not very lucrative, and prevented me from being
sufficiently attentive to what I did to do it well; for which reason,
half the time I had to myself was lost in erasing errors or beginning my
sheet anew. This daily importunity rendered Paris more unsupportable,
and made me ardently wish to be in the country. I several times went to
pass a few days at Mercoussis, the vicar of which was known to Madam le
Vasseur, and with whom we all arranged ourselves in such a manner as not
to make things disagreeable to him. Grimm once went thither with us.

[Since I have neglected to relate here a trifling, but memorable
adventure I had with the said Grimm one day, on which we were to
dine at the fountain of St. Vandrille, I will let it pass: but when
I thought of it afterwards, I concluded that he was brooding in his
heart the conspiracy he has, with so much success, since carried
into execution.]

The vicar had a tolerable voice, sung well, and, although he did not read
music, learned his part with great facility and precision. We passed our
time in singing the trios I had composed at Chenonceaux. To these I
added two or three new ones, to the words Grimm and the vicar wrote, well
or ill. I cannot refrain from regretting these trios composed and sung
in moments of pure joy, and which I left at Wootton, with all my music.
Mademoiselle Davenport has perhaps curled her hair with them; but they
are worthy of being preserved, and are, for the most part, of very good
counterpoint. It was after one of these little excursions in which I had
the pleasure of seeing the aunt at her ease and very cheerful, and in
which my spirits were much enlivened, that I wrote to the vicar very
rapidly and very ill, an epistle in verse which will be found amongst my
papers.

I had nearer to Paris another station much to my liking with M. Mussard,
my countryman, relation and friend, who at Passy had made himself a
charming retreat, where I have passed some very peaceful moments.
M. Mussard was a jeweller, a man of good sense, who, after having
acquired a genteel fortune, had given his only daughter in marriage to
M. de Valmalette, the son of an exchange broker, and maitre d'hotel to
the king, took the wise resolution to quit business in his declining
years, and to place an interval of repose and enjoyment between the hurry
and the end of life. The good man Mussard, a real philosopher in
practice, lived without care, in