She had not concerted with
him; but the next day, instead of explaining herself verbally, she,
with great address, gave me a letter they had drawn up together, and
by which, without entering into a detail of facts, she justified him
by his concentrated character, attributed to me as a crime my having
suspected him of perfidy towards his friend, and exhorted me to come
to an accommodation with him. This letter staggered me. In a
conversation we afterwards had together, and in which I found her
better prepared than she had been the first time, I suffered myself to
be quite prevailed upon, and was inclined to believe I might have
judged erroneously. In this case I thought I really had done a
friend a very serious injury, which it was my duty to repair. In
short, as I had already done several times with Diderot, and the Baron
d'Holbach, half from inclination, and half from weakness, I made all
the advances I had a right to require; I went to M. Grimm, like
another George Dandin, to make him my apologies for the offense he had
given me; still in the false persuasion, which, in the course of my
life has made me guilty of a thousand meannesses to my pretended
friends, that there is no hatred which may not be disarmed by mildness
and proper behavior; whereas, on the contrary, the hatred of the
wicked becomes still more envenomed by the impossibility of finding
anything to found it upon, and the sentiment of their own injustice is
another cause of offense against the person who is the object of it.
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