I told him that I had come from Italy on purpose to see him.
"Confess, sir," he said to me, "that you have kept me waiting a very long time." This repartee was obliging and critical at the same time, and pointed out in a delicate and witty manner the untruth of my compliment.

He made me a present of his works, and asked me if I liked the French plays; I told him that I had seen 'Thetis et Pelee' at the opera.

That play was his own composition, and when I had praised it, he told me that it was a 'tete pelee'.
"I was at the Theatre Francais last night," I said, "and saw Athalie." "It is the masterpiece of Racine; Voltaire, has been wrong in accusing me of having criticized that tragedy, and in attributing to me an epigram, the author of which has never been known, and which ends with two very poor lines: "Pour avoir fait pis qu'Esther, Comment diable as-to pu faire" I have been told that M.de Fontenelle had been the tender friend of Madame du Tencin, that M.d'Alembert was the offspring of their intimacy, and that Le Rond had only been his foster-father.

I knew d'Alembert at Madame de Graffigny's.

That great philosopher had the talent of never appearing to be a learned man when he was in the company of amiable persons who had no pretension to learning or the sciences, and he always seemed to endow with intelligence those who conversed with him.
When I went to Paris for the second time, after my escape from The Leads of Venice, I was delighted at the idea of seeing again the amiable, venerable Fontenelle, but he died a fortnight after my arrival, at the beginning of the year 1757.
When I paid my third visit to Paris with the intention of ending my days in that capital, I reckoned upon the friendship of M.d'Alembert, but he died, like Fontenelle, a fortnight after my arrival, towards the end of 1783.