regretted.

I cannot, however, omit taking notice of a new correspondence I entered
into at this period, which has had too much influence over the rest of my
life not to make it necessary for me to mark its origin. 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 Eloisa. 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 persisted 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