to take a ticket that I might not that evening have the mortification to return as I had come.  This injustice was the more shameful, as the only price I had set on my piece when I gave it to the managers was a perpetual freedom of the house; for although this was a right, common to every author, and which I enjoyed under a double title, I expressly stipulated for it in presence of M. Duclos.  It is true, the treasurer brought me fifty louis, for which I had not asked; but, besides the smallness of the sum, compared with that which, according to the rule, established in such cases, was due to me, this payment had nothing in common with the right of entry formerly granted, and which was entirely independent of it.  There was in this behavior such a complication of iniquity and brutality, that the public, notwithstanding its animosity against me, which was then at its highest, was universally shocked at it, and many persons who insulted me the preceding evening, the next day exclaimed in the open theatre, that it was shameful thus to deprive an author of his right of entry; and particularly one who had so well deserved it, and was entitled to claim it for himself and another person.  So true is the Italian proverb:  Ogn’ un ama la giustizia in cosa d altrui.—­[Every one loves justice in the affairs of another.]

In this situation the only thing I had to do was to demand my work, since the price I had agreed to receive for it was refused me.  For this purpose I wrote to M. d’Argenson, who had the department of the opera.  I likewise enclosed to him a memoir which was unanswerable; but this, as well as my letter, was ineffectual, and I received no answer to either.  The silence of that unjust man hurt me extremely, and did not contribute to increase the very moderate good opinion I always had of his character and abilities.  It was in this manner the managers kept my piece while they deprived me of that for which I had given it them.  From the weak to the strong, such an act would be a theft:  from the strong to the weak, it is nothing more than an appropriation of property, without a right.

With respect to the pecuniary advantages of the work, although it did not produce me a fourth part of the sum it would have done to any other. person, they were considerable enough to enable me to subsist several years, and to make amends for the ill success of copying, which went on but very slowly.  I received a hundred louis from the king; fifty from Madam de Pompadour, for the performance at Bellevue, where she herself played the part of Colin; fifty from the opera; and five hundred livres from Pissot, for the engraving; so that this interlude, which cost me no more than five or six weeks’ application, produced, notwithstanding the ill treatment I received from the managers and my stupidity at court, almost as much money as my ‘Emilius’, which had cost me twenty years’ meditation, and three years’ labor.  But I paid dearly for the pecuniary ease I received from