I gave her some money, and engaged to pay her lodging with her
children, or elsewhere to provide for her subsistence as much as it
should be possible for me to do it, and never to let her want bread as
long as I should have it myself.
Finally the day after my arrival at Mont-Louis, I wrote to Madam
d'Epinay the following letter:
MONTMORENCY, 17th December, 1757.
"Nothing, madam, is so natural and necessary as to leave your
house the moment you no longer approve of my remaining there. Upon
your refusing your consent to my passing the rest of the winter at the
Hermitage I quitted it on the fifteenth of December. My destiny was to
enter it in spite of myself and to leave it the same. I thank you
for the residence you prevailed upon me to make there, and I would
thank you still more had I paid for it less dear. You are right in
believing me unhappy; nobody upon earth knows better than yourself
to what a degree I trust be so. If being deceived in the choice of our
friends be a misfortune, it is another not less cruel to recover
from so pleasing an error."
Such is the faithful narration of my residence at the Hermitage, and
of the reasons which obliged me to leave it. I could not break off the
recital, it was necessary to continue it with the greatest
exactness; this epoch of my life having had upon the rest of it an
influence which will extend to my latest remembrance.
BOOK X
[1758]
THE extraordinary degree of strength a momentary effervescence had
given me to quit the Hermitage, left me the moment I was out of it.
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