Note 121 — Front matter (continued 4)

A document found in the Bastille on its capture in July 1789, written by one Meusnier, an inspector of police who was employed by Maurice de Saxe in his persecution of the Favarts, and published the same year, under the title of Manuscrit trouvé à la Bastille (signé Meusnier) concernant deux lettres-de-cachet lâchées contre Mlle. de Chantilly et M. Favart par le Maréchal de Saxe, asserts that for some time Justine lived with Favart, as his mistress, in a house in the Rue de Buci. But in the opinion of Desnoiresterres, the best informed of the poet's biographers, this charge is sufficiently controverted by the following letter written by Favart to his fiancée: "Take care of your health; remember that mine is involved in it. You will take more care of yourself, if you have any regard for me, who love you more than life; though do not take offence, for my very sentiments are your eulogy. Your talents seduce me, but your virtue binds me. If your thoughts were in contradiction to your actions, you would be worthy neither of my esteem nor my love.... I am speaking to you against the interests of my heart; but I, at the same time, prove to you that I am the sincerest and the best of your friends."—Favart, Mémoires et correspondance littéraire (edit. 1808), i. 20. Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et Lettrés, p. 196 et seq.