[Geneva, c. 5 February 1768]

[I thank you a thousand times for the excellent news which you give me.
You have gained a new triumph over fanaticism; I do not despair of soon seeing it in chains at your feet. M. le duc de Choiseul is well capable of understanding the lessons which you give to kings, and to put them in practice. It was right that you should both be born in the same century, and ours had need of two men who are so intrepid and so enlightened.

I do not yet know whether the friend to whom I applied at Montpellier has found the document for which you ask, and whether he has sent it to m. de Chardon. I shall know shortly.

I have read L'Homme aux quarante écus, and Le Dîner de Boulainvilliers. It is impossible that every eye should not be at last opened to the truth. If a few discontented monks brought about a revolution in a century but little enlightened, what will you not do in ours?

Here, sir, is the progress which Geneva has made. We are still well divided here. The council sincerely wishes for peace, but the citizens wish to impose terrible conditions; they are not satisfied with electing half the two hundred and the little council. They wish further to grabeller the two hundred every year. But when each citizen is the judge of his magistrates, it seems to me, sir, that no one will wish to be a magistrate; the rôle of citizen will be preferable. In truth, I do not know how it will all finish, but the manner in which the conflict is being carried on proves that it expects nothing from the garantee powers.

I ardently desire to have the honour of seeing you, and if my wife were not ill I would have been at Ferney to console myself for our sufferings at Geneva. I will go, sir, at the first opportunity that I have free, in order to present to you my most profound respects.]

M.