Failing in this attempt they endeavored to obtain by a scruple the effect which complaisance had not produced, and construed into a crime my keeping the old woman at a distance from the succors of which, at her age, she might be in need.They did not recollect that she, and many other old people, whose lives were prolonged by the air of the country, might obtain these succors at Montmorency, near to which Ilived; as if there were no old people, except in Paris, and that it was impossible for them to live in any other place.Madam le Vasseur, who ate a great deal, and with extreme voracity, was subject to overflowings of bile and to strong diarrhoeas, which lasted several days, and served her instead of clysters.At Paris she neither did nor took anything for them, but left nature to itself.She observed the same rule at the Hermitage, knowing it was the best thing she could do.No matter, since there were not in the country either physicians or apothecaries, keeping her there must, no doubt, be with the desire of putting an end to her existence, although she was in perfect health.Diderot should have determined at what age, under pain of being punished for homicide, it is no longer permitted to let old people remain out of Paris.
This was one of the atrocious accusations from which he did not except me in his remark; that none but the wicked were alone: and the meaning of his pathetic exclamation with the et caetera, which he had benignantly added: A woman of eighty years of age, etc.
I thought the best answer that could be given to this reproach would be from Madam le Vasseur herself.I desired her to write freely and naturally her sentiments to Madam d'Epinay.To relieve her from all constraint I would not see her letter.I showed her that which I am going to transcribe.I wrote it to Madam d'Epinay upon the subject of an answer I wished to return to a letter still more severe from Diderot, and which she had prevented me from sending.
Thursday.
"My good friend.Madam le Vasseur is to write to you: I have desired her to tell you sincerely what she thinks.To remove from her all constraint, I have intimated to her that I will not see what she writes and I beg of you not to communicate to me any part of the contents of her letter.
"I will not send my letter because you do not choose I should;but, feeling myself grievously offended, it would be baseness and falsehood, of either of which it is impossible for me to be guilty, to acknowledge myself in the wrong.Holy writ commands him to whom a blow is given, to turn the other cheek, but not to ask pardon.Do you remember the man in comedy who exclaims, while he is giving another blows with his staff, 'This is the part of a philosopher!'
"Do not flatter yourself that he will be prevented from coming by the bad weather we now have.His rage will give him the time and strength which friendship refuses him, and it will be the first time in his life he ever came upon the day he had appointed.
"He will neglect nothing to come and repeat to me verbally the injuries with which he loads me in his letters; I will endure them all with patience.He will return to Paris to be ill again; and, according to custom, I shall be a very hateful man.What is to be done? Endure it all.
"But do not you admire the wisdom of the man who would absolutely come to Saint Denis in a hackney-coach to dine there, bring me home in a hackney-coach, and whose finances, eight days afterwards, obliges him to come to the Hermitage on foot? It is not possible, to speak his own language, that this should be the style of sincerity.But were this the case, strange changes of fortune must have happened in the course of a week.
"I join in your affliction for the illness of madam, your mother, but you will perceive your grief is not equal to mine.We suffer less by seeing the persons we love ill than when they are unjust and cruel.
"Adieu, my good friend, I shall never again mention to you this unhappy affair.You speak of going to Paris with an unconcern, which, at any other time, would give me pleasure."I wrote to Diderot, telling him what I had done, relative to Madam le Vasseur, upon the proposal of Madam d'Epinay herself; and Madam le Vasseur having, as it may be imagined, chosen to remain at the Hermitage, where she enjoyed a good state of health, always had company, and lived very agreeably, Diderot, not knowing what else to attribute to me as a crime, construed my precaution into one, and discovered another in Madam le Vasseur continuing to reside at the Hermitage, although this was by her own choice; and though her going to Paris had depended, and still depended upon herself, where she would continue to receive the same succors from me as I gave to her in my house.
This is the explanation of the first reproach in the letter of Diderot.That of the second is in the letter which follows: "The learned man (a name given in a joke by Grimm to the son of Madam d'Epinay) must have informed you there were upon the rampart twenty poor persons who were dying with cold and hunger, and waiting for the farthing you customarily gave them.This is a specimen of our little babbling....And if you understand the rest it would amuse you perhap."My answer to this terrible argument, of which Diderot seemed so proud, was in the following words: