I have always experienced the same
sentiment in reading all the works which have come from your pen.
Receive my thanks for the whole. I should have returned you these in
person had my affairs permitted me to remain any time in your
neighborhood; but I was not this year long at the Chevrette. M. and
Madam Dupin come there on Sunday to dinner. I expect M. de Saint
Lambert, M. de Francueil, and Madam d'Houdetot will be of the party;
you will do me much pleasure by making one also. All the persons who are
to dine with me, desire, and will, as well as myself, be delighted to
pass with you a part of the day. I have the honor to be with the most
perfect consideration," etc.

This letter made my heart beat violently; after having for a year past
been the subject of conversation of all Paris, the idea of presenting
myself as a spectacle before Madam d'Houdetot, made me tremble, and I had
much difficulty to find sufficient courage to support that ceremony.
Yet as she and Saint Lambert were desirous of it, and Madam d'Epinay
spoke in the name of her guests without naming one whom I should not be
glad to see, I did not think I should expose myself accepting a dinner to
which I was in some degree invited by all the persons who with myself
were to partake of it. I therefore promised to go: on Sunday the weather
was bad, and Madam D'Epinay sent me her carriage.

My arrival caused a sensation. I never met a better reception. An
observer would have thought the whole company felt how much I stood in
need of encouragement. None but French hearts are susceptible of this
kind of delicacy. However, I found more people than I expected to see.
Amongst others the Comte d' Houdetot, whom I did not know, and his sister
Madam de Blainville, without whose company I should have been as well
pleased. She had the year before came several times to Eaubonne, and her
sister-in-law had left her in our solitary walks to wait until she
thought proper to suffer her to join us. She had harbored a resentment
against me, which during this dinner she gratified at her ease. The
presence of the Comte d' Houdetot and Saint Lambert did not give me the
laugh on my side, and it may be judged that a man embarrassed in the most
common conversations was not very brilliant in that which then took
place. I never suffered so much, appeared so awkward, or received more
unexpected mortifications. As soon as we had risen from table, I
withdrew from that wicked