The Confessions

  During my stay at the Hermitage and since my move to Montmorency I had made several acquaintances in the neighbourhood, which I found pleasant and which subjected me to no obligations. Chief among them was young Loyseau de Mauléon, who was just beginning at the Bar and had no idea to what an eminence he would attain there. I was in no doubt, however, and soon pointed out to him the illustrious career which he can be seen to be following to-day. I prophesied to him that if he was particular in his choice of briefs and only pleaded in defence of justice and virtue, his talents would benefit by the loftiness of his principles and he would become the equal of the finest orators. He has followed my advice, and felt the benefit of it. His defence of M. de Portes is worthy of Demosthenes. He used to come every year to spend his vacation a Mlle from the Hermitage, at Saint-Brice, on the estate of Mauléon, his mother’s property, where the great Bossuet once lived. It was an estate that could hardly have sustained a succession of such owners in their old noble grandeur.

  In the same village of Saint-Brice I also knew Guérin the bookseller, a man of wit and learning, and a pleasant person high up in his trade. He introduced me to Jean Néaulme, an Amsterdam bookseller, his correspondent and friend, who eventually printed Émile. Nearer even than Saint-Brice, I had M. Maltor, the vicar of Grosley, who was cut out to be a statesman and minister rather than a village priest, and who would have received at least a diocese to rule if positions went by talents. He had been secretary to the Count du Luc, and a close friend of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau. His esteem for the memory of that illustrious exile was as great as his loathing for the rascally Saurin, who had ruined him; and he knew a number of curious anecdotes about them both which Séguy had not put into his still unpublished life of Rousseau. M. Maltor assured me that, far from having cause to complain of him, the Count du Luc had retained the warmest friendship for the poet to the end of his life. M. Maltor had been given this very pleasant retreat by M. de Vintimille after his patron’s death. In the past he had been employed in a number of affairs, which he remembered perfectly despite his age and about which he talked very well. His conversation was as instructive as it was entertaining, and not at all like a village priest’s. He combined the air of a man of the world with the learning of a scholar. Of all my permanent neighbours he was the one whose society I found most pleasant and whom I most regretted leaving.

  There were also at Montmorency the Fathers of the Oratory, among them Father Berthier, the professor of physics, whom I liked for a certain air of geniality that I found in him beneath his slight veneer of pedantry. It was difficult, however, to reconcile his extreme simplicity with the determination and adroitness he displayed in pushing himself everywhere, among the great, the ladies, the religious, and the philosophers. He knew how to be all things to all men. I found great pleasure in his company, and talked about him to everybody. Apparently what I said came back to him. For one day he thanked me with a half laugh for having found him such a good fellow. I noticed something sardonic in his smiling face that totally altered it in my eyes, and the memory of which has often recurred to me since then. I cannot find a better comparison for his smile than with Panurge’s when he is buying Dindenaut’s sheep.* Our acquaintance had begun shortly after my arrival at the Hermitage, where he often came to see me. I had already settled at Montmorency when he left to return and live in Paris. There he often saw Mme Le Vasseur. One day quite unexpectedly he wrote to me on that lady’s behalf, to inform me that M. Grimm had offered to support her, and to ask my permission to accept his offer. This, I understood, consisted of a pension of three hundred livres, and Mme Le Vasseur was to come and live at Deuil, between La Chevrette and Montmorency. I will not describe the impression that this news made on me; it would have been less surprising if Grimm had had an income of ten thousand livres, or any more comprehensible relationship with the woman, and if it had not been considered such a crime in me to have taken her into the country. For now he intended to take her back, as if she had grown younger since she left. I realized that the good old lady was only asking my permission, which she could have dispensed with if I had refused it, so as not to risk the loss of what I gave her. Although Grimm’s charity seemed to me most extraordinary, it did not strike me as much at the time as it has done since. But even if I had known all that I have since discovered I should nevertheless have given my consent, as I did, and was bound to do unless I were to outbid his offer. Since that time I have been somewhat cured of my belief in Father Berthier’s geniality of which I had once heedlessly accused him, to his considerable amusement.

  This same Father Berthier enjoyed the acquaintance of two men who sought to make mine, I do not know for what reason, for we had certainly very few tastes in common. They were nobody’s children, of whose nationality and family no one knew, nor probably did they use their real names. They were Jansenists and were supposed to be priests in disguise, perhaps because of their absurd habit of carrying long swords, from which they were never parted. The prodigious secrecy in which they enveloped all their proceedings gave them the appearance of party managers, and I have always been convinced that they edited the Ecclesiastical Gazette. One o I them was tall, benevolent, and unctuous, and called himself M. Ferran .; the other was short and thickset, fussy, and punctilious; he went by the name of M. Minard. They addressed one another as cousins. They lived in Paris with d’Alembert, at Mme Rousseau’s, his nurse, and they had taken some rooms at Montmorency where they spent their summers. They kept house for themselves without a servant or a runner, taking it in turns each week to go out for the provisions, to do the cooking, and clean the place. In other ways they lived fairly well, and we sometimes had meals with one another. I do not know why they bothered about me. For my part, I was only interested in them because they played chess, and to get one short game I sometimes endured four hours of boredom. Because they thrust themselves into all companies and tried to take a hand in everything, Thérèse called them ‘the old women’, and this name has stuck to them at Montmorency.

  These, together with my landlord M. Mathas, who was a good fellow, were my principal country acquaintances. I still had enough left in Paris to be able to live pleasantly there, if ever I chose, outside the circle of men of letters, among whom only Duclos was my friend. For Deleyre was still too young; and although once he had a close view of the philosophical clique’s behaviour towards me he had completely severed connexion with diem – or at least I-thought so – I still could not forget how ready he had been to come to me as the spokesman of all that tribe.

  In the first place I had my old and respected friend M. Roguin. He was a friend from the good old days, whom I had not won by my writings but by my person, and whose friendship for that reason I have always kept. I had the good Lenieps, my compatriot, and his daughter, who was then living with Mme Lambert. I had a young Genevese called Coindet, who seemed to me a good lad, careful, obliging, and eager, but who was in fact ignorant, credulous, greedy, and presumptuous. He had come to visit me at the beginning of my stay at the Hermitage and, though he had acted as his own introducer, he had soon established himself in my unwilling favour. He had some taste for drawing and knew the artists. He was of service to me in the matter for the illustrations for Julie, for which he undertook to look after the drawings and plates, and performed his task most successfully.

  M. Dupin’s house was open to me; and though not so brilliant as in Mme Dupin’s heyday, it was still one of the best houses in Paris, thanks to the distinction of its host and hostess and the choice of company that assembled there. As I had never put anyone before them, and had only left them in order to lead an independent life, they had not ceased to look on me with friendship, and I was always sure of a good reception from Mme Dupin. I could even count her as one of my country neighbours since they had set up an establishment at Clichy, where I sometimes went to spend a day or two, and where I should have gone more often if Mme Dupin and Mme de Chenon-ceaux had lived on better terms. But the difficulty of dividing my attentions
in the same house between two women out of sympathy with one another made Clichy too trying for me. Being on more equal and familiar terms with Mme Chenonceaux, I enjoyed the pleasure of her society under less awkward conditions at Deuil, almost at my door, where she had rented a small house, and at home too where she quite often came to see me.

  I had Mme de Créqui, who had taken to religion and given up seeing the d’Alemberts, the Marmontels, and most of the men of letters, with the exception, I think, of Abbé Trublet, then something of a sanctimonious hypocrite, of whom she was already rather tired. Me she had sought out, and I have never lost her goodwill; we have always kept up a correspondence. She sent me fat pullets from Le Mans as a New Year’s present, and her plans were made for coming to see me in the next year when a journey of Mme de Luxembourg’s cut across hers. I owe her a place to herself here, for she will always occupy a distinguished place in my memories.

  I also had a friend whom I should put first in the list after Roguin: my old colleague de Carrio, formerly titular secretary to the Spanish embassy at Venice, then in Sweden where his Court had made him chargé d’affaires, and finally in Paris where he had been made the actual secretary to the embassy. He came quite unexpectedly, to surprise me at Montmorency. He had been decorated with a Spanish order, the name of which I forget, and wore a fine jewelled cross. He had been obliged, when proving his ancestry, to add a letter to his name and was now the Chevalier de Carrion. I found him quite unchanged, with the same kind heart and a mind that became more likeable every day. I should have resumed my old friendship with him if Coindet had not got between us in his usual way, and taken advantage of my absence to worm himself into my place in the Chevalier’s confidence where, under the pretence of being anxious to serve me, he in fact supplanted me.

  The thought of Carrion reminds me of another of my country neighbours whom it would be very wrong of me not to mention, since I have to confess that I did him an unpardonable wrong. This was good M. Le Blond, who had done me a service at Venice and who, having come on a visit to France, had rented a country house at La Bridie, not far from Montmorency.* As soon as I heard that he was my neighbour I went off to him in the joy of my heart, counting it more of a pleasure than a duty to pay him a visit. I set out the very next day, but met some people who were coming to see me, and had to return with them. Two days later I set out again; he had dined in Paris with all his family. The third time he was at home; I heard women’s voices and saw a carriage at the door, at which I took fright. I wanted, at any rate on our first meeting, to see him without interruption and talk over our old days together. In short, I put off my visit from one day to another until shame at being so late in fulfilling this duty caused me not to fulfil it at all. After having had the courage to wait so long, I had not the courage to put in an appearance. This neglect, at which M. Le Blond could not help being justly offended, made my sluggishness towards him look like ingratitude. And yet I felt so little guilty in my heart that if I had been able to give him any real pleasure, even without his knowing it, I am sure that he would not have found me slow in doing so. But my indolence, my carelessness, and my delay in fulfilling small duties have done me more harm than any grave vices. My worst faults have been those of omission. I have rarely done anything I should not, but unfortunately I have still more rarely done what I should.

  Since I am now on the subject of my Venice acquaintances, I must not forget one who belongs with them, and whom I did not lose till considerably after the rest. I am thinking of M. de Jonville, who had continued to treat me with great friendship after his return from Geneva. He was very fond of seeing me and liked to discuss the affairs and follies of M. de Montaigu, about whom he had heard a number of stories through the Foreign Office, where he had several connexions. I also had the pleasure of meeting again at his house my old colleague Dupont, who had bought a position in his own province and whom business sometimes brought to Paris. M. de Jonville became little by little so eager for my company that in the end it grew tiresome; and although we lived very far apart there was trouble between us if I let a whole week go by without dining with him. When he went to Jonville he always wanted to take me with him; but having once spent a week there, which had seemed a very long one to me, I was not anxious to go again. He was certainly an honourable and generous man, likeable indeed in some respects, but he was not very intelligent; he was handsome, slightly vain of his appearance and a good deal of a bore. He had a strange collection, perhaps unique of its kind, which greatly interested him, and in which he tried to interest his friends, who were sometimes less amused by it than he. This was a very complete file of all the topical sketches presented at Court and in Paris during the last fifty years, in which many anecdotes were to be found for which one would have looked in vain elsewhere. Now there is a source for the history of France, the like of which is almost unthinkable in any other country.

  One day, when we were on the very best of terms, he received me so coldly, so frigidly, and in a manner so unlike his usual one that after giving him an opportunity of explaining himself, and even going so far as to ask him to, I left his house resolved never to set foot in it any more. This resolution I have kept. For I am never to be seen again in a place where I have once had a bad reception, and there was no Diderot there to plead on M. de Jonville’s behalf. I searched my mind in vain for any wrong I could have done him. I could find none. I was certain that I had never spoken of him or of his family with any disrespect, for I was sincerely fond of him. And not only had I nothing but good to say of him, but my most constant maxim has always been never to speak with anything but respect of the houses I have frequented.

  At last, after long pondering, I arrived at the following conjecture. The last time we had met he had given me supper at the rooms of some whores he knew, together with two or three Foreign Office clerks, very pleasant people who had neither looked nor behaved like rakes; and I can swear that, so far as I was concerned, I spent the evening meditating sadly enough on the unhappy fate of those poor creatures. I did not pay a share of the expenses, because M. de Jonville treated me to the supper, and I did not pay the girls anything because I had given them no opportunity of earning, in the padoana fashion, any money I might have offered them. We all departed in high spirits and on the best of terms. I did not visit the girls again, but I went three or four days later to dine with M. de Jonville, whom I had not seen in the interval and who gave me the reception I have described. Being unable to imagine any reason other than some misunderstanding arising from that supper, and seeing that he did not wish to explain himself, I made my decision and gave up calling on him. But I continued to send him my books, and he often sent me his compliments, and one day when I met him in the foyer of the Comédie he politely reproached me for no longer coming to see him. But that did not bring me back. Thus this affair looked more like an attack of the sulks than a clean break. Nevertheless, since I had not seen him or heard of him since that day, it would have been too late to renew an acquaintance which had lapsed for several years. That is why M. de Jonville does not appear in my list, although I had for a long time been a frequent visitor at his house.

  I will not swell this same list with the names of my many less intimate friends, or with those who, because of my absence, had ceased to be friends at all, and yet whom I still sometimes saw in the country, either at my own or at neighbours’ houses; among them were the Abbé de Condillac, the Abbé de Mably, M. de Mairan, M. de Lalive, M. de Boisgelou, M. Watelet, M. Ancelet, and others whom it would be tedious to mention. I will make passing mention of M. de Margency, the King’s Chamberlain, a former member of the Holbach clique, which he had left, like myself, and an old friend of Mme d’épinay whom, like myself, he had given up. Nor must I forget his friend Desmahis, who won short-lived fame by his comedy The Malapert.* The former was my country neighbour, his estate at Margency being near Montmorency. We were old acquaintances, but our proximity and certain experiences that we had in common brought us closer together. Desmah
is died shortly afterwards. He had ability and wit; but he was rather like the eccentric in his own comedy, and somewhat fancied himself with the ladies, who did not greatly mourn his loss.

  I cannot, however, refrain from mentioning a fresh correspondence into which I entered at that time, and which has had too much influence over the rest of my life for me not to record its beginnings. I am speaking of M. Lamoignon de Malesherbes,† First President of the Court of Excise, at that time responsible for the censorship of printed books, an office which he performed in an enlightened and temperate way, to the great satisfaction of men of letters. I had not paid a single call on him in Paris; I had, however, always received from him the greatest help and civility in censorship matters, and I knew that on more than one occasion he had severely shaken up those who attacked me in their writings. I had fresh evidence of his kindness over the printing of Julie; for the proof sheets of so large a book would have been very costly to send by post from Amsterdam. He, however, possessed free postal facilities, and allowed them to be addressed to him. He then sent them on to me, also free of charge, under the frank of his father, the Chancellor. When the work was printed he did not allow it to be sold in the Kingdom till an edition which he had had prepared for my benefit had been sold out. This he did against my will, for any such profit accruing to me would have been stolen from Rey, to whom I had sold my manuscript. So not only did I refuse to accept this present which was intended for me, without Rey’s consent, – which he most generously gave – but I offered to share the hundred pistoles, to which it amounted, with him; to which he would not agree. For this hundred pistoles I had the annoyance, of which M. de Malesherbes had not warned me, of seeing my work horribly mutilated, and the sales of the good edition held up until the bad edition was exhausted.