me
in his works. Such difficulty is there in managing the irritable
self-love of men of letters, and so careful ought every person to be
not to leave anything equivocal in the compliments they pay them.

Having nothing more to disturb me, I took advantage of my leisure and
independence to continue my literary pursuits with more coherence. I
this winter finished my Eloisa, and sent it to Rey, who had it printed
the year following. I was, however, interrupted in my projects by a
circumstance sufficiently disagreeable. I heard new preparations were
making at the opera-house to give the 'Devin du Village'. Enraged at
seeing these people arrogantly dispose of my property, 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 cavilling