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CHAPTER XII.
MADAME DU CHÂTELET.
Besides this craving after liberty of expression, his desire to devote himself to letters, in the abstract, was extraordinarily powerful. It was by far his strongest passion, and, in fact, absorbed and turned to its own account all the others. "Heavens, my dear Cideville!" he exclaims, "what a delicious life to find one's self living with three or four literary people who have talents but no jealousy—to live thus in harmony, to cultivate our art, to talk it over, to enlighten each other! I fancy I may live some day in such a little paradise." Notwithstanding the extraordinary industry and success which had thus far distinguished him, he must have felt that the life he had led of late, one of constant evasion—the life, in fact, of a bird of passage, whose periods of migration were altogether uncertain and fortuitous—diversified by intervals when he figured as a man of pleasure—was, to say nothing of its discomfort, at variance with his true vocation. He now perceived an opportunity of quitting the frivolities and dissipation of Paris, and of living in comfort and security in a spot so near the French frontier that a single step would place him beyond
