and by this means the 'Coterie d'Holbachique' learned
that I was seriously resolved to pass the winter at the Hermitage. This
perseverance, of which they had not imagined me to be capable,
disconcerted them, and, until they could think of some other means of
making my residence disagreeable to me, they sent back, by means of
Diderot, the same De Leyre, who, though at first he had thought my
precautions quite natural, now pretended to discover that they were
inconsistent with my principles, and styled them more than ridiculous in
his letters, in which he overwhelmed me with pleasantries sufficiently
bitter and satirical to offend me had I been the least disposed to take
offence. But at that time being full of tender and affectionate
sentiments, and not susceptible of any other, I perceived in his biting
sarcasms nothing more than a jest, and believed him only jocose when
others would have thought him mad.

By my care and vigilance I guarded the garden so well, that, although
there had been but little fruit that year the produce was triple that of
the preceding years; it is true, I spared no pains to preserve it, and I
went so far as to escort what I sent to the Chevrette and to Epinay, and
to carry baskets of it myself. The aunt and I carried one of these,
which was so heavy that we were obliged to rest at every dozen steps, and
which we arrived with it we were quite wet with perspiration.

As soon as the bad season began to confine me to the house, I wished to
return to my indolent amusements, but this I found impossible. I had
everywhere two charming female friends before my eyes, their friend,
everything by which they were surrounded, the country they inhabited, and
the objects created or embellished for them by my imagination. I was no
longer myself for a moment, my delirium never left me. After many
useless efforts to banish all fictions from my mind, they at length
seduced me, and my future endeavors were confined to giving them order
and coherence, for the purpose of converting them into a species of
novel.

What embarrassed me most was, that I had contradicted myself so openly
and fully. After the severe principles I had just so publicly asserted,
after the austere maxims I had so loudly preached, and my violent
invectives against books, which breathed nothing but effeminacy and love,
could anything be less expected or more extraordinary, than to see me,
with my own hand, write my name in the list of au