The person in question is De Lamoignon de Malesherbes of the Cour des aides, then censor of books, which office he exercised with equal intelligence and mildness, to the great satisfaction of men of letters.I had not once been to see him at Paris; yet I had never received from him any other than the most obliging condescensions relative to the censorship, and I knew that he had more than once very severely reprimanded persons who had written against me.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.It is somewhere said in that work that the wife of a coal-heaver is more respectable than the mistress of a prince.This phrase had occurred to me in the warmth of composition without any application.In reading over the work I perceived it would be applied, yet in consequence of the very imprudent maxim I had adopted of not suppressing anything, on account of the application which might be made, when my conscience bore witness to me that I had not made them at the time I wrote, I determined not to expunge the phrase, and contented myself with substituting the word Prince to King, which Ihad first written.This softening did not seem sufficient to M.de Malesherbes; he retrenched the whole expression in a new sheet which he had printed on purpose and stuck in between the other with as much exactness as possible in the copy of Madam de Pompadour.She was not ignorant of this maneuver.Some good-natured people took the trouble to inform her of it.For my part it was not until a long time afterwards, and when I began to feel the consequences of it, that the matter came to my knowledge.
Is not this the origin of the concealed but implacable hatred of another lady who was in a like situation, without my knowing it or even being acquainted with her person when I wrote the passage? When the book was published the acquaintance was made, and I was very uneasy.I mentioned this to the Chevalier de Lorenzi, who laughed at me, and said the lady was so little offended that she had not even taken notice of the matter.I believed him, perhaps rather too lightly, and made myself easy when there was much reason for my being otherwise.
At the beginning of the winter I received an additional mark of the goodness of M.de Malesherbes of which I was very sensible, although I did not think proper to take advantage of it.A place was vacant in the journal des Savants.Margency wrote to me, proposing to me the place, as from himself.But I easily perceived from the manner of the letter that he was dictated to and authorized; he afterwards told me he had been desired to make me the offer.The occupations of this place were but trifling.All I should have had to do would have been to make two extracts a month, from the books brought to me for that purpose, without being under the necessity of going once to Paris, not even to pay the magistrate a visit of thanks.