subject, rendered the house, and my residence at Paris, disagreeable to
me. When my indisposition permitted me to go out, and I did not suffer
myself to be led by my acquaintance first to one place and then to
another, I took a walk, alone, and reflected on my grand system,
something of which I committed to paper, bound up between two covers,
which, with a pencil, I always had in my pocket. In this manner, the
unforeseen disagreeableness of a situation I had chosen entirely led me
back to literature, to which unsuspectedly I had recourse as a means of
releaving my mind, and thus, in the first works I wrote, I introduced the
peevishness and ill-humor which were the cause of my undertaking them.
There was another circumstance which contributed not a little to this;
thrown into the world despite of myself, without having the manners of
it, or being in a situation to adopt and conform myself to them, I took
it into my head to adopt others of my own, to enable me to dispense with
those of society. My foolish timidity, which I could not conquer, having
for principle the fear of being wanting in the common forms, I took, by
way of encouraging myself, a resolution to tread them under foot. I
became sour and cynic from shame, and affected to despise the politeness
which I knew not how to practice. This austerity, conformable to my new
principles, I must confess, seemed to ennoble itself in my mind; it
assumed in my eyes the form of the intrepidity of virtue, and I dare
assert it to be upon this noble basis, that it supported itself longer
and better than could have been expected from anything so contrary to my
nature. Yet, not withstanding, I had the name of a misanthrope, which my
exterior appearance and some happy expressions had given me in the world:
it is certain I did not support the character well in private, that my
friends and acquaintance led this untractable bear about like a lamb, and
that, confining my sarcasms to severe but general truths, I was never
capable of saying an uncivil thing to any person whatsoever.
The 'Devin du Village' brought me completely into vogue, and presently
after there was not a man in Paris whose company was more sought after
than mine. The history of this piece, which is a kind of era in my life,
is joined with that of the connections I had at that time. I must enter
a little into particulars to make what is to follow the better
understood.
I had a numerous acquaintance, yet no more than two friends: Diderot and
Grimm. By an effect of the desire I have ever felt to unite everything
that is dear to me, I was too much a friend to both not to make them
shortly become so to each other. I connected them: they agreed well
together, and shortly become more intimate with each other than with me.
Diderot had a numerous acquaintance, but Grimm, a stranger and a
new-comer, had his to procure, and with the greatest pleasure I procured
him all I could. I had already given him Diderot. I afterwards brought
him acquainted with Gauffecourt. I introduced him to Madam Chenonceaux,
Madam D'Epinay, and the Baron d'Holbach; with whom I had become
connected almost in spite of myself. All my friends became his: this
was natural: but not one of his ever became mine; which was inclining to
the contrary. Whilst he yet lodged at the house of the Comte de Friese,
he frequently gave us dinners in his apartment, but I never received the
least mark of friendship from the Comte de Friese, Comte de Schomberg,
his relation, very familiar with Grimm, nor from any other person, man
or woman, with whom Grimm, by their means, had any connection. I except
the Abbe Raynal, who, although his friend, gave proofs of his being
mine; and in cases of need, offered me his purse with a generosity not
very common. But I knew the Abbe Raynal long before Grimm had any
acquaintance with him, and had entertained a great regard for him on
account of his delicate and honorable behavior to me upon a slight
occasion, which I shall never forget.
The Abbe Raynal is certainly a warm friend; of this I saw a proof, much
about the time of which I speak, with respect to Grimm himself, with whom
he was very intimate. Grimm, after having been sometime on a footing of
friendship with Mademoiselle Fel, fell violently in love with her, and
wished to supplant Cahusac. The young lady, piquing herself on her
constancy, refused her new admirer. He took this so much to heart, that
the appearance of his affliction became tragical. He suddenly fell into
the strangest state imaginable. He passed days and nights in a continued
lethargy. He lay with his eyes open; and although his pulse continued to
beat regularly, without speaking eating, or stirring, yet sometimes
seeming to hear what was said to him, but never answering, not even by a
sign, and remaining almost as immovable as if he had been dead, yet
without agitation, pain, or fever. The Abbe Raynal and myself watched
over him; the abbe, more robust, and in better health than I was, by
night, and I by day, without ever both being absent at one time. The
Comte de Friese was alarmed, and brought to him Senac, who, after having
examined the state in which he was, said there was nothing to apprehend,
and took his leave without giving a prescription. My fears for my friend
made me carefully observe the countenance of the physician, and I
perceived him smile as he went away. However, the patient remained
several days almost motionless, without taking anything except a few
preserved cherries, which from time to time I put upon his tongue, and
which he swallowed without difficulty. At length he, one morning, rose,
dressed himself, and returned to his usual way of life, without either at
that time or afterwards speaking to me or the Abbe Raynal, at least that
I know of, or to any other person, of this singular lethargy, or the care
we had taken of him during the time it lasted.
The affair made a noise, and it would really have been a wonderful
circumstance had the cruelty of an opera girl made a man die of despair.
This strong passion brought Grimm into vogue; he was soon considered as a
prodigy in love, friendship, and attachments of every kind. Such an
opinion made his company sought after, and procured him a good reception
in the first circles; by which means he separated from me, with whom he
was never inclined to associate when he could do it with anybody else.
I perceived him to be on the point of breaking with me entirely; for the
lively and ardent sentiments, of which he made a parade, were those which
with less noise and pretensions, I had really conceived for him. I was
glad he succeeded in the world; but I did not wish him to do this by
forgetting his friend. I one day said to him: "Grimm, you neglect me,
and I forgive you for it. When the first intoxication of your success is
over, and you begin to perceive a void in your enjoyments, I hope you
will return to your friend, whom you will always find in the same
sentiments; at present do not constrain yourself, I leave you at liberty
to act as you please, and wait your leisure." He said I was right, made
his arrangements in consequence, and shook off all restraint, so that I
saw no more of him except in company with our common friends.
Our chief rendezvous, before he was connected with Madam d'Epinay as he
afterwards became, was at the house of Baron d'Holbach. This said baron
was the son of a man who had raised himself from obscurity. His fortune
was considerable, and he used it nobly, receiving at his house men of
letters and merit: and, by the knowledge he himself had acquired, was
very worthy of holding a place amongst them. Having been long attached
to Diderot, he endeavored to become acquainted with me by his means, even
before my name was known to the world. A natural repugnancy prevented me
a long time from answering his advances. One day, when he asked me the
reason of my unwillingness, I told him he was too rich. He was, however,
resolved to carry his point, and at length succeeded. My greatest
misfortune proceeded from my being unable to resist the force of marked
attention. I have ever had reason to repent of having yielded to it.
Another acquaintance which, as soon as I had any pretensions to it, was
converted into friendship, was that of M. Duclos. I had several years
before seen him, for the first time, at the Chevrette, at the house of
Madam d'Epinay, with whom he was upon very good terms. On that day we
only dined together, and he returned to town in the afternoon. But we
had a conversation of a few moments after dinner. Madam d'Epinay had
mentioned me to him, and my opera of the 'Muses Gallantes'. Duclos,
endowed with too great talents not to be a friend to those in whom the
like were found, was prepossessed in my favor, and invited me to go and
see him. Notwithstanding my former wish, increased by an acquaintance, I
was withheld by my timidity and indolence, as long as I had no other
passport to him than his complaisance. But encouraged by my first
success, and by his eulogiums, which reached my ears, I went to see him;
he returned my visit, and thus began the connection between us, which
will ever render him dear to me. By him, as well as from the testimony
of my own heart, I learned that uprightness and probity may sometimes be
connected with the cultivation of letters.
Many other connections less solid, and which I shall not here
particularize, were the effects of my first success, and lasted until
curiosity was satisfied. I was a man so easily known, that on the next
day nothing new was to be discovered in me. However, a woman, who at
that time was desirous of my acquaintance, became much more solidly
attached to me than any of those whose curiosity I had excited: this was
the Marchioness of Crequi, niece to M. le Bailli de Froulay, ambassador
from Malta, whose brother had preceded M. de Montaigu in the embassy to
Venice, and whom I had gone to see on my return from that city. Madam de
Crequi wrote to me: I visited her: she received me into her friendship.
I sometimes dined with her. I met at her table several men of letters,
amongst others M. Saurin, the author of Spartacus, Barnevelt, etc., since
become my implacable enemy; for no other reason, at least that I can
imagine, than my bearing the name of a man whom his father has cruelly
persecuted.
It will appear that for a copyist, who ought to be employed in his
business from morning till night, I had many interruptions, which
rendered my days not very lucrative, and prevented me from being
sufficiently attentive to what I did to do it well; for which reason,
half the time I had to myself was lost in erasing errors or beginning my
sheet anew. This daily importunity rendered Paris more unsupportable,
and made me ardently wish to be in the country. I several times went to
pass a few days at Mercoussis, the vicar of which was known to Madam le
Vasseur, and with whom we all arranged ourselves in such a manner as not
to make things disagreeable to him. Grimm once went thither with us.
[Since I have neglected to relate here a trifling, but memorable
adventure I had with the said Grimm one day, on which we were to
dine at the fountain of St. Vandrille, I will let it pass: but when
I thought of it afterwards, I concluded that he was brooding in his
heart the conspiracy he has, with so much success, since carried
into execution.]
The vicar had a tolerable voice, sung well, and, although he did not read
music, learned his part with great facility and precision. We passed our
time in singing the trios I had composed at Chenonceaux. To these I
added two or three new ones, to the words Grimm and the vicar wrote, well
or ill. I cannot refrain from regretting these trios composed and sung
in moments of pure joy, and which I left at Wootton, with all my music.
Mademoiselle Davenport has perhaps curled her hair with them; but they
are worthy of being preserved, and are, for the most part, of very good
counterpoint. It was after one of these little excursions in which I had
the pleasure of seeing the aunt at her ease and very cheerful, and in
which my spirits were much enlivened, that I wrote to the vicar very
rapidly and very ill, an epistle in verse which will be found amongst my
papers.
I had nearer to Paris another station much to my liking with M. Mussard,
my countryman, relation and friend, who at Passy had made himself a
charming retreat, where I have passed some very peaceful moments.
M. Mussard was a jeweller, a man of good sense, who, after having
acquired a genteel fortune, had given his only daughter in marriage to
M. de Valmalette, the son of an exchange broker, and maitre d'hotel to
the king, took the wise resolution to quit business in his declining
years, and to place an interval of repose and enjoyment between the hurry
and the end of life. The good man Mussard, a real philosopher in
practice, lived without care, in a very pleasant house which he himself
had built in a very pretty garden, laid out with his own hands. In
digging the terraces of this garden he found fossil shells, and in such
great quantities that his lively imagination saw nothing but shells in
nature. He really thought the universe was composed of shells and the
remains of shells, and that the whole earth was only the sand of these in
different stratae. His attention thus constantly engaged with his
singular discoveries, his imagination became so heated with the ideas
they gave him, that, in his head, they would soon have been converted
into a system, that is into folly, if, happily for his reason, but
unfortunately for his friends, to whom he was dear, and to whom his house
was an agreeable asylum, a most cruel and extraordinary disease had not
put an end to his existence. A constantly increasing tumor in his
stomach prevented him from eating, long before the cause of it was
discovered, and, after several years of suffering, absolutely occasioned
him to die of hunger. I can never, without the greatest affliction of
mind, call to my recollection the last moments of this worthy man, who
still received with so much pleasure, Leneips and myself, the only
friends whom the sight of his sufferings did not separate from him until
his last hour, when he was reduced to devouring with his eyes the repasts
he had placed before us, scarcely having the power of swallowing a few
drops of weak tea, which came up again a moment afterwards. But before
these days of sorrow, how many have I passed at his house, with the
chosen friends he had made himself! At the head of the list I place the
Abbe Prevot, a very amiable man, and very sincere, whose heart vivified
his writings, worthy of immortality, and who, neither in his disposition
nor in society, had the least of the melancholy coloring he gave to his
works. Procope, the physician, a little Esop, a favorite with the
ladies; Boulanger, the celebrated posthumous author of 'Despotisme
Oriental', and who, I am of opinion extended the systems of Mussard on
the duration of the world. The female part of his friends consisted of
Madam Denis, niece to Voltaire, who, at that time, was nothing more than
a good kind of woman, and pretended not to wit: Madam Vanloo, certainly
not handsome, but charming, and who sang like an angel: Madam de
Valmalette, herself, who sang also, and who, although very thin, would
have been very amiable had she had fewer pretensions. Such, or very
nearly such, was the society of M. Mussard, with which I should had been
much pleased, had not his conchyliomania more engaged my attention; and I
can say, with great truth, that, for upwards of six months, I worked with
him in his cabinet with as much pleasure as he felt himself.
He had long insisted upon the virtue of the waters of Passy, that they
were proper in my case, and recommended me to come to his house to drink
them. To withdraw myself from the tumult of the city, I at length
consented, and went to pass eight or ten days at Passy, which, on account
of my being in the country, were of more service to me than the waters I
drank during my stay there. Mussard played the violincello, and was
passionately found of Italian music. This was the subject of a long
conversation we had one evening after supper, particularly the
'opera-buffe' we had both seen in Italy, and with which we were highly
delighted. My sleep having forsaken me in the night, I considered in
what manner it would be possible to give in France an idea of this kind
of drama. The 'Amours de Ragonde' did not in the least resemble it.
In the morning, whilst I took my walk and drank the waters, I hastily
threw together a few couplets to which I adapted such airs as occurred to
me at the moments. I scribbled over what I had composed, in a kind of
vaulted saloon at the end of the garden, and at tea. I could not refrain
from showing the airs to Mussard and to Mademoiselle du Vernois, his
'gouvernante', who was a very good and amiable girl. Three pieces of
composition I had sketched out were the first monologue: 'J'ai perdu mon
serviteur;'--the air of the Devin; 'L'amour croit s'il s'inquiete;' and
the last duo: 'A jamais, Colin, je t'engage, etc.' I was so far from
thinking it worth while to continue what I had begun, that, had it not
been for the applause and encouragement I received from both Mussard and
Mademoiselle, I should have throw n my papers into the fire and thought
no more of their contents, as I had frequently done by things of much the
same merit; but I was so animated by the encomiums I received, that in
six days, my drama, excepting a few couplets, was written. The music
also was so far sketched out, that all I had further to do to it after my
return from Paris, was to compose a little of the recitative, and to add
the middle parts, the whole of which I finished with so much rapidity,
that in three weeks my work was ready for representation. The only thing
now wanting, was the divertissement, which was not composed until a long
time afterwards.
My imagination was so warmed by the composition of this work that I had
the strongest desire to hear it performed, and would have given anything
to have seen and heard the whole in the manner I should have chosen,
which would have been that of Lully, who is said to have had 'Armide'
performed for himself only. As it was not possible I should hear the
performance unaccompanied by the public, I could not see the effect of my
piece without getting it received at the opera. Unfortunately it was
quite a new species of composition, to which the ears of the public were
not accustomed; and besides the ill success of the 'Muses Gallantes' gave
too much reason to fear for the Devin, if I presented it in my own name.
Duclos relieved me from this difficulty, and engaged to get the piece
rehearsed without mentioning the author. That I might not discover
myself, I did not go to the rehearsal, and the 'Petits violons',
[Rebel and Frauneur, who, when they were very young, went together
from house to house playing on the violin, were so called.]
by whom it was directed, knew not who the author was until after a
general plaudit had borne the testimony of the work. Everybody present
was so delighted with it, that, on the next day, nothing else was spoken
of in the different companies. M. de Cury, Intendant des Menus, who was
present at the rehearsal, demanded the piece to have it performed at
court. Duclos, who knew my intentions, and thought I should be less
master of my work at the court than at Paris, refused to give it. Cury
claimed it authoratively. Duclos persisted in his refusal, and the
dispute between them was carried to such a length, that one day they
would have gone out from the opera-house together had they not been
separated. M. de Cury applied to me, and I referred him to Duclos. This
made it necessary to return to the latter. The Duke d'Aumont interfered;
and at length Duclos thought proper to yield to authority, and the piece
was given to be played at Fontainebleau.
The part to which I had been most attentive, and in which I had kept at
the greatest distance from the common track, was the recitative. Mine
was accented in a manner entirely new, and accompanied the utterance of
the word. The directors dared not suffer this horrid innovation to pass,
lest it should shock the ears of persons who never judge for themselves.
Another recitative was proposed by Francueil and Jelyotte, to which I
consented; but refused at the same time to have anything to do with it
myself.
When everything was ready and the day of performance fixed, a proposition
was made me to go to Fontainebleau, that I might at least be at the last
rehearsal. I went with Mademoiselle Fel, Grimm, and I think the Abbe
Raynal, in one of the stages to the court. The rehearsal was tolerable:
I was more satisfied with it than I expected to have been. The orchestra
was numerous, composed of the orchestras of the opera and the king's
band. Jelyotte played Colin, Mademoiselle Fel, Colette, Cuvillier the
Devin: the choruses were those of the opera. I said but little; Jelyotte
had prepared everything; I was unwilling either to approve of or censure
what he had done; and notwithstanding I had assumed the air of an old
Roman, I was, in the midst of so many people, as bashful as a schoolboy.
The next morning, the day of performance, I went to breakfast at the
coffee-house 'du grand commun', where I found a great number of people.
The rehearsal of the preceding evening, and the difficulty of getting
into the theatre, were the subjects of conversation. An officer present
said he entered with the greatest ease, gave a long account of what had
passed, described the author, and related what he had said and done; but
what astonished me most in this long narrative, given with as much
assurance as simplicity, was that it did not contain a syllable of truth.
It was clear to me that he who spoke so positively of the rehearsal had
not been at it, because, without knowing him, he had before his eyes that
author whom he said he had seen and examined so minutely. However, what
was more singular still in this scene, was its effect upon me. The
officer was a man rather in years, he had nothing of the appearance of a
coxcomb; his features appeared to announce a man of merit; and his cross
of Saint Louis, an officer of long standing. He interested me:
notwithstanding his impudence. Whilst he uttered his lies, I blushed,
looked down, and was upon thorns; I, for some time, endeavored within
myself to find the means of believing him to be in an involuntary error.
At length, trembling lest some person should know me, and by this means
confound him, I hastily drank my chocolate, without saying a word, and,
holding down my head, I passed before him, got out of the coffee-house as
soon as possible, whilst the company were making their remarks upon the
relation that had been given. I was no sooner in the street than I was
in a perspiration, and had anybody known and named me before I left the
room, I am certain all the shame and embarrassment of a guilty person
would have appeared in my countenance, proceeding from what I felt the
poor man would have had to have suffered had his lie been discovered.
I come to one of the critical moments of my life, in which it is
difficult to do anything more than to relate, because it is almost
impossible that even narrative should not carry with it the marks of
censure or apology. I will, however, endeavor to relate how and upon
what motives I acted, with out adding either approbation or censure.
I was on that day in the same careless undress as usual, with a long
beard and wig badly combed. Considering this want of decency as an act
of courage, I entered the theatre wherein the king, queen, the royal
family, and the whole court were to enter immediately after. I was
conducted to a box by M. de Cury, and which belonged to him. It was very
spacious, upon the stage and opposite to a lesser, but more elevated one,
in which the king sat with Madam de Pompadour.