e relative to this
manuscript. I gave it, well sealed up, to Du Voisin, a minister in the
pays de Vaud and chaplain at the Hotel de Hollande, who sometimes came to
see me, and took upon himself to send the packet to Rey, with whom he was
connected. The manuscript, written in a small letter, was but very
trifling, and did not fill his pocket. Yet, in passing the barriere, the
packet fell, I know not by what means, into the hands of the Commis, who
opened and examined it, and afterwards returned it to him, when he had
reclaimed it in the name of the ambassador. This gave him an opportunity
of reading it himself, which he ingeniously wrote me he had done,
speaking highly of the work, without suffering a word of criticism or
censure to escape him; undoubtedly reserving to himself to become the
avenger of Christianity as soon as the work should appear. He resealed
the packet and sent it to Rey. Such is the substance of his narrative in
the letter in which he gave an account of the affair, and is all I ever
knew of the matter.

Besides these two books and my dictionary of music, at which I still did
something as opportunity offered, I had other works of less importance
ready to make their appearance, and which I proposed to publish either
separately or in my general collection, should I ever undertake it. The
principal of these works, most of which are still in manuscript in the
hands of De Peyrou, was an essay on the origin of Languages, which I had
read to M. de Malesherbes and the Chevalier de Lorenzy, who spoke
favorably of it. I expected all the productions together would produce
me a net capital of from eight to ten thousand livres (three to four
hundred pounds), which I intended to sink in annuities for my life and
that of Theresa; after which, our design, as I have already mentioned,
was to go and live together in the midst of some province, without
further troubling the public about me, or myself with any other project
than that of peacefully ending my days and still continuing to do in my
neighborhood all the good in my power, and to write at leisure the
memoirs which I intended.

Such was my intention, and the execution of it was facilitated by an act
of generosity in Rey, upon which I cannot be silent. This bookseller, of
whom so many unfavorable things were told me in Paris, is,
notwithstanding, the only one with whom I have always had reason to be
satisfied. It is true, we frequently disagreed as to t