ot's
writings. While Diderot was on a journey he fell in with a lady who
knew Helvetius's country. "She told us that the philosopher at his
country seat was the unhappiest of men. He is surrounded by peasants and
by neighbours who hate him. They break the windows of his mansion; they
ravage his property at night; they cut his trees, and break down his
fences. He dares not sally out to shoot a rabbit without an escort. You
will ask me why all this? It comes of an unbridled jealousy about his
game. His predecessors kept the estate in order with a couple of men and
a couple of guns. Helvetius has four-and-twenty, and yet he cannot guard
his property. The men have a small premium for every poacher that they
catch, and they resort to every possible vexation in order to multiply
their sorry profit. They are, for that matter, no better than so many
poachers who draw wages. The border of his woods was peopled with the
unfortunate wretches who had been driven from their homes into pitiful
hovels. It is these repeated acts of tyranny that have raised up against
him enemies of every kind, and all the more insolent, as Madame N. said,
for having found out that the good philosopher is a trifle
pusillanimous. I cannot see what he has gained by such a way of managing
his property; he is alone on it, he is hated, he is in a constant state
of fright. Ah, how much wiser our good Madame Geoffrin, when she said of
a trial that tormented her: 'Finish my case. They want my money? I have
some; give them money. And what can I do better with money than buy
tranquillity with it?' In Helvetius's place, I should have said: 'They
kill a few hares, or a few rabbits; let them kill. The poor creatures
have no shelter save my woods, let them remain there.'"[107]

[107] Voyage a Bourbonne. _Oeuv._, xvii. 344.

On the other hand, there are well-attested stories of Helvetius's
munificence. There is one remarkable testimony to his wide renown for
good-nature. After the younger Pretender had been driven out of France,
he had special reasons on some occasion for visiting Paris. He wrote to
Helvetius that he had heard of him as a man of the greatest probity and
honour in France, and that to Helvetius, therefore, he would trust
himself. Helvetius did not refuse the dangerous compliment, and he
concealed the prince for two years in his house.[108] He was as
benevolent where his vanity was less pleasantly flattered. More than one
man of letters, including M