with their conspiracies, that had not it been for the
necessary precautions during the journey I should have thought no more of
them. The remembrance of one thing which supplied the place of all these
was what I had read the evening before my departure. I recollect, also,
the pastorals of Gessner, which his translator Hubert had sent me a
little time before. These two ideas occurred to me so strongly, and were
connected in such a manner in my mind, that I was determined to endeavor
to unite them by treating after the manner of Gessner, the subject of the
Levite of Ephraim. His pastoral and simple style appeared to me but
little fitted to so horrid a subject, and it was not to be presumed the
situation I was then in would furnish me with such ideas as would enliven
it. However, I attempted the thing, solely to amuse myself in my
cabriolet, and without the least hope of success. I had no sooner begun
than I was astonished at the liveliness of my ideas, and the facility
with which I expressed them. In three days I composed the first three
cantos of the little poem I finished at Motiers, and I am certain of not
having done anything in my life in which there is a more interesting
mildness of manners, a greater brilliancy of coloring, more simple
delineations, greater exactness of proportion, or more antique simplicity
in general, notwithstanding the horror of the subject which in itself is
abominable, so that besides every other merit I had still that of a
difficulty conquered. If the Levite of Ephraim be not the best of my
works, it will ever be that most esteemed. I have never read, nor shall
I ever read it again without feeling interiorly the applause of a heart