, I again took up
the memoir I had sent to M. D'Argenson, to which no answer had been
returned, and having made some trifling alterations in it, I sent the
manuscript by M. Sellon, resident from Geneva, and a letter with which he
was pleased to charge himself, to the Comte de St. Florentin, who had
succeeded M. D'Argenson in the opera department. Duclos, to whom I
communicated what I had done, mentioned it to the 'petits violons', who
offered to restore me, not my opera, but my freedom of the theatre, which
I was no longer in a situation to enjoy. Perceiving I had not from any
quarter the least justice to expect, I gave up the affair; and the
directors of the opera, without either answering or listening to my
reasons, have continued to dispose as of their own property, and to turn
to their profit, the Devin du Village, which incontestably belong to
nobody but myself.

Since I had shaken off the yoke of my tyrants, I led a life sufficiently
agreeable and peaceful; deprived of the charm of too strong attachments
I was delivered from the weight of their chains. Disgusted with the
friends who pretended to be my protectors, and wished absolutely to
dispose of me at will, and in spite of myself, to subject me to their
pretended good services, I resolved in future to have no other
connections than those of simple benevolence. These, without the least
constraint upon liberty, constitute the pleasure of society, of which
equality is the basis. I had of them as many as were necessary to enable
me to taste of the charm of liberty without being subject to the
dependence of it; and as soon as I had made an experiment of this manner
of life, I felt it was the most proper to my age, to end my days in
peace, far removed from the agitations, quarrels and cavillings in which
I had just been half submerged.

During my residence at the Hermitage, and after my settlement at
Montmorency, I had made in the neighborhood some agreeable acquaintance,
and which did not subject me to any inconvenience. The principal of
these was young Loiseau de Mauleon, who, then beginning to plead at the
bar, did not yet know what rank he would one day hold there. I for my
part was not in the least doubt about the matter. I soon pointed out to
him the illustrious career in the midst of which he is now seen, and
predicted that, if he laid down to himself rigid rules for the choice of
causes, and never became the defender of anything but virtue and justic