ingratitude or of a secret motive.  I well know, that let you do as you will you will have in your favor the testimony of your conscience, but will this alone be sufficient, and is it permitted to neglect to a certain degree that which is necessary to acquire the approbation of others?  What I now write, my good friend, is to acquit myself of what I think I owe to us both.  Should my letter displease you, throw it into the fire and let it be forgotten.  I salute, love and embrace you.”

Although trembling and almost blind with rage whilst I read this epistle, I remarked the address with which Diderot affected a milder and more polite language than he had done in his former ones, wherein he never went further than “My dear,” without ever deigning to add the name of friend.  I easily discovered the secondhand means by which the letter was conveyed to me; the subscription, manner and form awkwardly betrayed the manoeuvre; for we commonly wrote to each other by post, or the messenger of Montmorency, and this was the first and only time he sent me his letter by any other conveyance.

As soon as the first transports of my indignation permitted me to write, I, with great precipitation, wrote him the following answer, which I immediately carried from the Hermitage, where I then was, to Chevrette, to show it to Madam d’ Epinay; to whom, in my blind rage, I read the contents, as well as the letter from Diderot.

“You cannot, my dear friend, either know the magnitude of the obligations I am under to Madam d’Epinay, to what a degree I am bound by them, whether or not she is desirous of my accompanying her, that this is possible, or the reasons I may have for my noncompliance.  I have no objection to discuss all these points with you; but you will in the meantime confess that prescribing to me so positively what I ought to do, without first enabling yourself to judge of the matter, is, my dear philosopher, acting very inconsiderately.  What is still worse, I perceive the opinion you give comes not from yourself.  Besides my being but little disposed to suffer myself to be led by the nose under your name by any third or fourth person, I observe in this secondary advice certain underhand dealing, which ill agrees with your candor, and from which you will on your account, as well as mine, do well in future to abstain.

“You are afraid my conduct should be misinterpreted; but I defy a heart like yours to think ill of mine.  Others would perhaps speak better of me if I resembled them more.  God preserve me from gaining their approbation!  Let the vile and wicked watch over my conduct and misinterpret my actions, Rousseau is not a man to be afraid of them, nor is Diderot to be prevailed upon to hearken to what they say.

“If I am displeased with your letter, you wish me to throw it into the fire, and pay no attention to the contents.  Do you imagine that anything coming from you can be forgotten in such a manner?  You hold, my dear friend, my tears as cheap in the pain you give me, as you do my life and health, in the cares you exhort me to take.  Could you but break yourself of this, your friendship would be more pleasing to me, and I should be less to be pitied.”