liberal, generous, unostentatious, and benevolent."[106] [102] See Jal's _Dict. Crit._, p. 676. There is a comparison in _L'Esprit_, which we may assume to have been due to family reminiscence: "Like those Physicians who, in their jealousy of the discovery of the emetic, abused the credulity of a few prelates, to excommunicate a remedy of which the service is so prompt and so salutary," etc.--ii. 23. [103] Hume, however, tells a story to the effect that Helvetius tried to dissuade Montesquieu from publishing his great book, as being altogether unworthy of his previous reputation. [104] Barbier v. 57. [105] Morellet, i. 71. [106] Marmontel, ii, 116. As it happens, there is a very different picture in one of Diderot's writings. While Diderot was on a journey he fell in with a lady who knew Helvetius's country. "She told us that the philosopher at his country seat was the unhappiest of men. He is surrounded by peasants and by neighbours who hate him. They break the windows of his mansion; they ravage his property at night; they cut his trees, and break down his fences. He dares not sally out to shoot a rabbit without an escort. You will ask me why all this? It comes of an unbridled jealousy about his game. His predecessors kept the estate in order with a couple of men and a couple of guns. Helvetius has four-and-twenty, and yet he cannot guard his property. The men have a small premium for every poacher that they catch, and they resort to every possible vexation in order to multiply their sorry profit. They are, for that matter, no better than so many poachers who draw wages. The border of his woods was peopled with the unfortunate wretches who had been driven from their homes into pitiful hovels. It is these repeated acts of tyranny that have raised up against him enemies of every kind, and all the more insolent, as Madame N. said, for having found out that the good philosopher is a trifle pusillanimous. I cannot see what he has gained by such a way of managing his property; he is alone on it, he is hated, he is in a constant state of fright. Ah, how much wiser our good Madame Geoffrin, when she said of a trial that tormented her: 'Finish my case. They want my money? I have some; give them money. And what can I do better with money than buy tranquillity with it?' In Helvetius's place, I should have said: 'They kill a few hares, or a few rabbits; let them kill. The poor creatures have no shelter save my woods, let them remain there.'"[107] [107] Voyage a Bourbonne. _Oeuv._, xvii. 344.