d in the employment I had chosen,
by decrying me as a bad copyist. I confess he spoke the truth; but in
this case it was not for him to do it. He proved himself in earnest by
employing another copyist, and prevailing upon everybody he could, by
whom I was engaged, to do the same. His intention might have been
supposed to be that of reducing me to a dependence upon him and his
credit for a subsistence, and to cut off the latter until I was brought
to that degree of distress.

All things considered, my reason imposed silence upon my former
prejudice, which still pleaded in his favor. I judged his character to
be at least suspicious, and with respect to his friendship I positively
decided it to be false. I then resolved to see him no more, and informed
Madam d'Epinay of the resolution I had taken, supporting, it with several
unanswerable facts, but which I have now forgotten.

She strongly combated my resolution without knowing how to reply to the
reasons on which it was founded. She had not concerted with him; but the
next day, instead of explaining herself verbally, she, with great
address, gave me a letter they had drawn up together, and by which,
without entering into a detail of facts, she justified him by his
concentrated character, attributed to me as a crime my having suspected
him of perfidy towards his friend, and exhorted me to come to an
accommodation with him. This letter staggered me. In a conversation we
afterwards had together, and in which I found her better prepared than
she had been the first time, I suffered myself to be quite prevailed
upon, and was inclined to believe I might have judged erroneously. In
this case I thought I really had done a friend a very serious injury,
which it was my duty to repair. In short, as I had already done several
times with Diderot, and the Baron d'Holbach, half from inclination, and
half from weakness, I made all the advances I had a right to require;
I went to M. Grimm, like another George Dandin, to make him my apologies
for the offence he had given me; still in the false persuasion, which, in
the course of my life has made me guilty of a thousand meannesses to my
pretended friends, that there is no hatred which may not be disarmed by
mildness and proper behavior; whereas, on the contrary, the hatred of the
wicked becomes still more envenomed by the impossibility of finding
anything to found it upon, and the sentiment of their own injustice is
another cause