Within a few years of his death, the brave, cheerful tone had declined to this:—
I am broken down with fatigue; I must repose for the rest of my life.
Then further to this:—
I have expected to kill myself for the last three months, finishing an addition to my work on the origin and changes of the French civil law. It will take only three hours to read it; but, I assure you, it has been such a labor to me, that my hair has turned white under it all.
Finally it touches nadir:—
It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I can work no more.
My candles are all burned out; I have set off all my cartridges.
When Montesquieu died, only Diderot, among Parisian men of letters, followed him to his tomb.