e,
his genius, elevated by this sublime sentiment, would be equal to that of
the greatest orators. He followed my advice, and now feels the good
effects of it. His defence of M. de Portes is worthy of Demosthenes. He
came every year within a quarter of a league of the Hermitage to pass the
vacation at St. Brice, in the fife of Mauleon, belonging to his mother,
and where the great Bossuet had formerly lodged. This is a fief, of
which a like succession of proprietors would render nobility difficult to
support.

I had also for a neighbor in the same village of St. Brice, the
bookseller Guerin, a man of wit, learning, of an amiable disposition, and
one of the first in his profession. He brought me acquainted with Jean
Neaulme, bookseller of Amsterdam, his friend and correspondent, who
afterwards printed Emilius.

I had another acquaintance still nearer than St. Brice, this was M.
Maltor, vicar of Groslay, a man better adapted for the functions of a
statesman and a minister, than for those of the vicar of a village, and
to whom a diocese at least would have been given to govern if talents
decided the disposal of places. He had been secretary to the Comte de
Luc, and was formerly intimately acquainted with Jean Bapiste Rousseau.
Holding in as much esteem the memory of that illustrious exile, as he
held the villain who ruined him in horror; he possessed curious anecdotes
of both, which Segur had not inserted in the life, still in manuscript,
of the former, and he assured me that the Comte de Luc, far from ever
having had reason to complain of his conduct, had until his last moment
preserved for him the warmest friendship. M. Maltor, to whom M. de
Vintimille gave this retreat after the death of his patron, had formerly
been employed in many affairs of which, although far advanced in years,
he still preserved a distinct remembrance, and reasoned upon them
tolerably well. His conversation, equally amusing and instructive, had
nothing in it resembling that of a village pastor: he joined the manners
of a man of the world to the knowledge of one who passes his life in
study. He, of all my permanent neighbors, was the person whose society
was the most agreeable to me.

I was also acquainted at Montmorency with several fathers of the oratory,
and amongst others Father Berthier, professor of natural philosophy; to
whom, notwithstanding some little tincture of pedantry, I become attached
on account of a certain air of cordia