I had new
proofs of his goodness upon the subject of the edition of Julie. The
proofs of so great a work being very expensive from Amsterdam by post,
he, to whom all letters were free, permitted these to be addressed
to him, and sent them to me under the countersign of the chancellor
his father. When the work was printed he did not permit the sale of it
in the kingdom until, contrary to my wishes, an edition had been
sold for my benefit. As the profit of this would on my part have
been a theft committed upon Rey, to whom I had sold the manuscript,
I not only refused to accept the present intended me, without his
consent, which he very generously gave, but insisted upon dividing
with him the hundred pistoles (a thousand livres- forty pounds), the
amount of it, but of which he would not receive anything. For these
hundred pistoles I had the mortification, against which M. de
Malesherbes had not guarded me, of seeing my work horribly
mutilated, and the sale of the good edition stopped until the bad
one was entirely disposed of.
I have always considered M. de Malesherbes as a man whose
uprightness was proof against every temptation. Nothing that has
happened has even made me doubt for a moment of his probity; but, as
weak as he is polite, he sometimes injures those he wishes to serve by
the excess of his zeal to preserve them from evil. He not only
retrenched a hundred pages in the edition of Paris, but he made
another retrenchment, which no person but the author could permit
himself to do, in the copy of the good edition he sent to Madam de
Pompadour.
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