[Bois de Vaud, 15 December 1771]

[My dear benefactor,

I am quite persuaded that if you could give me a regiment you would do so, and I would venture to ask you for it; but when I went to pay my court to you, and to relate my misfortunes, I did not dare to ask you if you could help me.
I consider it an abominable indiscretion to ask continually for recommendations to persons to whom I ought to be more recommendable, by my devotion to their service, than to you who owe me nothing and to whom I owe everything. But necessity and the fatality of my star are my law to-day. My friends wish me to write to m. le duc d’Aiguillon. I am told that he will save me; I do not know him, he has never heard of me, and I am supposed to be at Huningen.

Here is my letter. Will you permit friend Vagnière to read it to you, and will you dictate from your bed a few lines in which you will say to m. le duc d’Aiguillon that a poor devil who has not been able to approach him has had the insolence to beg you to place his letter in your packet, and that in spite of this insolence you do not detest him, but that you pity him?

The least of my evils is a severe feverish cold, which this badly constructed statement of my case has not diminished. I place myself at your feet with that fervid and tender veneration and gratitude which you are entitled in so many ways to receive from me.]