Diderot never dated his letters.
Madam d'Epinay and Madam d'Houdetot seldom dated theirs, except the
day of the week, and De Leyre mostly confined himself to the same
rules. When I was desirous of putting these letters in order I was
obliged to supply what was wanting by guessing at dates, so
uncertain that I cannot depend upon them. Unable therefore to fix with
certainty the beginning of these quarrels, I prefer relating in one
subsequent article everything I can recollect concerning them.
* Natural Son; a Comedy, by Diderot.
The return of spring had increased my amorous delirium, and in my
melancholy, occasioned by the excess of my transports, I had
composed for the last parts of Eloisa several letters, wherein evident
marks of the rapture in which I wrote them are found. Amongst others I
may quote those from the Elysium, and the excursion upon the lake,
which, if my memory does not deceive me, are at the end of the
fourth part. Whoever, in reading these letters, does not feel his
heart soften and melt into the tenderness by which they were dictated,
ought to lay down the book: nature has refused him the means of
judging of sentiment.
Precisely at the same time I received a second unforeseen visit from
Madam d'Houdetot, in the absence of her husband, who was captain of
the Gendarmarie, and of her lover, who was also in the service. She
had come to Eaubonne, in the middle of the Valley of Montmorency,
where she had taken a pretty house, from thence she made a new
excursion to the Hermitage.
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