The Confessions

  The Village Soothsayer* brought me completely into fashion, and soon no man in all Paris was more sought after than I. The story of this play, which marks an epoch in my life, is mixed up with that of the relationships I had at the time, about which I must enter into some details in order to throw light on what follows.

  I had a considerable number of acquaintances but only two chosen friends, Diderot and Grimm. Owing to the desire I always feel to bring those who are dear to me together I was so much the friend of both that they could not help striking up a friendship themselves. I brought them together; they got along well and were soon more intimate with one another than with me. Diderot had innumerable acquaintances; but Grimm, being a foreigner and a newcomer, had as yet few, and I was delighted to procure him all I could. I had introduced him to Diderot. I introduced him to Gauffecourt. I took him to Mme Chenonceaux, to Mme d’Épinay, and to Baron d’Holbach, with whom I found myself on terms almost against my will. All my friends became his. That was quite simple. But none of his became mine, and this was not so easy to understand. Whilst he lived with the Count de Frièse, he often invited us to dine with him; but I never received any tokens of friendship or good-will from the Count himself or from his relative the Count de Schomberg, who was very friendly with Grimm, or from any other person, male or female, with whom Grimm was on terms through them. The sole exception was the Abbé Raynal who, although his friend, proved also mine, and on one occasion offered me his purse with most uncommon generosity. But I had known the Abbé Raynal before Grimm knew him, and I had always been fond of him ever since his delicate and honourable behaviour to me on a very trivial occasion, but one which I never forgot.

  The Abbé Raynal was certainly a warm friend, and gave me proof of it at about the time I am speaking of, in a matter concerning Grimm, with whom he was extremely intimate. After having been on very friendly terms for some time with Mlle Fel, Grimm suddenly took it into his head to fall madly in love with her and to try and supplant Cahusac. The lady, who prided herself on her constancy, dismissed her new wooer, who took the affair tragically and decided that it would be the death of him. Suddenly he fell into the strangest illness ever heard of in all the world. He spent his days and his nights in a continuous lethargy, with his eyes wide open and his pulse beating normally, but never speaking or eating or moving, sometimes appearing to understand but never replying, even by signs. For the rest he was free from tremor, pain, or fever, but lay there as if he were dead. The Abbé Raynal and I took it in turns to watch him. The Abbé, being sturdier and in better health, spent the nights with him, and I spent the days. He was never alone. One of us would not leave till the other came. The Count de Frièse was alarmed and brought Senac, who examined him thoroughly, said it would be nothing, and did not even prescribe for him. My concern for my friend made me look carefully into the doctor’s face, and I saw him smile as he went out. The sick man, however, lay motionless for several days and took no broth or anything else except some preserved cherries, which I put on his tongue from time to time and which he swallowed without difficulty. One fine morning he got up, dressed himself, and resumed his ordinary life, without ever saying anything either to me or, as far as I know, to the Abbé or anyone else about his singular lethargy, or about the way we had looked after him all the time it had lasted.

  This incident did not fail to make a stir, and it really would have been a marvellous story if an opera girl’s hard-heartedness had caused a man to the of despair. This magnificent passion made Grimm fashionable; so he was considered a prodigy of love, friendship, and devotion of every sort. This reputation caused him to be sought after and fêted in high society, and so took him far from me, who had never been anything but a makeshift. I saw that he was on the point of deserting me altogether, which much distressed me, for all the strong feelings of which he made such a show were those that in a quieter way I felt for him. I was glad that he had succeeded in the world, but could have wished that his success did not involve his forgetting his friend. ‘Grimm,’ I said to him one day, ‘you are neglecting me, but I forgive you. When the first intoxication of your riotous success has worn off and you feel its hollowness, I hope that you will come back to me. You will find me the same. But for the present do not worry. I leave you free and I will wait for you.’ He accepted what I said, acted as I had suggested, and went his own way so completely that I never saw him again except in the company of our common friends.

  Our chief meeting-place, before he became as intimate with Mme d’Épinay as he subsequently did, was at Baron d’Holbach’s.* The said baron was the son of a self-made man, and enjoyed a considerable fortune of which he made noble use. He entertained men of letters and attainments at his house, and by his own knowledge and accomplishments was able to hold his own amongst them. Having been intimate for a long time with Diderot, he had sought me out through him even before my name was well known. A natural repugnance kept me for some time from responding to his advances. One day he asked me the reason, and I answered: ‘You are too rich.’ He persisted, and finally had his way. My greatest misfortune has been my inability to resist flattery; I have always had cause to be sorry when I have given in to it.

  Another acquaintance, which turned into a friendship as soon as I had a right to claim it, was that with M. Duclos. I had met him for the first time several years before at La Chevrette, at the house of Mme d’Épinay, with whom he was on good terms. We merely dined together, and he left the same day; but we chatted for a few minutes after dinner. Mme d’Épinay had spoken to him about me and my opera The Gallant Muses. Duclos, who had too much talent himself not to value other talented men, was predisposed in my favour and invited me to visit him. Notwithstanding my original liking for him, which was strengthened on acquaintance, my shyness and sluggishness held me back for so long as I had no passport to him except his kindness; but encouraged by my first success and his praises, which came round to me, I called upon him. He returned my visit, and so began a relationship between us which will always cause me to hold him dear, and which, reinforcing the evidence of my own heart, has convinced me that uprightness and honour may sometimes be combined with the pursuit of letters.

  Many other less solid relationships, which I will not mention here, followed as a consequence of my first successes, and lasted until curiosity was satisfied. I was a man so quickly understood that there was nothing more to be learnt about me on a second day. One woman, however, who sought me out at that time held on more persistently than all the rest. This was the Marchioness de Créqui, niece of the Bailli de Froulay, the Maltese ambassador, whose brother had been M. de Montaigu’s predecessor in the Venice embassy, whom I had gone to see on my return from that city. Mme de Créqui wrote to me; I went to her house, and she took me as a friend. I dined there sometimes, and met several men of letters, among others M. Saurin, the author of Spartacus, Barnevelt, and other plays, who has since become my most bitter enemy, for no other reason that I can imagine except that I bear the name of a man whom his father most disgracefully persecuted.

  Clearly, for a copyist who should have been working at his trade from morning till night, I had many distractions which prevented my day from being very lucrative, and prevented my paying sufficient attention to the work I did to do it well. So I lost more than half the time I had left in rubbing or scratching out my mistakes, or beginning again on a fresh sheet. These tiresome interruptions made Paris more unbearable to me every day, and caused me to look eagerly for opportunities of going into the country. Several times I went to spend a few days at Marcoussis, where Mme Le Vasseur knew the priest, in whose house we so arranged ourselves that he was not inconvenienced. On one occasion Grimm came with us.* The priest had a voice and sang well, and though he had no knowledge of music he could learn his part with ease and accuracy. We passed the time singing the trios I had composed at Chenonceaux; and here I wrote two or three new ones to words that Grimm and the priest put together in a rough and ready way. I cannot help regretting those trios
composed and sung in moments of real and pure joy. I left them at Wootton with all my music, and Miss Davenport has no doubt already used them as curl-papers. But they deserved to be kept and were mostly very good in their counterpoint. It was after one of these little trips, on which I had been delighted to see ‘aunt’ at her ease and in high spirits, and on which I had been in high spirits too, that I wrote the priest a letter in verse, very hastily and badly botched together, which will be found among my papers.

  Nearer Paris, I had another refuge that was much to my taste, as the guest of M. Mussard, my compatriot, relative, and friend, who had built himself a charming retreat near Passy, where I have spent some very peaceful hours. M. Mussard was a jeweller, a sensible man who, after making an honest fortune in his business and marrying his only daughter to M. de Valmalette, the son of an exchange-broker and chamberlain to the King, had taken the wise course of retiring from his trade and business in his old age, and placing an interval of rest and enjoyment between the bustle of life and his death. This good Mussard, a real practising philosopher, lived without a care in a very pleasant house that he had built for himself, and a very pretty garden which he had planted with his own hands. In digging over the terraces of this garden he found fossil shells, and in such quantities that his lively imagination could see nothing but shells in the whole of Nature and finally came to believe that the Universe consisted only of shells and the remains of shells, and that the whole earth was merely powdered shell. With no other thought in his head but his singular discoveries, he got so excited about his ideas on the subject that they would finally have turned into a system in his head – that is to say into a mania – had not death, fortunately for his reason but unfortunately for his friends, who were fond of him and found his house the most delightful refuge, come and taken him from them by the strangest and cruellest disease. This was a malignant tumour of the stomach which had prevented his eating for some time before the reason was discovered, and which finally killed him, after several years of great pain, by sheer starvation. I cannot remember the last days of this unfortunate and worthy man without a pang at the heart. He still gave a hearty welcome to Lenieps and myself, the only friends whom the sight of his sufferings did not drive away from him until his last hour. But he was reduced, I say, to feasting his eyes on the meals he had served for us whilst scarcely himself able to swallow a few drops of very weak tea, which he would bring up the next moment. Before the time of his illness how many pleasant hours I spent at his house with the picked friends he had made! First among them I rank the Abbé Prévost, a very charming and simple man, whose books were inspired by his heart and deserve immortality. Nothing about his nature or his company displayed that sombre colouring which he gave to his works. Then there was Doctor Procope, an ugly little man but a great success with the ladies; there was Boulanger, the famous author of the posthumous Oriental Despotism, who I believe developed Mussard’s theories about the age of the world. Among the women there was Mme Denis, Voltaire’s niece, who was then a simple person and made no pretensions to wit; Mme Vanloo, certainly no beauty but a charming person who sang like an angel; and Mme de Valmalette herself, who also sang and who, extremely thin though she was, would have been most attractive if she had not set out so earnestly to be so. Such was more or less the company M. Mussard kept, and I should have enjoyed it very much had I not enjoyed his conchyliomania in private even better. Indeed, I can say that for six months or more I worked in his study with as much pleasure as he did.

  He had insisted for a long time that the Passy waters would be good for my health, and implored me to stay in his house and drink them. To get away from the urban crowds for a while I finally accepted, and went to spend eight or ten days at Passy, which did me good, though rather because I was staying in the country than by virtue of the waters. Mussard played the violoncello, and was a passionate lover of Italian music. One evening we had a long talk on that subject before going to bed, and particularly discussed the comic operas we had both seen in Italy, and which had delighted us both.

  That night, being unable to sleep, I began to consider how it would be possible to give an idea of this kind of drama in France; for The Loves of Ragonde* did not resemble it in any way. In the morning, whilst strolling and taking the waters, I made up a few hasty samples of verses, and fitted tunes to them that came back to me as I did so. I scribbled all this down in a kind of vaulted summer-house at the end of the garden, and over tea I could not help showing these airs to M. Mussard and his housekeeper, Mlle Duvernois, who was a very nice and amiable young woman. The three pieces I had sketched out were the first monologue, ‘I have lost my serving-man’; the soothsayer’s song, ‘Love grows by its own disquiet’; and the final duet, ‘I hold you, Colin, to your vows.’ So little did I imagine that this was worth the trouble of continuing that, had it not been for the applause and encouragement of those two, I should have thrown my scraps of paper on the fire and not given them another thought, as I have done so many times to other things at least as good. But they so inspired me that within six days my text was written, except for a few verses, and all my music sketched out. So all that I had left to do in Paris was a few recitatives and all the connecting parts; and I completed the whole thing with such speed that in three weeks my scenes were copied out and ready to be performed. All that was lacking was the interlude, which was not written till long afterwards.

  1752 The composition of this work so excited me that I longed passionately to hear it; and I would have given anything to see it performed after my own ideas behind closed doors, as Lulli is said to have had his Armide played for him alone on one occasion. As it was not possible for me to have this pleasure except at a public performance, it was absolutely necessary, if my piece was to be played, to get it accepted at the Opera. Unfortunately it was in an absolutely new style, to which people’s ears were unaccustomed. Furthermore, the failure of The Gallant Muses made me expect a similar fate for the Soothsayer if I submitted it under my own name. Duclos helped me out of my difficulty and undertook to get the work tried over without revealing who the author was. So as not to betray myself I did not attend this rehearsal; and the ‘Little Violins’* who conducted it did not themselves know who the author was until the work’s excellence had been confirmed by general applause. Everyone who heard it was delighted with it, so much so that next day there was no other subject of conversation in any company. M. de Cury, Master of the King’s Entertainments, who had been present at the rehearsal, asked for the work so that it could be performed at Court. Duclos knew my intentions, and considered that I would have less control over my piece at Court than in Paris. He therefore refused. Cury demanded it by virtue of his office, but Duclos did not give in, and the dispute became so lively that on one occasion they would have walked out of the Opera to fight a duel if they had not been separated. Cury tried to approach me, but I left the decision in M. Duclos’s hands. So he had to go back to him. The Duke d’Aumont interfered, and Duclos finally saw fit to yield to authority. He handed the piece over, therefore, to be played at Fontainebleau.

  The part to which I had paid the greatest attention, and in which I had made the greatest departure from the beaten track, was the recitative. Mine was stressed in an entirely new way and timed to the speaking of the words. But they would not let this horrible innovation stand; they were afraid that it would shock the ears of the timid herd. I gave my permission for a fresh recitative to be written by Francueil and Jelyotte, but I refused to have anything to do with it myself.

  When all was ready and the date fixed for the performance, it was suggested that I should go down to Fontainebleau, at least to see the last rehearsal. I went with Mlle Fel, Grimm, and, I think, the Abbé Raynal, in one of the royal carriages. The rehearsal was not too bad; and I was better pleased with it than I had expected. The orchestra was large, being made up of the Opera players and the royal band. Jelyotte sang Colin; Mlle Fel, Colette; and Cuvilier, the Soothsayer; the Opera singers were the chorus. I sai
d very little. Jelyotte had made all the arrangements and I did not want to interfere with what he had done; but in spite of my impassive air I was as shy as a schoolboy among all those people.

  The day after the performance I went to breakfast at the Café du Grand-Commun, where there were a great number of people, talking about the last evening’s rehearsal, and the difficulty there had been in getting in. One officer who was there said that he had had no trouble and gave a long account of the evening. He described the author and reported what he had done and said. But what astounded me about this long tale, told with equal assurance and directness, was that there was not a word of truth in it. It was perfectly clear to me that this fellow who spoke so knowledgeably about the rehearsal had not been there. For there before his eyes was the author he pretended to have observed so carefully, and he did not recognize him. But what was still more singular about this incident was its effect on me. This man was getting on in years; there was nothing of the fop or the braggart about his looks or his speech; his features proclaimed him a man of attainments; his Cross of St Louis showed him to be an officer in retirement. Despite his effrontery, and in spite of myself, I felt a liking for him; and as he retailed his lies I blushed and looked down. I was sitting upon thorns. Sometimes I asked myself whether it was not possible to suppose that he was merely mistaken, and really believed what he said. Finally, trembling with fear that someone might recognize me and put him to shame, I hastily finished my chocolate in silence and left the place at the earliest possible moment, lowering my head as I passed in front of him, just as his audience was beginning to comment on his tale. In the street I noticed that I was in a perspiration; and I am sure that if anyone had recognized me and called my name while I was inside, I should have displayed all the shame and confusion of a guilty man, simply from what I felt that poor man would suffer if his lies were detected.