She strongly combated my resolution without knowing how to reply to the reasons on which it was founded.She had not concerted with him; but the next day, instead of explaining herself verbally, she, with great address, gave me a letter they had drawn up together, and by which, without entering into a detail of facts, she justified him by his concentrated character, attributed to me as a crime my having suspected him of perfidy towards his friend, and exhorted me to come to an accommodation with him.This letter staggered me.In a conversation we afterwards had together, and in which I found her better prepared than she had been the first time, I suffered myself to be quite prevailed upon, and was inclined to believe I might have judged erroneously.In this case I thought I really had done a friend a very serious injury, which it was my duty to repair.In short, as I had already done several times with Diderot, and the Baron d'Holbach, half from inclination, and half from weakness, I made all the advances I had a right to require; I went to M.Grimm, like another George Dandin, to make him my apologies for the offense he had given me; still in the false persuasion, which, in the course of my life has made me guilty of a thousand meannesses to my pretended friends, that there is no hatred which may not be disarmed by mildness and proper behavior; whereas, on the contrary, the hatred of the wicked becomes still more envenomed by the impossibility of finding anything to found it upon, and the sentiment of their own injustice is another cause of offense against the person who is the object of it.Ihave, without going further than my own history, a strong proof of this maxim in Grimm, and in Tronchin; both become my implacable enemies from inclination, pleasure and fancy, without having been able to charge me with having done either of them the most trifling injury,* and whose rage, like that of tigers, becomes daily more fierce by the facility of satiating it.
* I did not give the surname of Jongleur only to the latter until a long time alter his enmity had been declared, and the persecutions he brought upon me at Geneva and elsewhere.I soon suppressed the name the moment I perceived I was entirely his victim.Mean vengeance is unworthy of my heart, and hatred never takes the least root in it.
I expected that Grimm, confused by my condescension and advances, would receive me with open arms, and the most tender friendship.He received me as a Roman Emperor would have done, and with a haughtiness I never saw in any person but himself.I was by no means prepared for such a reception.When, in the embarrassment of the part I had to act, and which was so unworthy of me, I had, in a few words and with a timid air, fulfilled the object which had brought me to him;before he received me into favor, he pronounced, with a deal of majesty, an harangue he had prepared, and which contained a long enumeration of his rare virtues, and especially those connected with friendship.He laid great stress upon a thing which at first struck me a good deal: this was his having always preserved the same friends.
Whilst he was yet speaking, I said to myself, it would be cruel for me to be the only exception to this rule.He returned to the subject so frequently, and with such emphasis, that I thought, if in this he followed nothing but the sentiments of his heart, he would be less struck with the maxim, and that he made of it an art useful to his views by procuring the means of accomplishing them.Until then I had been in the same situation; I had preserved all my first friends, those even from my tenderest infancy, without having lost one of them except by death, and yet I had never before made the reflection: it was not a maxim I had prescribed myself.Since, therefore, the advantage was common to both, why did he boast of it in preference, if he had not previously intended to deprive me of the merit? He afterwards endeavored to humble me by proofs of the preference our common friends gave to me.With this I was as well acquainted as himself; the question was, by what means he had obtained it? whether it was by merit or address? by exalting himself, or endeavoring to abase me? At last, when he had placed between us all the distance that he could add to the value of the favor he was about to confer, he granted me the kiss of peace, in a slight embrace which resembled the accolade which the king gives to new-made knights.I was stupefied with surprise: I knew not what to say; not a word could I utter.This whole scene had the appearance of the reprimand a preceptor gives to his pupil while he graciously spares inflicting the rod.I never think of it without perceiving to what degree judgments, founded upon appearances to which the vulgar give so much weight, are deceitful, and how frequently audaciousness and pride are found in the guilty, and shame and embarrassment in the innocent.
We were reconciled: this was a relief to my heart, which every kind of quarrel fills with anguish.It will naturally be supposed that a like reconciliation changed nothing in his manners; all it effected was to deprive me of the right of complaining of them.For this reason I took a resolution to endure everything, and for the future to say not a word.