CHAPTER XV.

Le plaisir de la societe entre les amis se cultive par une
ressemblance de gout sur ce qui regarde les moeurs, et par quelque
difference d'opinions sur les sciences; par la ou l'on s'affermit
dans ses sentiments, ou l'on s'exerce et l'on s'instruit par la
dispute.
--La Bruyere.

There was a party at Monsieur de V--e's, to which Vincent and myself were
the only Englishmen invited: accordingly as the Hotel de V. was in the
same street as my hotel, we dined together at my rooms, and walked from
thence to the minister's house.

The party was as stiff and formal as such assemblies invariably are, and
we were both delighted when we espied Monsieur d'A--, a man of much
conversational talent, and some celebrity as an ultra writer, forming a
little group in one corner of the room.

We took advantage of our acquaintance with the urbane Frenchman to join
his party; the conversation turned almost entirely on literary subjects.
Allusion being made to Schlegel's History of Literature, and the severity
with which he speaks of Helvetius, and the philosophers of his school, we
began to discuss what harm the free-thinkers in philosophy had effected.

"For my part," said Vincent, "I am not able to divine why we are
supposed, in works where there is much truth, and little falsehood, much
good, and a little evil, to see only the evil and the falsehood, to the