had
an esteem for me, which, if I took care to cultivate, might be
serviceable in furnishing me with what was necessary to complete their
views for my future establishment. The next morning I flew to M. the
Abbe, who did not receive me as a servant, but made me sit by his
fireside, and questioned me with great affability. He soon found that my
education, which had attempted many things, had completed none; but
observing that I understood something of Latin, he undertook to teach me
more, and appointed me to attend him every morning. Thus, by one of the
whimsicalities which have marked the whole course of my life, at once
above and below my natural situation, I was pupil and footman in the same
house: and though in servitude, had a preceptor whose birth entitled him
to supply that place only to the children of kings.

The Abbe de Gauvon was a younger son, and designed by his family for a
bishopric, for which reason his studies had been pursued, further than is
usual with people of quality. He had been sent to the university of
Sienna, where he had resided some years, and from whence he had brought a
good portion of cruscantism, designing to be that at Turin which the Abbe
de Dangeau was formerly at Paris. Being disgusted with theology, he gave
in to the belle-lettres, which is very frequent in Italy, with those who
have entered the career of prelacy. He had studied the poets, and wrote
tolerable Latin and Italian verses; in a word, his taste was calculated
to form mine, and give some order to that chaos of insignificant trash
with which my brain was encumbered; but whether my prating had misled
him, or that he could not support the trouble of teaching the elementary
parts of Latin, he put me at first too high; and I had scarcely
translated a few fables of Phoedrus before he put me into Virgil, where I
could hardly understand anything. It will be seen hereafter that I was
destined frequently to learn Latin, but never to attain it. I labored
with assiduity, and the abbe bestowed his attention with a degree of
kindness, the remembrance of which, even at this time, both interests and
softens me. I passed the greater part of the morning with him as much
for my own instruction as his service; not that he ever permitted me to
perform any menial office, but to copy, or write from his dictating; and
my employment of secretary was more useful than that of scholar, and by
this means I not only learned the Italian in its ut