There could have been no incident better calculated than this to create a sensation in the coteries of Paris. Immediately on receiving the first angry letter, Hume sent an indignant account of the ingratitude and malevolence of Rousseau to the Baron D'Holbach, which proved a delightfully exciting morsel to a party assembled at his house; for the baron had told him, from the beginning, that he was warming a serpent in his bosom.[346:2] The very rapid celebrity which the story received does not seem to have been anticipated by Hume, and he says, apologetically, to Madame de Boufflers,--"I wrote, indeed, to Baron D'Holbach, without either recommending or expecting secrecy: but I thought this story, like others, would be told to eight or ten people; in a week or two, twenty or thirty more might hear it, and it would require three months before it would reach you at Pougues. I little imagined that a private story, told to a private gentleman, could run over a whole kingdom in a moment. If the King of England had declared war against the King of France, it could not have been more suddenly the subject of conversation."[346:3] Between the rupture and the publication of the narrative regarding it, Hume seems to have written very abundantly on the subject, to his friends in Paris. The following is one of his letters:-- HUME _to the_ ABBÉ LE BLANC. _Lisle Street, Leicester Fields, 12th August, 1766._ MY DEAR SIR,--I have used the freedom to send to you, in two packets, by this post, the whole train of my correspondence with Rousseau, connected by a short narrative. I hope you will have leisure to peruse it. The story is incredible, as well as inconceivable, were it not founded on such authentic documents. Surely never was there so much wickedness and madness combined in one human creature; nor did ever any one meet with such a return for such signal services as those I performed towards him. But I am told that he used to say to Duclos, and others, that he hated all those to whom he owed any obligation. In that case I am fully entitled to his animosity.