at the house of the Baron d'Holbach. The schoolfellow of Turgot and of Lomenie de Brienne, Morellet was as liberal as the former, and as versatile as the latter. From his youth upwards he had wielded a ready pen, but always as the champion of truth and innocence. His first important work was Le Manuel des Inquisiteurs, opportunely published in 1762, at the moment when the attention of the country was occupied by the intrigues of the Jesuits.[1] It at once obtained an enormous circulation, and was not ill received by the Government, over which Choiseul, the sworn foe of the Jesuits, then presided. But before the appearance of the Manuel, Morellet had already obtained a certain celebrity, by making acquaintance with the interior of the Bastille. Through the influence of Madame de Rebecq, an old flame of Choiseul, who had been severely handled by Diderot in the Fils Naturel, leave had been obtained to place the Philosophes of Palissot on the stage. In this piece Helvetius, Rousseau, Diderot, and d'Alembert were held up to public odium. The philosophers, nothing daunted, replied with a series of squibs against Palissot, whose previous career fitted him as little, as her own did Madame de Rebecq, to be the champion of religion and morality. To this series Morellet contributed La Preface de la Comédie des Philosophes. It contained the following passage amongst others in allusion to Le Fils Naturel: "Et on verra une grande dame bien malade désirer, pour toute consolation avant de mourir, d'assister à la première représentation, et dire: C'est maintenant, Seigneur, que vous laissez aller votre servante en paix, car mes yeux ont vu la vengeance." Madame de Rebecq was at this moment slowly dying of lung disease. Palissot, in order to whet her indignation, sent her a copy "with the author's compliments." Madame de Rebecq died, but not before she had obtained a lettre de cachet which consigned Morellet to the Bastille, from April to August 1760.
- ↑ The Manuel was founded on the Directorium Inquisitorium of Nicholas Eymeric, the Grand Inquisitor, a copy of which Morellet happened to find (1759) in the library of the Abbé de Canaillac at Rome, while attending a pupil, the Abbé de la Galaizière, during the Papal conclave held on the death of Benedict XIV.
