D'Alembert declared his intention of abandoning the work, and urged his colleague to do the same.

His letters to Voltaire show intelligibly enough how he brought himself to this resolution.

"I am worn out," he says, "with the affronts and vexations of every kind that this work draws down upon us.

The hateful and even infamous satires which they print against us, and which are not only tolerated, but protected, authorised, applauded, nay, actually commanded by the people with power in their hands; the sermons, or rather the tocsins that are rung against us at Versailles in the presence of the king, _nemine reclamante_; the new intolerable inquisition that they are bent on practising against the Encyclopaedia, by giving us new censors who are more absurd and more intractable than could be found at Goa; all these reasons, joined to some others, drive me to give up this accursed work once for all." He cared nothing for libels or stinging pamphlets in themselves, but libels permitted or ordered by those who could instantly have suppressed them, were a different thing, especially when they vomited forth the vilest personalities.

He admitted that there were other reasons why he was bent on retiring, and it would appear that one of these reasons was dissatisfaction with the financial arrangements of the booksellers.[148] Voltaire for some time remonstrated against this retreat before the hated _Infame_.