Yet, by one of the meannesses of decaying authority, the decree of three months before was left suspended over their heads.[135] The third volume of the Encyclopaedia appeared in the autumn of 1753.
D'Alembert prefixed an introduction, vindicating himself and his colleague with a manliness, a sincerity, a gravity, a fire, that are admirable and touching.

"What," he concluded, "can malignity henceforth devise against two men of letters, trained long since by their meditations to fear neither injustice nor poverty; who having learnt by a long and mournful experience, not to despise, but to mistrust and dread men, have the courage to love them, and the prudence to flee them ?...

After having been the stormy and painful occupation of the most precious years of our life, this work will perhaps be the solace of its close.

May it, when both we and our enemies alike have ceased to exist, be a durable monument of the good intention of the one, and the injustice of the other....

Let us remember the fable of Bocalina: 'A traveller was disturbed by the importunate chirrupings of the grasshoppers; he would fain have slain them every one, but only got belated and missed his way; he need only have fared peacefully on his road, and the grasshoppers would have died of themselves before the end of a week.'"[136] A volume was now produced in each year, until the autumn of 1757 and the issue of the seventh volume.