h as upon
sentiments. How could this agree with defects which are peculiar to
little minds? How can the continued overflowings of a susceptible heart
suffer it to be incessantly employed in so many little cares relative to
the person? He who feels his heart inflamed with this celestial fire
strives to diffuse it, and wishes to show what he internally is. He
would wish to place his heart in his countenance, and thinks not of other
paint for his cheeks.

I remember the summary of his morality which Madam d'Epinay had mentioned
to me and adopted. This consisted in one single article; that the sole
duty of man is to follow all the inclinations of his heart. This
morality, when I heard it mentioned, gave me great matter of reflection,
although I at first considered it solely as a play of wit. But I soon
perceived it was a principle really the rule of his conduct, and of which
I afterwards had, at my own expense, but too many convincing proofs.
It is the interior doctrine Diderot has so frequently intimated to me,
but which I never heard him explain.

I remember having several years before been frequently told that Grimm
was false, that he had nothing more than the appearance of sentiment,
and particularly that he did not love me. I recollected several little
anecdotes which I had heard of him by M. de Francueil and Madam de
Chenonceaux, neither of whom esteemed him, and to whom he must have been
known, as Madam de Chenonceaux was daughter to Madam de Rochechouart,
the intimate friend of the late Comte de Friese, and that M. de
Francueil, at that time very intimate with the Viscount de Polignac,
had lived a good deal at the Palais Royal precisely when Grimm began to
introduce himself there. All Paris heard of his despair after the death
of the Comte de Friese. It was necessary to support the reputation he
had acquired after the rigors of Mademoiselle Fel, and of which I, more
than any other person, should have seen the imposture, had I been less
blind. He was obliged to be dragged to the Hotel de Castries where he
worthily played his part, abandoned to the most mortal affliction.
There, he every morning went into the garden to weep at his ease, holding
before his eyes his handkerchief moistened with tears, as long as he was
in sight of the hotel, but at the turning of a certain alley, people, of
whom he little thought, saw him instantly put his handkerchief in his
pocket and take out of it a book. This observatio