“As I was ignorant of the project of M. le Chevalier before I received your letter, and as I know nothing of the matter, you will permit me to inform myself before I reply. As to the reproach which you make in regard to Julie, I do not feel that I merit it, if I have not sent to know how she is, it is because I have been assured that she was very much better and had been seen at her window, which made me think that it was true. If my aunt were not ill, which prevents my leaving, I would assuredly go to see her. I embrace her with all my heart.” M. de Loménie says: “The two were perhaps innocent at that moment, if I can judge from a letter of a cousin of Pauline’s and a friend of Beaumarchais, very badly treated by the latter in regard to this affair, ‘When you have a more tranquil mind so that you will do me justice,’ says the cousin, ‘I will speak openly with you and prove to you that you, who condemn others so easily, are more culpable than those you believe to be dissimulating and perfidious. Nothing is so pure as the heart of the dear Pauline, nothing nobler than that of the Chevalier, or more sincere than my own, and you look upon all three as though we were monsters.’” The above letter of November 8, 1765, is all we have to fix the date of the previous one. During the interval which follows, it is impossible to determine exactly what happened, but true it is that by February 11th, 1766, the definite rupture had taken place and even the cousin undertakes no longer to shield the “dear Pauline.” As to the Chevalier, who a year before had written of Julie, “She is the unique object of my tenderest desires,” it may be that Julie herself had much to do with his estrangement, for in a letter already quoted we have her own authority for believing that she was never very deeply in love, and her “maliciousness,” may have helped to cool the ardor of the Chevalier. Certain it is, that Julie with all her warmth and expansiveness was not by nature any more formed for absorbing passions than was her brother. A letter belonging to a very much earlier period, proves that love was at no time a very serious matter with her, while it paints to the life the gaiety of her character. She writes, “You must know, my dear Lhénon upon what terms of folly I am with your brother. His air of interest for me, of which I wrote a month ago, has developed singularly and beautified itself since our friends have gone to the country. He comes nearly every evening to supper and stays till midnight or one o’clock. Ah my dear Lhénon, you should hear him recounting to me, and me retorting in the same tone with that air of _folie_ that you have always known me to possess; but in the midst of all these pleasantries I have sometimes found a happy way of expressing myself, so as to persuade him seriously that I do not love him, and I believe him convinced, although I have never said half as many sweet things to him as I do now, because of an agreement which we have to love