Colardeau produced an héroïde entitled Armide à Renaud. His second tragedy, Calista, represented in 1760, had some success through the talent of Mademoiselle Clairon but provoked critical comments, particularly because of its scabrous subject (rape). Colardeau undertook a translation into French of Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, but he destroyed the manuscript before his death. He then tried his hand at a translation of Virgil's Aeneid which he abandoned when he heard that Father Delille was working on an identical project. In 1762, his poem Patriotism brought him to the attention of the Duc de Choiseul and earned him a biting satire to which he responded in his Epître à Minette (Letter to Minette). Returned to Pithiviers in 1766, he wrote a comedy in five acts and in verse, Les perfidies à la mode, which was not performed. In 1770, he put into verse the first two parts of Edward Young's Night-Thoughts, whose French translation had just been published. In 1772 he published a Temple de Gnide composed a decade earlier, adapted from Montesquieu, as the poem by Nicolas-Germain Léonard appeared shortly before. In 1774 he published his Epître à M. Duhamel de Denainvilliers (Letter to Mr. Duhamel Denainvilliers) on the charms of the countryside and a descriptive poem Les Hommes de Prométhée (The Men of Prometheus) which describes the awakening of romantic love in the first two human beings. Family life The Mémoires Secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la République des Lettres en France attributed the death of the writer to a venereal disease contracted during a fleeting relationship with a "courtesan ungrateful and treacherous". The siren that Mémoires ... designate as Demoiselle Verrières would be Marie Rinteau (1730–1775) called Marie Verrières or De Verrières . Marie and her sister had a welcoming house at Auteuil and provided a beautiful theatre. A liaison with Maurice de Saxe produced a girl born in 1748, Aurore, who became the grandmother of George Sand. Marie was unable to make provisions for her education and the Dauphine took Aurore from her mother to be educated in a convent: after the death of Marshal Saxe (1750) Marie's name is associated in the chronicles of the time with a number of gentlemen among whom there is the enduring presence of Denis Joseph Lalive d'Epinay, from a family of fermiers généraux, husband of Louise d'Epinay (who was a lover of Louis Dupin Francueil Aurore, future husband