of Belles Lettres, whose mild and agreeable society will ever make me
regret the loss of it, although he has since thought proper to detach
himself from me; M. Jalabert, at that time professor of natural
philosophy, since become counsellor and syndic, to whom I read my
discourse upon Inequality (but not the dedication), with which he seemed
to be delighted; the Professor Lullin, with whom I maintained a
correspondence until his death, and who gave me a commission to purchase
books for the library; the Professor Vernet, who, like most other people,
turned his back upon me after I had given him proofs of attachment and
confidence of which he ought to, have been sensible, if a theologian can
be affected by anything; Chappins, clerk and successor to Gauffecourt,
whom he wished to supplant, and who, soon afterwards, was him self
supplanted; Marcet de Mezieres, an old friend of my father's, and who had
also shown himself to be mine: after having well deserved of his country,
he became a dramatic author, and, pretending to be of the council of two
hundred, changed his principles, and, before he died, became ridiculous.
But he from whom I expected most was M. Moultout, a very promising young
man by his talents and his brilliant imagination, whom I have always
loved, although his conduct with respect to me was frequently equivocal,
and, not withstanding his being connected with my most cruel enemies,
whom I cannot but look upon as destined to become the defender of my
memory and the avenger of his friend.

In the midst of these dissipations, I neither lost the taste for my
solitary excursions, nor the habit of them; I frequently made long ones
upon the banks of the lake, during which my mind, accustomed to
reflection, did not remain idle; I digested the plan already formed
of my political institutions, of which I shall shortly have to speak;
I meditated a history of the Valais; the plan of a tragedy in prose,
the subject of which, nothing less than Lucretia, did not deprive me of