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 I had 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
manoeuvre. 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 Lorenzy, 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.