usband.
His grief affected my heart. I myself was grieved for the loss of that
excellent woman, and wrote to M. d'Holbach a letter of condolence.
I forgot all the wrongs he had done me, and at my return from Geneva,
and after he had made the tour of France with Grimm and other friends
to alleviate his affliction, I went to see him, and continued my visits
until my departure for the Hermitage. As soon as it was known in his
circle that Madam D'Epinay was preparing me a habitation there,
innumerable sarcasms, founded upon the want I must feel of the flattery
and amusement of the city, and the supposition of my not being able to
support the solitude for a fortnight, were uttered against me. Feeling
within myself how I stood affected, I left him and his friends to say
what they pleased, and pursued my intention. M. d'Holbach rendered me
some services in finding a place for the old Le Vasseur, who was eighty
years of age and a burden to his wife, from which she begged me to
relieve her.

[This is an instance of the treachery of my memory. A long time
after I had written what I have stated above, I learned, in
conversing with my wife, that it was not M. d'Holbach, but M. de
Chenonceaux, then one of the administrators of the Hotel Dieu, who
procured this place for her father. I had so totally forgotten the
circumstance, and the idea of M. d'Holbach's having done it was so
strong in my mind that I would have sworn it had been him.]

He was put into a house of charity, where, almost as soon as he arrived
there, age and the grief of finding himself removed from his family sent
him to the grave. His wife and all his children, except Theresa, did not
much regret his loss. But she, who loved him tenderly, has ever since
been inconsolable, and never forgiven herself for having suffered him,
at so advanced an age, to end his days in any other house than her own.

Much about the same time I received a visit I little expected, although
it was from a very old acquaintance. My friend Venture, accompanied by
another man, came upon me one morning by surprise. What a change did I
discover in his person! Instead of his former gracefulness, he appeared
sottish and vulgar, which made me extremely reserved with him. My eyes
deceived me, or either debauchery had stupefied his mind, or all his
first splendor was the effect of his youth, which was past. I saw him
almost with indifference, and we par