t of this odious piece: the reading of
it was insupportable to me, and, without going through the whole, I
returned the copy to Duchesne with the following letter:

MONTMORENCY, 21st, May, 1760.

"In casting my eyes over the piece you sent me, I trembled at seeing
myself well spoken of in it. I do not accept the horrid present. I am
persuaded that in sending it me, you did not intend an insult; but you do
not know, or have forgotten, that I have the honor to be the friend of a
respectable man, who is shamefully defamed and calumniated in this
libel."

Duchense showed the letter. Diderot, upon whom it ought to have had an
effect quite contrary, was vexed at it. His pride could not forgive me
the superiority of a generous action, and I was informed his wife
everywhere inveighed against me with a bitterness with which I was not in
the least affected, as I knew she was known to everybody to be a noisy
babbler.

Diderot in his turn found an avenger in the Abbe Morrellet, who wrote
against Palissot a little work, imitated from the 'Petit Prophete',
and entitled the Vision. In this production he very imprudently offended
Madam de Robeck, whose friends got him sent to the Bastile; though she,
not naturally vindictive, and at that time in a dying state, I am certain
had nothing to do with the affair.

D'Alembert, who was very intimately connected with Morrellet, wrote me a
letter, desiring I would beg of Madam de Luxembourg to solicit his
liberty, promising her in return encomiums in the 'Encyclopedie';
my answer to this letter was as follows:

"I did not wait the receipt of your letter before I expressed to Madam de
Luxembourg the pain the confinement of the Abbe Morrellet gave me. She
knows my concern, and shall be made acquainted with yours, and her
knowing that the abbe is a man of merit will be sufficient to make her
interest herself in his behalf. However, although she and the marechal
honor me with a benevolence which is my greatest consolation, and that
the name of your friend be to them a recommendation in favor of the Abbe
Morrellet, I know not how far, on this occasion, it may be proper for
them to employ the credit attached to the rank they hold, and the
consideration due to their persons. I am not even convinced that the
vengeance in question relates to the Princess Robeck so much as you seem
to imagine; and were this even the case, we must not suppose that the
pleas