“I tell you all this to show you that I can, to this very hour, account for every minute of that day, one of the most memorable of my whole life, from the moment of my leaving M. de Voltaire; and when I returned home, late as was the hour, before retiring to rest, I sat down to begin a letter to my uncle, the Cardinal de Perigord, in order to recount to him the adventure of the morning, and above all, to tell him the anecdote concerning our family, which M. de Voltaire had related, and in which I knew my uncle would take a most peculiar delight, both from the source whence it came, and the personal interest inspired by the subject. Judge, then, of the mortification I experienced upon finding that, in spite of all my endeavours to collect my wandering ideas to the one point in question, I could not recollect the story which M. de Voltaire had been at so much pains to tell me, to which I had listened with so much attention and with such extraordinary relish; I could not even write in my letter the immediate object of the story—neither detail, nor hero, nor point, (which last I remembered had diverted me beyond measure,) would present itself to my remembrance; and, after much vexation of spirit, I was fain to leave my letter unfinished, until I had met with Champfort, whose memory I doubted not would be fully able to supply the deficiency of mine. “I was determined to lose no time in assuring myself of this, and called upon the poet the very next day. What, think you, was his answer to my urgent entreaties that he would assist me? ‘Parbleu, _mon cher_, I was too much occupied in thinking what I should say to M. de Voltaire to notice what _he_ was saying to me. I heard not a word of his story, but you must own that I completely succeeded in proving the false quantity in the second canto of the Henriade.’ “He had not even heard the story! so there was no hope in that quarter, and I was obliged to content myself with the trust, that at some future day I might be fortunate enough again to meet M. de Voltaire, and induce him to tell the tale once more. As I have already said, however, I had not the good fortune to see him afterwards.