Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/165

146 All that the Abbé Terrai did, or planned to do in the matter of the domains is null and void; all has been destroyed, rescinded, nullified ; you may be as easy about your father's property as you were ten years ago. M. Turgot assured me of this yesterday ; he asked me for news of you, and reproached himself for not having yet had a moment in which to answer persons to whom he could not bring himself to write office letters. M. de Vaines charged me to recall him to your recollection ; he is absolutely crushed by his work; they have so much to repair and to foresee that they have not a moment in which to breathe. The Abbé Terrai is ordered to replace in the royal treasury the hundred thousand crowns he had taken by anticipation on the leasing of farms; M. Turgot has declared that he does not wish for the fifty thousand francs which come to him yearly, by law, from those leases ; he has reduced himself in the same way on all sides, which gives him courage to make reforms of the same kind in the offices dependent on him. He is an excellent man; and if he can remain in office he will become the idol of the nation : he is fanatical for the public good, and he spends all his strength for it. Saturday, after the postman. I was interrupted. I have received your letter, mon ami; you are well; that is enough to live for. Alas ! I know not how to answer you. The shocks that you give my soul are too violent for words. Mon ami, all that I can say to you is that your letter is charming through the tone of tenderness and confidence which reigns there; it is honourable and true as your own soul ; and though it does not answer mine on all points, that is not your fault, and I do not complain of it. Alas, no ! I am satisfied with you ; but I say with Phèdre, " I have taken to life a hatred, and to my love a horror."