M. de Malesherbes believed this really to be the
case, and wrote to me upon the subject. This error in a man for whom I
had so much esteem gave me some pain, and I wrote to him four
letters successively, in which I stated the real motives of my
conduct, and made him fully acquainted with my taste, inclination
and character, and with the most interior sentiments of my heart.
These letters, written hastily, almost without taking pen from
paper, and which I neither copied, corrected, nor even read, are
perhaps, the only things I ever wrote with facility, which, in the
midst of my sufferings, was, I think, astonishing. I sighed, as I felt
myself declining, at the thought of leaving in the midst of honest men
an opinion of me so far from truth; and by the sketch hastily given in
my four letters, I endeavored, in some measure, to substitute them
to the memoirs I had proposed to write. They are expressive of my
grief to M. de Malesherbes, who showed them in Paris, and are,
besides, a kind of summary of what I here give in detail, and, on this
account, merit preservation. The copy I begged of them some years
afterwards will be found amongst my papers.
The only thing which continued to give me pain, in the idea of my
approaching dissolution, was my not having a man of letters for a
friend, to whom I could confide my papers, that after my death he
might take a proper choice of such as were worthy of publication.
After my journey to Geneva, I conceived a friendship for Moultou;
this young man pleased me, and I could have wished him to receive my
last breath.
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