eive the legacy. Everything well considered, I determined to
accept it, whatever it might be, and to do that honor to the memory of an
honest man, who, in a rank in which friendship is seldom found, had had a
real one for me. I had not this duty to fulfill. I heard no more of the
legacy, whether it were true or false; and in truth I should have felt
some pain in offending against one of the great maxims of my system of
morality, in profiting by anything at the death of a person whom I had
once held dear. During the last illness of our friend Mussard, Leneips
proposed to me to take advantage of the grateful sense he expressed for
our cares, to insinuate to him dispositions in our favor. "Ah! my dear
Leneips," said I, "let us not pollute by interested ideas the sad but
sacred duties we discharge towards our dying friend. I hope my name will
never be found in the testament of any person, at least not in that of a
friend." It was about this time that my lord marshal spoke to me of his,
of what he intended to do in it for me, and that I made him the answer of
which I have spoken in the first part of my memoirs.

My second loss, still more afflicting and irreparable, was that of the
best of women and mothers, who, already weighed down with years, and
overburthened with infirmities and misery, quitted this vale of tears for
the abode of the blessed, where the amiable remembrance of the good we
have done here below is the eternal reward of our benevolence. Go,
gentle and beneficent shade, to those of Fenelon, Berneg, Catinat, and
others, who in a more humble state have, like them, opened their hearts
to pure charity; go and taste of the fruit of your own benevolence, and
prepare for your son the place he hopes to fill by your side. Happy in
your misfortunes that Heaven, in putting to them a period, has spared you
the cruel spectacle of his! Fearing, lest I should fill her heart with
sorrow by the recital of my first disasters, I had not written to her
since my arrival in Switzerland; but I wrote to M. de Conzie, to inquire
after her situation, and it was from him I learned she had ceased to
alleviate the sufferings of the afflicted, and that her own were at an
end. I myself shall not suffer long; but if I thought I should not see
her again in the life to come, my feeble imagination would less delight
in the idea of the perfect happiness I there hope to enjoy.

My third and last loss, for since that time I have not ha