But the philosopher was a dirty fellow after all, and it only does credit to his noble biographer's sense of propriety to admit, that "his conduct must seem strange to all men of right and honourable feelings." In fact, the philosopher seems to have lent his aid very zealously to a correspondence carried on by his sensitive fellow-lodger! with a view to a marriage with a Spanish Marquis Mora. Among other proofs, he went every morning to the post-office to receive the Spaniard's letters for the lady. "I confess," says Lord Brougham, "I am driven, how reluctantly soever, to the painful conclusion, that he lent himself to the plan of her _inveigling_ the Spaniard into a marriage." And this was not the only instance of his by-play. Mademoiselle professed also to have fallen in love with a M. Guibert, known as a military writer. Guibert exhibited his best tactics, in keeping clear of the lady. "All this time, she continued," says his lordship, "to make D'Alembert believe, that she had no real passion for any one but himself." No one can easily suppose that they were not connected in a plan of obtaining for her a settlement in life by marriage. But, if this marriage-intrigue was in every sense, and on all sides, contemptible; what are we to think of the nature of the connexion existing between this sensitive lady and D'Alembert, living for years under the same roof? The whole matter would be too repulsive for the decorums of biography, if it were not among the evidences of that utter corruption of morals, and callousness of feeling, which were finally avenged in the havoc of the Revolution. D'Alembert's income had been increased by his appointment to the office of secretary to the Academy, in 1772. Unfortunately for his literary fame, it became a part of his duty to write the _éloges_ of the deceased members, an office which he fulfilled with equal diligence and unproductiveness; for, of those unfortunate performances he wrote no less than eighty-three. But the French are fond of fooleries of this kind; a few sounding sentences with them are biography; a few rambling sketches fill up the outline to their taste; and the whole forms a specimen of that eloquence which men are content to admire on the other side of the Channel.