ty to
toleration, may become united; a proof of which is seen in China, and in
the cabal against myself; whereas religion, both reasonable and moral,
taking away all power over the conscience, deprives those who assume that
power of every resource. I knew the chancellor was a great friend to the
Jesuits, and I had my fears less the son, intimidated by the father,
should find himself under the necessity of abandoning the work he had
protected. I besides imagined that I perceived this to be the case in
the chicanery employed against me relative to the first two volumes, in
which alterations were required for reasons of which I could not feel the
force; whilst the other two volumes were known to contain things of such
a nature as, had the censor objected to them in the manner he did to the
passages he thought exceptionable in the others, would have required
their being entirely written over again. I also understood, and M. de
Malesherbes himself told me of it, that the Abbe de Grave, whom he had
charged with the inspection of this edition, was another partisan of the
Jesuits. I saw nothing but Jesuits, without considering that, upon the
point of being suppressed, and wholly taken up in making their defence,
they had something which interested them much more than the cavillings
relative to a work in which they were not in question. I am wrong,
however, in saying this did not occur to me; for I really thought of it,
and M. de Malesherbes took care to make the observation to me the moment
he heard of my extravagant suspicions. But by another of those
absurdities of a man, who, from the bosom of obscurity, will absolutely
judge of the secret of great affairs, with which he is totally
unacquainted. I never could bring myself to believe the Jesuits were in
danger, and I considered the rumor of their suppression as an artful
manoeuvre of their own to deceive their adversaries. Their past
successes, which had been uninterrupted, gave me so terrible an idea of
the power, that I already was grieved at the overthrow of the parliament.
I knew M. de Choiseul had prosecuted his studies under the Jesuits, that
Madam de Pompadour was not upon bad terms with them, and that their
league with favorites and ministers had constantly appeared advantageous
to their order against their common enemies. The court seemed to remain
neuter, and persuaded as I was that should the society receive a severe
check it would not come from the parliame