ngenuousness? At least I
confess my faults. As I am bound to speak the truth, I dare not yet add,
_this can never happen to me again_. But the strong resolution will come
with weak age; and the more I can transform myself, the nearer I shall
approach perfection."

Will you be so kind as to present my respects to Madame and Mademoiselle
de Meulan. Have you not a very excellent and amiable young man (another
of the few who are consoled by elevation and purity of mind), the nephew
of M. Hocher, residing under the same roof with yourself? If so, I beg
you to recall me to his remembrance, and through him to that of his
uncle, from whom I expect, with much anxiety, an answer upon a matter of
the greatest interest to the uncle of my son-in-law, in the installation
of the Imperial Courts. But nothing has arrived by the post.

I shall say nothing to you of our good and estimable friends of the
Place Louis Quinze, for I am going to write to them directly.

But it has just occurred to me to entreat a favour of you before I close
my letter. When, in your precepts to youth, you arrive at the chapter
and age which treats of the choice of a profession, I implore you to
insert something to this effect: "If your vocation leads you to be a
publisher or editor of any work, moral, political, or historical, it
matters not which, do not consider yourself at liberty to mutilate an
author without his previous knowledge, and above all, one who is
tenacious of the inviolability of his text more from conscience than
self-love. If you mutilate him on your own responsibility, which is
tolerably bold, do not believe that you are permitted to substitute a
fictitious member of your own construction for the living one you have
lopped off; and be cautious lest, without being aware of it, you replace
an arm of flesh by a wooden leg. But break up all your presses rather
than make him say, under the seal of his own signature, the contrary of
what he has written, thought, or felt. To do this is an offence almost
amounting to a moral crime." I write more at length on this topic to my
friends of the Place Louis Quinze, and I beg you to speak to none but
them of my enigma, which assuredly you have already solved; I hope that
what has now offended and vexed me will not happen again. In saying what
was necessary, I used very guarded expressions. I do not wish a rupture,
the vengeance of which might fall on cherished memories or living
friends. My letter has ta