the only persons whom you ought to befriend. It is in the
country men learn how to love and serve humanity; all they learn in
cities is to despise it."

Such were the singular scruples on which a man of sense had the folly to
attribute to me as a crime my retiring from Paris, and pretended to prove
to me by my own example, that it was not possible to live out of the
capital without becoming a bad man. I cannot at present conceive how I
could be guilty of the folly of answering him, and of suffering myself to
be angry instead of laughing in his fare. However, the decisions of
Madam d'Epinay and the clamors of the 'Cote in Holbachique' had so far
operated in her favor, that I was generally thought to be in the wrong;
and the D'Houdetot herself, very partial to Diderot, insisted upon my
going to see him at Paris, and making all the advances towards an
accommodation which, full and sincere as it was on my part, was not of
long duration. The victorious argument by which she subdued my heart
was, that at that moment Diderot was in distress. Besides the storm
excited against the 'Encyclopedie', he had then another violent one to
make head against, relative to his piece, which, notwithstanding the
short history he had printed at the head of it, he was accused of having
entirely taken from Goldoni. Diderot, more wounded by criticisms than
Voltaire, was overwhelmed by them. Madam de Grasigny had been malicious
enough to spread a report that I had broken with him on this account.
I thought it would be just and generous publicly to prove the contrary,
and I went to pass two days, not only with him, but at his lodgings.
This, since I had taken up my abode at the Hermitage, was my second
journey to Paris. I had made the first to run to poor Gauffecourt, who
had had a stroke of apoplexy, from which he has never perfectly
recovered: I did not quit the side of his pillow until he was so far
restored as to have no further need of my assistance.

Diderot received me well. How many wrongs are effaced by the embraces of
a friend! after these, what resentment can remain in the heart? We came
to but little explanation. This is needless for reciprocal invectives.
The only thing necessary is to know how to forget them. There had been
no underhand proceedings, none at least that had come to my knowledge:
the case was not the same with Madam d' Epinay. He showed me the plan of
the 'Pere de Famille'. "This," said I to him, "is the b