ABSTRACT
Diderot’s letters of the summer of 1768 reveal a good deal of the hopes, fears and tensions associated with Jodin’s and Schulenburg’s reunion at Salzwedel. Jodin had written him detailed accounts of her difficult trip thither from Dresden and her reception by the lover from whom she would have had good reason to fear she was to be parted for ever. However as Mme Jodin had put it, Marie Madeleine was now ‘at the summit of her desires’, reunited with Schulenburg in what was hoped to be a permanent rapprochement. On his side, Diderot assumed, as we have seen in his previous letter, that Jodin’s position was sufficiently secure as the Count’s consort for her to leave the stage permanently.1 Nevertheless he feared the very intensity of their relationship and was sceptical of their capacity to endure one another for long: ‘I can neither approve nor disapprove of your reconciliation with Monsieur le Comte. It is too doubtful whether you are made for his happiness or he for yours.’2
