“Given to study and retirement, rather reserved in my friendships, and not desiring to make new ones, I refused at first; she urged my acceptance with so much grace, however, that I could not persist in my refusal. “I went to her home, I found the abbé, I applauded his verses as all Paris has since done, but I did not see the brother of the mistress of the house.... “At last one evening, while I was visiting Madame de Miron, he came in. She presented him to me and begged me to recite some verses of the poem which had made her wish to interest me in him. “He showed the same indifference as his sister had done at the beginning, but glowed with even finer interest as I proceeded. He wished to take me at once to sup with him with Madame le Comtesse de Mir.... I refused absolutely, and did not yield to any of his solicitations although they were very ardent. I did not wish that my first step should give him the idea of a frivolous man who could be disposed of lightly. “The next morning he called on me and brought me an invitation from Madame le Comtesse de Mir ... and in the evening he came for me. Two days later he invited me to his house, presented me to his father, to the one sister who lived with him, and whom I had never met. “I saw him as simple in his domestic circle as he was brilliant in a salon. I was very soon certain that he was a good son, good brother, good master, and good father because he had still a little son, a young child whose infantile words were often repeated to us, which charmed me all the more because it betrayed his paternal tenderness and showed how much more powerful were his sentiments than his _esprit_. “We soon learned to esteem each other from a similar foundation of severe principles, hidden in his case under an exterior of lightness and gaiety, by a vivid and constant love of the good, the beautiful, the honest, by an equal disdain for prejudice, and for all opinions ill-founded. “We became intimate friends through the similarities and differences of our characters, and the congeniality of our interests. “The taste for letters, for the theatre, for the arts, the same indulgence for the weaknesses of the human heart, strengthened our union. We passed many evenings together, now in the midst of a great number, now in more restricted circles. Poetry, music, new scientific discoveries, all were subjects of our discourse. I heard him blend witticisms, graceful stories, the best pleasantries, all the charm of an _esprit_ free, abundant, and varied with the effusions of a sensible, active, generous heart. “He never criticised any work, on the contrary he always brought out beauties which others had not noticed, extolled talent, repelled scandal; he defended all those whose merit he heard depreciated, and never listened to slander. ‘I am,’ he used to say, ‘an advocate of the absent.’