Mons. d’ Aimeri is still nearly in the same state, yet they say he has less fever; but I find him more dejected, more depressed, than he was yesterday. He has been shut up for an hour to-night with two notaries: in short, he takes all the precautions of a man who thinks himself at the last extremity. At the same time I observed a change in him today which struck me; it appeared to me, as if he wished to flatter himself, or rather to deceive us, in regard to his health. He told me to-day, for example, that he had slept pretty well last night, which is not true. He added, that he was in less pain than yesterday; he no longer talks of his fatal presages; his heart appears quite hardened and he shews an insensibility which even extends to his grandson. I believe that his remorse, and his apprehensions, naturally violent at this time, give him up to the most cruel terrors; to such dreadful ideas that he can only think of himself. Nothing makes us so selfish as being in imminent danger; and how dreadful is that which looks him in the face! … His tortured soul seems excluded from all hopes; he is inaccessible to the soft sentiments of friendship and to all kind of consolation. I spent three hours with him: I observed also, that he could not without extreme pain hear the Chevalier de Murville's will mentioned; but unfortunately Mons. de Valmont has not yet exhausted that subject of conversation, and it is absolutely impossible to make him understand, that it displeases Mons. d’ Aimeri. He answers, that certainly his father-in-law must be delighted at Charles's having an estate of an hundred thousand livres a year; and of course he talks of nothing else; and still keeps praising this good Chevalier de Murville, whom he knew formerly only a poor Gentleman of Picardy, but whole person deserved to have made his fortune; for he was as handsome as an Angel. You know Mons. de Valmont; therefore can both hear him and see him.