434 D'ALEMBEET. 



passion. She obtained an opinion of Lorry, the famous 

 physician, that the air of France was necessary for his 

 recovery ; and his family yielding to this representa- 

 tion, he set out for Paris, but died on the way. Not- 

 withstanding her passion for Guibert, which had been 

 intercalated as it were, she is said to have taken 

 Mora's death so much to heart, that her excitable and 

 feeble frame could not stand against the shock, and she 

 died about two years after, in May 1776. 



Now, strange as it must seem to all men of right and 

 honourable feelings, D'Alembert was so completely the 

 dupe of his passion for her, that she made him the con- 

 fidant of hers for Mora. Nay, he was sent every morn- 

 ing to the post-office for his absent and favoured rival's 

 letters, that he might have them ready on her awaken- 

 ing. Nay, further, the opinion of Lorry which recalled 

 him, was obtained through the solicitation of D'Alem- 

 bert, the Doctor's intimate friend ; and he wrote the 

 most tender letter to Mora's father, condoling upon the 

 young man's death. Marmontel sets all this down to 

 the account of his extreme devotion to his mistress, and 

 the great simplicity of his character. But this assumes 

 that he believed her to be really in love with Mora. 

 D'Alembert's own account is entirely different. In his 

 * Address to her Manes,' and his ' Address at her Tomb,' 

 we find him distinctly complaining that she had de- 

 ceived him, and made him believe for eight years and 

 upwards that she loved him, when he discovered, by a 

 paper left for him to read after her death, that all the 

 time she really loved another. She appointed him her 

 executor ; and he found that she had kept masses of 

 letters from others and not one from himself; also she 

 bequeathed all these letters to different persons and 

 none to him. He then bursts out into this complaint: 

 " Pourquoi les devoirs que cette execution m'impo- 

 soit m'ont-ils appris, ce que je ne devois pas savoir et 

 ce que j'aurois desire ignorer? Pourquoi ne m'avez- 

 vous pas ordonne bruler sans 1'ouvrir ce manuscrit 



