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Updated: June 24, 2025
As soon as the first transports of my indignation permitted me to write, I, with great precipitation, wrote him the following answer, which I immediately carried from the Hermitage, where I then was, to Chevrette, to show it to Madam d' Epinay; to whom, in my blind rage, I read the contents, as well as the letter from Diderot.
Diderot, who refused for a long time to meet Mme. d'Epinay, but finally became an intimate and lasting friend, touches often, in his letters to Sophie, upon the pleasant informality of La Chevrette, with its curious social episodes and its emotional undercurrents. He does not forget even the pigeons, the geese, the ducks, and the chickens, which he calls his own.
Grimm was scarcely arrived at the Chevrette, where I already did not much amuse myself, before he made it insupportable to me by airs I never before saw in any person, and of which I had no idea. The evening before he came, I was dislodged from the chamber of favor, contiguous to that of Madam d'Epinay; it was prepared for Grimm, and instead of it, I was put into another further off.
Madam d'Houdetot informed me of the day on which she intended to come and bid adieu to the valley, and gave me a rendezvous at Laubonne. This happened to be the same day on which Madam d'Epinay left the Chevrette to go to Paris for the purpose of completing preparations for her journey. Fortunately she set off in the morning, and I had still time to go and dine with her sister-in-law.
At the first attempt the boats were discovered, and the Chevrette ran a mile and a-half farther up the bay, and took on board a party of soldiers.
You must mount your horse and proceed to the Rue Tiquetonne, Hotel de la Chevrette, whence you will take my horse and that of Monsieur du Vallon, which you must saddle and equip as if for war, and then you will leave Paris, bringing them with you to Cours la Reine. If, when you arrive at Cours la Reine, you find no one, you must go on to Saint Germain. On the king's service."
After her fortune, which at one time was quite large, became diminished, partly through her own extravagance and partly through that of her son, who was the very counterpart of his father, she was forced to rent "La Chevrette" and, later on, "La Briche," where she had opened her second salon. The last years of her life she spent in Paris with Grimm.
We have met her before in the philosophical circles of La Chevrette, and in the beautiful promenades of the valley of Montmorency, where Rousseau offered her the incense of a passionate and poetic love.
She was, in fact, so absent, and always so little attentive to these things, that half the time she did not perceive them. The Baron d'Holbach, who never, as I heard of, had been at the Chevrette, was one of the latter.
We both went to the Chevrette; we sometimes met there by appointment.
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