The carol of the birds was loud
and high, and on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of
the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its
sweetest song with all its might.
and high, and on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of
the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its
sweetest song with all its might.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 to v10 - Cal to Fro
High vaulted
rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths
for the burning of wood in winter-time, and all luxuries befitting
the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The
fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to
break the fourteenth Louis-was conspicuous in their rich
furniture; but it was diversified by many objects that were illus-
trations of old pages in the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a
round room, in one of the château's four extinguisher-topped
towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the
wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed
in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad
lines of stone-color.
―――――
"My nephew," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper prepa-
ration; "they said he was not arrived. "
Nor was he; but he had been expected with Monseigneur.
"Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless,
leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour. ”
In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down
alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was
## p. 4679 (#473) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4679
opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup and was rais-
ing his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down.
"What is that? " he calmly asked, looking with attention at
the horizontal lines of black and stone-color.
"Monseigneur? That? "
"Outside the blinds. Open the blinds. "
It was done.
"Well? »
«< 'Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all
that are here. "
The servant who spoke had thrown the blinds wide, had
looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood, with that blank
behind him, looking round for instructions.
«< Good," said the imperturbable master. "Close them again. "
That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper.
He was half-way through it, when he again stopped with his
glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on
briskly, and came up to the front of the château.
"Ask who is arrived. "
It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few
leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had
diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up
with Monseigneur on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur,
at the posting-houses, as being before him.
In a
He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him
then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it.
little while he came. He had been known in England as Charles
Darnay.
Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did
not shake hands.
"You left Paris yesterday, sir? " he said to Monseigneur, as
he took his seat at table.
"Yesterday. And you? "
"I come direct. "
"From London ? »
"Yes. "
"You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, with
a smile.
"On the contrary; I come direct. "
"Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long
time intending the journey. "
## p. 4680 (#474) ###########################################
4680
CHARLES DICKENS
"I have been detained by "the nephew stopped a moment
in his answer "various business. "
――――
"Without doubt," said the polished uncle.
So long as a servant was present, no other words passed
between them. When coffee had been served and they were
alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting
the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask, opened a conver-
sation.
"I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object
that took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected
peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death
I hope it would have sustained me. "
"Not to death," said the uncle; "it is not necessary to say,
to death. "
"I doubt, sir," returned the nephew, "whether, if it had car-
ried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to
stop me there. »
The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of
the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to
that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so
clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring.
"Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, "for anything I know,
you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious ap-
pearance to the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me. "
"No, no, no," said the uncle pleasantly.
«< But, however that may be," resumed the nephew, glancing
at him with deep distrust, "I know that your diplomacy would
stop me by any means, and would know no scruple as to
means. "
"My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine pulsa-
tion in the two marks. "Do me the favor to recall that I told
you so, long ago. "
"I recall it. "
"Thank you," said the Marquis very sweetly indeed.
His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical
instrument.
-
"In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, "I believe it to be at
once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me
out of a prison in France here. "
"I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping his
coffee. "Dare I ask you to explain? »
## p. 4681 (#475) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4681
"I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the court,
and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a
lettre de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely. "
"It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness. "For
the honor of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you
to that extent. Pray excuse me! "
"I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day
before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed the
nephew.
"I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle,
with refined politeness; "I would not be sure of that. A good
opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of
solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage
than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss
the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little
instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and
honor of families, these slight favors that might so incommode
you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity.
They are sought by so many, and they are granted (compara-
tively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such
things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held
the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From
this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged;
in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge,
was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy
respecting his daughter- his daughter! We have lost many
privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the as-
sertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far
as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience.
very bad, very bad! "
All
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff and shook
his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be,
of a country still containing himself, that great means of regen-
eration.
"We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and
in the modern time also," said the nephew, gloomily, "that I
believe our name to be more detested than any name in France. "
"Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Detestation of the high
is the involuntary homage of the low. "
"There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, "a
face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which
## p. 4682 (#476) ###########################################
4682
CHARLES DICKENS
looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of
fear and slavery. "
"A compliment," said the Marquis, "to the grandeur of the
family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained
its grandeur. Hah! " And he took another gentle little pinch of
snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.
But when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, cov-
ered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine
mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of
keenness, closeness, and dislike than was comportable with its
wearer's assumption of indifference.
"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark defer-
ence of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis,
"will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,"
looking up to it, "shuts out the sky.
>>
That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed.
If a
picture of the château as it was to be a very few years hence,
and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years
hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have
been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred,
plunder-wrecked ruins. As for the roof he vaunted, he might
have found that shutting out the sky in a new way-to wit, for-
ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired,
out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.
"Meanwhile," said the Marquis, "I will preserve the honor
and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be
fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night? »
"A moment more. "
"An hour if you please. "
<< » said the nephew,
Sir,"
་ we have done wrong, and are reap-
ing the fruits of wrong. "
"We have done wrong? " repeated the Marquis, with an
inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then
to himself.
"Our family; our honorable family, whose honor is of so
much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my
father's time we did a world of wrong, injuring every human
creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it
Why need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally
yours? Can I separate my father's twin brother, joint inheritor,
and next successor, from himself? "
was.
## p. 4683 (#477) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4683
"Death has done that! " said the Marquis.
"And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a sys-
tem that is frightful to me, responsible for it but powerless in it;
seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and
obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me
to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance
and power in vain. "
«< Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis, touch-
ing him on the breast with his forefinger,—they were now stand-
ing by the hearth,-"you will forever seek them in vain, be
assured. "
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face was
cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking
quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again.
he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine
point of a small sword, with which in delicate finesse he ran
him through the body, and said, "My friend, I will die perpetu-
ating the system under which I have lived. "
When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff,
and put his box in his pocket.
"Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after ring-
ing a small bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny.
But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see. ”
"This property and France are lost to me," said the nephew,
sadly; "I renounce them. "
«<
"Are they both yours to renounce?
France may be, but is
the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but is it, yet? "
"I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If
it passed to me from you to-morrow
>>
"Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable. "
>>>
-
or twenty years hence-
"You do me too much honor," said the Marquis; "still, I
prefer that supposition. ”
"I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It
is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and
ruin! "
"Hah! " said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room.
"To the eye it is fair enough here; but seen in its integrity,
under the sky and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of
waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression,
hunger, nakedness, and suffering. "
## p. 4684 (#478) ###########################################
4684
CHARLES DICKENS
"Hah! " said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.
"If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands
better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible)
from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people
who cannot leave it, and who have been long wrung to the
last point of endurance, may in another generation suffer less; but
it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land. "
"And you? " said the uncle. "Forgive my curiosity; do you,
under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live? "
"I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even
with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day—work. "
"In England, for example? "
« Yes. The family honor, sir, is safe for me in this country.
The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it
in no other. "
The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bedchamber
to be lighted. It now shone brightly through the door of com-
munication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the
retreating step of his valet.
"England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently
you have prospered there," he observed then, turning his calm
face to his nephew with a smile.
"I have already said that for my prospering there, I am
sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my
Refuge. "
"They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of
many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there?
A Doctor? "
"Yes. "
"With a daughter? "
"Yes. "
"Yes," said the Marquis. "You are fatigued. Good-night! "
As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a
secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery
to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew
forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the set-
ting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in
the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic.
"Yes," repeated the Marquis. "A Doctor with a daughter.
Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued.
Good-night! "
## p. 4685 (#479) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4685
It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone
fence outside the château as to interrogate that face of his.
The nephew looked at him in vain, in passing on to the door.
"Good-night! " said the uncle. "I look to the pleasure of
seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur
my nephew to his chamber, there! And burn Monsieur my
nephew in his bed, if you will," he added to himself, before he
rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to his own
bedroom.
The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to
and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for
sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-
slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a
refined tiger;-looked like some enchanted marquis of the im-
penitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into
tiger form was either just going off or just coming on.
He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, look-
ing again at the scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden
into his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting
sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little vil-
lage in the hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender
of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the
carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little
bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the
tall man with his arms up, crying, "Dead! "
"I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, "and may go
to bed. "
So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let
his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night
break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to
sleep.
The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black
night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours the horses
in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl
made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise con-
ventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the
obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set
down for them.
For three heavy hours the stone faces of the château, lion and
human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the
landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust
## p. 4686 (#480) ###########################################
4686
CHARLES DICKENS
on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its
little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one an-
other; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for any-
thing that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed
were fast asleep. Dreaming perhaps of banquets, as the starved
usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the
yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed
and freed.
The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and
the fountain at the château dropped unseen and unheard - both
melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring
of Time through three dark hours. Then the gray water of
both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone
faces of the château were opened.
Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of
the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the
glow, the water of the château fountain seemed to turn to blood,
and the stone faces crimsoned.
The carol of the birds was loud
and high, and on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of
the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its
sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face
seemed to stare amazed, and with open mouth and dropped under-
jaw, looked awe-stricken.
Now the sun was full up, and movement began in the village.
Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and peo-
ple came forth shivering-chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air.
Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the vil-
lage population. Some to the fountain; some to the fields; men
and women here to dig and delve; men and women there to see
to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out to such pasture
as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the
Cross a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers,
the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.
The château awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke
gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of
the chase had been reddened as of old; then had gleamed trench-
ant in the morning sunshine; now doors and windows were
thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their
shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves
sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at
their chains and reared, impatient to be loosed.
## p. 4687 (#481) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4687
All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life and
the return of morning. Surely not so the ringing of the great
bell of the château, nor the running up and down the stairs, nor
the hurried figures on the terrace, nor the booting and tramping
here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses
and riding away?
What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of
roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with
his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it
was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones?
Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped
one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the
mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life,
down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got
to the fountain.
All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing
about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but show-
ing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led
cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would
hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the
cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they
had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people
of the château, and some of those of the posting-house, and all
the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were
crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless
way that was highly fraught with nothing. Already the mender
of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty par-
ticular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his
blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the
swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horse-
back, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden
though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the
German ballad of Leonora ?
It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at
the château.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night,
and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for
which it had waited through about two hundred years.
It was
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis.
like a fine mask, suddenly started, made angry, and petrified.
## p. 4688 (#482) ###########################################
4688
CHARLES DICKENS
Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it,
was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was
scrawled:
"Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES. "
OH
THE IVY GREEN
H, A dainty plant is the Ivy Green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the moldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green.
Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
And a stanch old heart has he.
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,
To his friend the huge Oak-Tree!
And slyly he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mold of dead men's graves.
Creeping where grim death has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green.
Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant in its lonely days.
Shall fatten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the Ivy's food at last.
Creeping on, where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green.
## p. 4689 (#483) ###########################################
4689
•
(1713-1784)
MONG the French Encyclopædists of the eighteenth century
Denis Diderot holds the place of leader. There were intel-
lects of broader scope and of much surer balance in that
famous group, but none of such versatility, brilliancy, and outburst-
ing force. To his associates he was a marvel and an inspiration.
He was born in October 1713, in Langres, Haute-Marne, France;
and died in Paris July 31st, 1784. After a classical education in Jes-
uit schools, he utterly disgusted his father by turning to the Bohe-
mian life of a littérateur in Paris. Although
very poor, he married at the age of thirty.
The whole story of his married life-the
common Parisian story in those days-
reflects no credit on him; though his liaison
with Mademoiselle Voland presents the as-
pects of a friendship abiding through life.
Poverty spurred him to exertion. Four
days of work in 1746 are said to have pro-
duced 'Pensées Philosophiques' (Philosophic
Thoughts). This book, with a little essay
following it, 'Interprétation de la Nature,'
was his first open attack on revealed re-
ligion. Its argument, though only negative,
and keeping within the bounds of theism,
foretokened a class of utterances which were frequent in Diderot's
later years, and whose assurance of his materialistic atheism would
be complete had they not been too exclamatory for settled convic-
tion. He contents himself with glorifying the passions, to the annul-
ling of all ethical standards. On this point at least his convictions
were stable, for long afterward he writes thus to Mademoiselle Vo-
land: "The man of mediocre passion lives and dies like the brute.
If we were bound to choose between Racine, a bad husband,
a bad father, a false friend, and a sublime poet, and Racine, good
father, good husband, good friend, and dull worthy man, I hold to
the first. Of Racine the bad man, what remains? Nothing. Of Ra-
cine the man of genius? The work is eternal. "
About 1747 he produced an allegory, Promenade du Sceptique. '
This French Pilgrim's Progress' scoffs at the Church of Rome for
VIII-294
•
·
DENIS DIDEROT
DENIS DIDEROT
## p. 4690 (#484) ###########################################
4690
DENIS DIDEROT
denying pleasure, then decries the pleasures of the world, and ends.
by asserting the hopeless uncertainty of the philosophy which both
scoffs at the Church and decries worldly pleasure. At this period he
was evidently inclined to an irregular attack on the only forms of
Christianity familiar to him, asceticism and pietism.
In 1749 Diderot first showed himself a thinker of original power,
in his Letter on the Blind. This work, 'Lettre sur les Aveugles
à l'Usage de Ceux qui Voient' (Letter on the Blind for the Use of
Those who See) opened the eyes of the public to Diderot's peculiar
genius, and the eyes of the authorities to the menace in his princi-
ples. The result was his imprisonment, and from that the spread of
his views. His offense was, that through his ingenious supposition of
the mind deprived of its use of one or more of the bodily senses,
he had shown the relativity of all man's conceptions, and had thence
deduced the relativity, the lack of absoluteness, of all man's ethical
standards—thus invalidating the foundations of civil and social order.
The broad assertion that Diderot and his philosophic group caused
the French Revolution has only this basis, that these men were
among the omens of its advance, feeling its stir afar but not recog-
nizing the coming earthquake. Yet it may be conceded that Diderot
anticipated things great and strange; for his mind, although neither
precise nor capable of sustained and systematic thought, was amaz-
ingly original in conception and powerful in grasp. The mist, blank
to his brethren, seems to have wreathed itself into wonderful shapes
to his eye; he was the seer whose wild enthusiasm caught the oracles
from an inner shrine. A predictive power appears in his Letter on
the Blind, where he imagines the blind taught to read by touch; and
nineteenth-century hypotheses gleam dimly in his random guess at
variability in organisms, and at survival of those best adapted to
their environment.
Diderot's monumental work, 'L'Encyclopédie,' dates from the mid-
dle of the century. It was his own vast enlargement of Ephraim
Chambers's Cyclopædia of 1727, of which a bookseller had demanded
a revision in French. D'Alembert was secured as his colleague, and
in 1751 the first volume appeared. The list of contributors includes
most of the great contemporary names in French literature. From
these, Diderot and D'Alembert gathered the inner group known as
the French Encyclopædists, to whose writings has been ascribed a
general tendency to destroy religion and to reconstitute society.
The authorities interfered repeatedly, with threats and prohibitions
of the publication; but the science of government included the sci-
ence of connivance for an adequate consideration, and the great
work went forward. Its danger lurked in its principles; for Diderot
dealt but little in the cheap flattery which the modern demagogue
## p. 4691 (#485) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4691
addresses to the populace. D'Alembert, wearied by ten years of per-
secution, retired in 1759, leaving the indefatigable Diderot to struggle
alone through seven years, composing and revising hundreds of
articles, correcting proofs, supervising the unrivaled illustrations of.
the mechanic arts, while quieting the opposition of the authorities.
The Encyclopædia under Diderot followed no one philosophic
path. Indeed, there are no signs that he ever gave any considera-
tion to either the intellectual or the ethical force of consistency.
His writing indicates his utter carelessness both as to the direction
and as to the pace of his thought. He had an abiding conviction
that Christianity was partly delusion and largely priestcraft, and was
maintained chiefly for upholding iniquitous privilege. His antagonism
was developed primarily from his emotions and sympathies rather
than from his intellect; hence it sometimes swerved, drawing peril-
ously near to formal orthodoxy. Moreover, this vivacious philosopher
sometimes rambled into practical advice, and easily effervesced into
fervid moralizings of the sentimental and almost tearful sort. His
immense natural capacity for sentiment appears in his own account
of his meeting with Grimm after a few months' absence.
His sen-
timentalism, however, had its remarkable counterpoise in a most
practical tendency of mind. In the Encyclopædia the interests of
agriculture and of all branches of manufacture were treated with
great fullness; and the reform of feudal abuses lingering in the laws
of France was vigorously urged in a style more practical than cyclo-
pædic.
Diderot gave much attention to the drama, and his 'Paradoxe sur
le Comédien (Paradox on the Actor) is a valuable discussion. He is
the father of the modern domestic drama. His influence upon the
dramatic literature of Germany was direct and immediate; it appeared
in the plays of Lessing and Schiller, and much of Lessing's criticism
was inspired by Diderot. His 'Père de Famille' (Family-Father) and
'Le Fils Naturel' (The Natural Son) marked the beginning of a new
era in the history of the stage, in the midst of which we are now
living. Breaking with the old traditions, Diderot abandoned the lofty
themes of classic tragedy and portrayed the life of the bourgeoisie.
The influence of England, frequently manifest in the work of the
Encyclopædists, is evident also here. Richardson was then the chief
force in fiction, and the sentimental element so characteristic in him
reappears in the dramas of Diderot.
Goethe was strongly attracted by the genius of Diderot, and
thought it worth his while not only to translate but to supply with
a long and luminous commentary the latter's Essay on Painting. '
It was by a singular trick of fortune, too, that one of Diderot's
most powerful works should first have appeared in German garb, and
## p. 4692 (#486) ###########################################
4692
DENIS DIDEROT
not in the original French until after the author's death. A manu-
script copy of the book chanced to fall into the hands of Goethe,
who so greatly admired it that he at once translated, annotated,
and published it. This was the famous dialogue Le Neveu de
Rameau' (Rameau's Nephew), a work which only Diderot's peculiar
genius could have produced. Depicting the typical parasite, shame-
less, quick-witted for every species of villainy, at home in every pos-
sible meanness, the dialogue is a probably unequaled compound of
satire, high æsthetics, gleaming humor, sentimental moralizing, fine
musical criticism, and scientific character analysis, with passages of
brutal indecency.
Among literary critics of painting, Diderot has his place in the
highest rank. His nine Salons'-criticisms which in his good-nature
he wrote for the use of his friend Grimm, on the annual exhibitions
in the Paris Salon from 1759 onward-have never been surpassed
among non-technical criticisms for brilliancy, freshness, and philo-
sophic suggestiveness. They reveal the man's elemental strength;
which was not in his knowledge, for he was without technical train-
ing in art and had seen scarcely any of the world's masterpieces,
but in his sensuously sympathetic nature, which gave him quickness.
of insight and delicacy in interpretation.
He had the faculty of making and keeping friends, being un-
affected, genial, amiable, enthusiastically generous and helpful to his
friends, and without vindictiveness to his foes. He needed these
qualities to counteract his almost utter lack of conscientiousness, his
gush of sentiment, his unregulated morals, his undisciplined genius,
his unbalanced thought. His style of writing, often vivid and strong,
is as often awkward and dull, and is frequently lacking in finish.
As a philosophic author and thinker his voluminous work is of little
enduring worth, for though plentiful in original power it totally lacks
organic unity; his thought rambles carelessly, his method is con-
fused. It has been said of him that he was a master who produced
no masterpiece. But as a talker, a converser, all witnesses testify
that he was wondrously inspiring and suggestive, speaking sometimes
as from mysterious heights of vision or out of unsearchable deeps of
thought.
## p. 4693 (#487) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4693
FROM RAMEAU'S NEPHEW
BE
E THE weather fair or foul, it is my custom in any case at
five o'clock in the afternoon to stroll in the Palais Royal.
I am always to be seen alone and meditative, on the bench
D'Argenson. I hold converse with myself on politics or love, on
taste or philosophy, and yield up my soul entirely to its own
frivolity. It may follow the first idea that presents itself, be the
idea wise or foolish. In the Allée de Foi one sees our young
rakes following upon the heels of some courtesan who passes on
with shameless mien, laughing face, animated glance, and a pug
nose; but they soon leave her to follow another, teasing them
all, joining none of them. My thoughts are my courtesans.
When it is really too cold or rainy, I take refuge in the Café
de la Régence and amuse myself by watching the chess-players.
Paris is the place of the world and the Café de la Régence the
place of Paris where the best chess is played. There one wit-
nesses the most carefully calculated moves; there one hears the
most vulgar conversation; for since it is possible to be at once
a man of intellect and a great chess-player, like Légal, so also
one may be at once a great chess-player and a very silly person,
like Foubert or Mayot.
One afternoon I was there, observing much, speaking rarely,
and hearing as little as possible, when one of the most singular
personages came up to me that ever was produced by this land
of ours, where surely God has never caused a dearth of singular
characters. He is a combination of high-mindedness and base-
ness, of sound understanding and folly; in his head the concep-
tions of honor and dishonor must be strangely tangled, for the
good qualities with which nature has endowed him he displays
without boastfulness, and the bad qualities without shame. For
the rest, he is firmly built, has an extraordinary power of im-
agination, and possesses an uncommonly strong pair of lungs.
Should you ever meet him and succeed in escaping from the
charm of his originality, it must be by stopping both ears with
your fingers or by precipitate flight. Heavens, what terrible
lungs!
And nothing is less like him than he himself. Sometimes he
is thin and wasted, like a man in the last stages of consump-
tion; you could count his teeth through his cheeks; you would
## p. 4694 (#488) ###########################################
4694
DENIS DIDEROT
think he had not tasted food for several days, or had come from
La Trappe.
A month later he is fattened and filled out as if he had never
left the banquets of the rich or had been fed among the Ber-
nardines. To-day, with soiled linen, torn trousers, clad in rags,
and almost barefoot, he passes with bowed head, avoids those
whom he meets, till one is tempted to call him and bestow upon
him an alms. To-morrow, powdered, well groomed, well dressed,
and well shod, he carries his head high, lets himself be seen, and
you would take him almost for a respectable man.
So he lives from day to day, sad or merry, according to the
circumstances. His first care, when he rises in the morning, is
to take thought where he is to dine. After dinner he bethinks
himself of some opportunity to procure supper, and with the night
come new cares. Sometimes he goes on foot to his little attic,
which is his home if the landlady, impatient at long arrears of
rent, has not taken the key away from him. Sometimes he goes
to one of the taverns in the suburbs, and there, between a bit of
bread and a mug of beer, awaits the day. If he lacks the six
sous necessary to procure him quarters for the night, which is
occasionally the case, he applies to some cabman among his
friends or to the coachman of some great lord, and a place on the
straw beside the horses is vouchsafed him. In the morning he
carries a part of his mattress in his hair. If the season is mild,
he spends the whole night strolling back and forth on the Cours
or in the Champs Élysées. With the day he appears again in
the city, dressed yesterday for to-day and to-day often for the
rest of the week.
For such originals I cannot feel much esteem, but there are
others who make close acquaintances and even friends of them.
Once in the year perhaps they are able to put their spell upon
me, when I meet them, because their character is in such strong
contrast to that of every-day humanity, and they break the oppress-
ive monotony which our education, our social conventions, our
traditional proprieties have produced. When such a man enters
a company, he acts like a cake of yeast that raises the whole, and
restores to each a part of his natural individuality. He shakes
them up, brings things into motion, elicits praise or censure,
drives truth into the open, makes upright men recognizable, un-
masks the rogues, and there the wise man sits and listens and is
enabled to distinguish one class from another.
## p. 4695 (#489) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4695
This particular specimen I had long known; he frequented a
house into which his talents had secured him the entrée. These
people had an only daughter. He swore to the parents that he
would marry their daughter. They only shrugged their shoul-
ders, laughed in his face, and assured him that he was a fool.
But I saw the day come when the thing was accomplished. He
asked me for some money, which I gave him. He had, I know
not how, squirmed his way into a few houses, where a couvert
stood always ready for him, but it had been stipulated that he
should never speak without the consent of his hosts. So there he
sat and ate, filled the while with malice; it was fun to see him
under this restraint. The moment he ventured to break the
treaty and open his mouth, at the very first word the guests all
shouted "O Rameau! " Then his eyes flashed wrathfully, and he
fell upon his food again with renewed energy.
You were curious to know the man's name; there it is. He
is the nephew of the famous composer who has saved us from
the church music of Lulli which we have been chanting for a
hundred years,
and who, having buried the Florentine,
will himself be buried by Italian virtuosi; he dimly feels this, and
so has become morose and irritable, for no one can be in a worse
humor- not even a beautiful woman who in the morning finds
a pimple on her nose - than an author who sees himself threat-
ened with the fate of outliving his reputation, as Marivaux and
Crébillon fils prove.
Rameau's nephew came up to me. "Ah, my philosopher, do
I meet you once again? What are you doing here among the
good-for-nothings? Are you wasting your time pushing bits of
wood about? "
·
·
-
I-No; but when I have nothing better to do, I take a
passing pleasure in watching those who push them about with
skill.
He-A rare pleasure, surely. Excepting Légal and Philidor,
there is no one here that understands it.
·
I-You are hard to please. I see that only the best finds
favor with you.
He-Yes, in chess, checkers, poetry, oratory, music, and such
other trumpery. Of what possible use is mediocrity in these
things?
I-I am almost ready to agree with you.
## p. 4696 (#490) ###########################################
4696
DENIS DIDEROT
He- You have always shown some interest in me, because
I'm a poor devil whom you really despise, but who after all
amuses you.
I-That is true.
He-Then let me tell you. (Before beginning, he drew a
deep sigh, covered his forehead with both hands, then with calm
countenance continued:-) You know I am ignorant, foolish,
silly, shameless, rascally, gluttonous.
I-What a panegyric!
He-It is entirely true.
tradiction, I pray you.
myself, and I don't tell all.
Not a word to be abated; no con-
No one knows me better than I know
I-Rather than anger you, I will assent.
He- Now, just think, I lived with people who valued me pre-
cisely because all these qualities were mine in a high degree.
I-That is most remarkable. I have hitherto believed that
people concealed these qualities even from themselves, or excused
them, but always despised them in others.
He-Conceal them? Is that possible? You may be sure that
when Palissot is alone and contemplates himself, he tells quite a
different story. You may be sure that he and his companion
make open confession to each other that they are a pair of arrant
rogues. Despise these qualities in others? My people were much
more reasonable, and I fared excellently well among them.
I was cock of the walk. When absent, I was instantly missed. I
was pampered. I was their little Rameau, their good Rameau,
the shameless, ignorant, lazy Rameau, the fool, the clown, the
gourmand. Each of these epithets was to me a smile, a caress, a
slap on the back, a box on the ears, a kick, a dainty morsel
thrown upon my plate at dinner, a liberty permitted me after
dinner as if it were of no account; for I am of no account.
People make of me and do before me and with me whatever
they please, and I never give it a thought.
I-You have been giving lessons, I understand, in accom-
paniment and composition?
He-Yes.
I-And you knew absolutely nothing about it?
rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths
for the burning of wood in winter-time, and all luxuries befitting
the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The
fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to
break the fourteenth Louis-was conspicuous in their rich
furniture; but it was diversified by many objects that were illus-
trations of old pages in the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a
round room, in one of the château's four extinguisher-topped
towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the
wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed
in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad
lines of stone-color.
―――――
"My nephew," said the Marquis, glancing at the supper prepa-
ration; "they said he was not arrived. "
Nor was he; but he had been expected with Monseigneur.
"Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless,
leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour. ”
In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down
alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was
## p. 4679 (#473) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4679
opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup and was rais-
ing his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down.
"What is that? " he calmly asked, looking with attention at
the horizontal lines of black and stone-color.
"Monseigneur? That? "
"Outside the blinds. Open the blinds. "
It was done.
"Well? »
«< 'Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all
that are here. "
The servant who spoke had thrown the blinds wide, had
looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood, with that blank
behind him, looking round for instructions.
«< Good," said the imperturbable master. "Close them again. "
That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper.
He was half-way through it, when he again stopped with his
glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on
briskly, and came up to the front of the château.
"Ask who is arrived. "
It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few
leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had
diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up
with Monseigneur on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur,
at the posting-houses, as being before him.
In a
He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him
then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it.
little while he came. He had been known in England as Charles
Darnay.
Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did
not shake hands.
"You left Paris yesterday, sir? " he said to Monseigneur, as
he took his seat at table.
"Yesterday. And you? "
"I come direct. "
"From London ? »
"Yes. "
"You have been a long time coming," said the Marquis, with
a smile.
"On the contrary; I come direct. "
"Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long
time intending the journey. "
## p. 4680 (#474) ###########################################
4680
CHARLES DICKENS
"I have been detained by "the nephew stopped a moment
in his answer "various business. "
――――
"Without doubt," said the polished uncle.
So long as a servant was present, no other words passed
between them. When coffee had been served and they were
alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting
the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask, opened a conver-
sation.
"I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object
that took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected
peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death
I hope it would have sustained me. "
"Not to death," said the uncle; "it is not necessary to say,
to death. "
"I doubt, sir," returned the nephew, "whether, if it had car-
ried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to
stop me there. »
The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of
the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to
that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so
clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring.
"Indeed, sir," pursued the nephew, "for anything I know,
you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious ap-
pearance to the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me. "
"No, no, no," said the uncle pleasantly.
«< But, however that may be," resumed the nephew, glancing
at him with deep distrust, "I know that your diplomacy would
stop me by any means, and would know no scruple as to
means. "
"My friend, I told you so," said the uncle, with a fine pulsa-
tion in the two marks. "Do me the favor to recall that I told
you so, long ago. "
"I recall it. "
"Thank you," said the Marquis very sweetly indeed.
His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical
instrument.
-
"In effect, sir," pursued the nephew, "I believe it to be at
once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me
out of a prison in France here. "
"I do not quite understand," returned the uncle, sipping his
coffee. "Dare I ask you to explain? »
## p. 4681 (#475) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4681
"I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the court,
and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a
lettre de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely. "
"It is possible," said the uncle, with great calmness. "For
the honor of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you
to that extent. Pray excuse me! "
"I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day
before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one," observed the
nephew.
"I would not say happily, my friend," returned the uncle,
with refined politeness; "I would not be sure of that. A good
opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of
solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage
than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss
the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little
instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and
honor of families, these slight favors that might so incommode
you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity.
They are sought by so many, and they are granted (compara-
tively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such
things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held
the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From
this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged;
in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge,
was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy
respecting his daughter- his daughter! We have lost many
privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the as-
sertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far
as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience.
very bad, very bad! "
All
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff and shook
his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be,
of a country still containing himself, that great means of regen-
eration.
"We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and
in the modern time also," said the nephew, gloomily, "that I
believe our name to be more detested than any name in France. "
"Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Detestation of the high
is the involuntary homage of the low. "
"There is not," pursued the nephew, in his former tone, "a
face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which
## p. 4682 (#476) ###########################################
4682
CHARLES DICKENS
looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of
fear and slavery. "
"A compliment," said the Marquis, "to the grandeur of the
family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained
its grandeur. Hah! " And he took another gentle little pinch of
snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.
But when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, cov-
ered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine
mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of
keenness, closeness, and dislike than was comportable with its
wearer's assumption of indifference.
"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark defer-
ence of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis,
"will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,"
looking up to it, "shuts out the sky.
>>
That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed.
If a
picture of the château as it was to be a very few years hence,
and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years
hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have
been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred,
plunder-wrecked ruins. As for the roof he vaunted, he might
have found that shutting out the sky in a new way-to wit, for-
ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired,
out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.
"Meanwhile," said the Marquis, "I will preserve the honor
and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be
fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night? »
"A moment more. "
"An hour if you please. "
<< » said the nephew,
Sir,"
་ we have done wrong, and are reap-
ing the fruits of wrong. "
"We have done wrong? " repeated the Marquis, with an
inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then
to himself.
"Our family; our honorable family, whose honor is of so
much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my
father's time we did a world of wrong, injuring every human
creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it
Why need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally
yours? Can I separate my father's twin brother, joint inheritor,
and next successor, from himself? "
was.
## p. 4683 (#477) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4683
"Death has done that! " said the Marquis.
"And has left me," answered the nephew, "bound to a sys-
tem that is frightful to me, responsible for it but powerless in it;
seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and
obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me
to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance
and power in vain. "
«< Seeking them from me, my nephew," said the Marquis, touch-
ing him on the breast with his forefinger,—they were now stand-
ing by the hearth,-"you will forever seek them in vain, be
assured. "
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face was
cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking
quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again.
he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine
point of a small sword, with which in delicate finesse he ran
him through the body, and said, "My friend, I will die perpetu-
ating the system under which I have lived. "
When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff,
and put his box in his pocket.
"Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after ring-
ing a small bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny.
But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see. ”
"This property and France are lost to me," said the nephew,
sadly; "I renounce them. "
«<
"Are they both yours to renounce?
France may be, but is
the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but is it, yet? "
"I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If
it passed to me from you to-morrow
>>
"Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable. "
>>>
-
or twenty years hence-
"You do me too much honor," said the Marquis; "still, I
prefer that supposition. ”
"I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It
is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and
ruin! "
"Hah! " said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room.
"To the eye it is fair enough here; but seen in its integrity,
under the sky and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of
waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression,
hunger, nakedness, and suffering. "
## p. 4684 (#478) ###########################################
4684
CHARLES DICKENS
"Hah! " said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.
"If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands
better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible)
from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people
who cannot leave it, and who have been long wrung to the
last point of endurance, may in another generation suffer less; but
it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land. "
"And you? " said the uncle. "Forgive my curiosity; do you,
under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live? "
"I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even
with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day—work. "
"In England, for example? "
« Yes. The family honor, sir, is safe for me in this country.
The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it
in no other. "
The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bedchamber
to be lighted. It now shone brightly through the door of com-
munication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the
retreating step of his valet.
"England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently
you have prospered there," he observed then, turning his calm
face to his nephew with a smile.
"I have already said that for my prospering there, I am
sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my
Refuge. "
"They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of
many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there?
A Doctor? "
"Yes. "
"With a daughter? "
"Yes. "
"Yes," said the Marquis. "You are fatigued. Good-night! "
As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a
secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery
to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew
forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the set-
ting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in
the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic.
"Yes," repeated the Marquis. "A Doctor with a daughter.
Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued.
Good-night! "
## p. 4685 (#479) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4685
It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone
fence outside the château as to interrogate that face of his.
The nephew looked at him in vain, in passing on to the door.
"Good-night! " said the uncle. "I look to the pleasure of
seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur
my nephew to his chamber, there! And burn Monsieur my
nephew in his bed, if you will," he added to himself, before he
rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to his own
bedroom.
The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to
and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for
sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-
slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a
refined tiger;-looked like some enchanted marquis of the im-
penitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into
tiger form was either just going off or just coming on.
He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, look-
ing again at the scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden
into his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting
sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little vil-
lage in the hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender
of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the
carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little
bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the
tall man with his arms up, crying, "Dead! "
"I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, "and may go
to bed. "
So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let
his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night
break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to
sleep.
The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black
night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours the horses
in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl
made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise con-
ventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the
obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set
down for them.
For three heavy hours the stone faces of the château, lion and
human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the
landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust
## p. 4686 (#480) ###########################################
4686
CHARLES DICKENS
on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its
little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one an-
other; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for any-
thing that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed
were fast asleep. Dreaming perhaps of banquets, as the starved
usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the
yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed
and freed.
The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and
the fountain at the château dropped unseen and unheard - both
melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring
of Time through three dark hours. Then the gray water of
both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone
faces of the château were opened.
Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of
the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the
glow, the water of the château fountain seemed to turn to blood,
and the stone faces crimsoned.
The carol of the birds was loud
and high, and on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of
the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its
sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face
seemed to stare amazed, and with open mouth and dropped under-
jaw, looked awe-stricken.
Now the sun was full up, and movement began in the village.
Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and peo-
ple came forth shivering-chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air.
Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the vil-
lage population. Some to the fountain; some to the fields; men
and women here to dig and delve; men and women there to see
to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out to such pasture
as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the
Cross a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers,
the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.
The château awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke
gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of
the chase had been reddened as of old; then had gleamed trench-
ant in the morning sunshine; now doors and windows were
thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their
shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves
sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at
their chains and reared, impatient to be loosed.
## p. 4687 (#481) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4687
All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life and
the return of morning. Surely not so the ringing of the great
bell of the château, nor the running up and down the stairs, nor
the hurried figures on the terrace, nor the booting and tramping
here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses
and riding away?
What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of
roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with
his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it
was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones?
Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped
one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the
mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life,
down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got
to the fountain.
All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing
about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but show-
ing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led
cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would
hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the
cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they
had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people
of the château, and some of those of the posting-house, and all
the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were
crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless
way that was highly fraught with nothing. Already the mender
of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty par-
ticular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his
blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the
swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horse-
back, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden
though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the
German ballad of Leonora ?
It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at
the château.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night,
and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for
which it had waited through about two hundred years.
It was
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis.
like a fine mask, suddenly started, made angry, and petrified.
## p. 4688 (#482) ###########################################
4688
CHARLES DICKENS
Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it,
was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was
scrawled:
"Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES. "
OH
THE IVY GREEN
H, A dainty plant is the Ivy Green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the moldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green.
Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
And a stanch old heart has he.
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,
To his friend the huge Oak-Tree!
And slyly he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mold of dead men's graves.
Creeping where grim death has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green.
Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant in its lonely days.
Shall fatten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the Ivy's food at last.
Creeping on, where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green.
## p. 4689 (#483) ###########################################
4689
•
(1713-1784)
MONG the French Encyclopædists of the eighteenth century
Denis Diderot holds the place of leader. There were intel-
lects of broader scope and of much surer balance in that
famous group, but none of such versatility, brilliancy, and outburst-
ing force. To his associates he was a marvel and an inspiration.
He was born in October 1713, in Langres, Haute-Marne, France;
and died in Paris July 31st, 1784. After a classical education in Jes-
uit schools, he utterly disgusted his father by turning to the Bohe-
mian life of a littérateur in Paris. Although
very poor, he married at the age of thirty.
The whole story of his married life-the
common Parisian story in those days-
reflects no credit on him; though his liaison
with Mademoiselle Voland presents the as-
pects of a friendship abiding through life.
Poverty spurred him to exertion. Four
days of work in 1746 are said to have pro-
duced 'Pensées Philosophiques' (Philosophic
Thoughts). This book, with a little essay
following it, 'Interprétation de la Nature,'
was his first open attack on revealed re-
ligion. Its argument, though only negative,
and keeping within the bounds of theism,
foretokened a class of utterances which were frequent in Diderot's
later years, and whose assurance of his materialistic atheism would
be complete had they not been too exclamatory for settled convic-
tion. He contents himself with glorifying the passions, to the annul-
ling of all ethical standards. On this point at least his convictions
were stable, for long afterward he writes thus to Mademoiselle Vo-
land: "The man of mediocre passion lives and dies like the brute.
If we were bound to choose between Racine, a bad husband,
a bad father, a false friend, and a sublime poet, and Racine, good
father, good husband, good friend, and dull worthy man, I hold to
the first. Of Racine the bad man, what remains? Nothing. Of Ra-
cine the man of genius? The work is eternal. "
About 1747 he produced an allegory, Promenade du Sceptique. '
This French Pilgrim's Progress' scoffs at the Church of Rome for
VIII-294
•
·
DENIS DIDEROT
DENIS DIDEROT
## p. 4690 (#484) ###########################################
4690
DENIS DIDEROT
denying pleasure, then decries the pleasures of the world, and ends.
by asserting the hopeless uncertainty of the philosophy which both
scoffs at the Church and decries worldly pleasure. At this period he
was evidently inclined to an irregular attack on the only forms of
Christianity familiar to him, asceticism and pietism.
In 1749 Diderot first showed himself a thinker of original power,
in his Letter on the Blind. This work, 'Lettre sur les Aveugles
à l'Usage de Ceux qui Voient' (Letter on the Blind for the Use of
Those who See) opened the eyes of the public to Diderot's peculiar
genius, and the eyes of the authorities to the menace in his princi-
ples. The result was his imprisonment, and from that the spread of
his views. His offense was, that through his ingenious supposition of
the mind deprived of its use of one or more of the bodily senses,
he had shown the relativity of all man's conceptions, and had thence
deduced the relativity, the lack of absoluteness, of all man's ethical
standards—thus invalidating the foundations of civil and social order.
The broad assertion that Diderot and his philosophic group caused
the French Revolution has only this basis, that these men were
among the omens of its advance, feeling its stir afar but not recog-
nizing the coming earthquake. Yet it may be conceded that Diderot
anticipated things great and strange; for his mind, although neither
precise nor capable of sustained and systematic thought, was amaz-
ingly original in conception and powerful in grasp. The mist, blank
to his brethren, seems to have wreathed itself into wonderful shapes
to his eye; he was the seer whose wild enthusiasm caught the oracles
from an inner shrine. A predictive power appears in his Letter on
the Blind, where he imagines the blind taught to read by touch; and
nineteenth-century hypotheses gleam dimly in his random guess at
variability in organisms, and at survival of those best adapted to
their environment.
Diderot's monumental work, 'L'Encyclopédie,' dates from the mid-
dle of the century. It was his own vast enlargement of Ephraim
Chambers's Cyclopædia of 1727, of which a bookseller had demanded
a revision in French. D'Alembert was secured as his colleague, and
in 1751 the first volume appeared. The list of contributors includes
most of the great contemporary names in French literature. From
these, Diderot and D'Alembert gathered the inner group known as
the French Encyclopædists, to whose writings has been ascribed a
general tendency to destroy religion and to reconstitute society.
The authorities interfered repeatedly, with threats and prohibitions
of the publication; but the science of government included the sci-
ence of connivance for an adequate consideration, and the great
work went forward. Its danger lurked in its principles; for Diderot
dealt but little in the cheap flattery which the modern demagogue
## p. 4691 (#485) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4691
addresses to the populace. D'Alembert, wearied by ten years of per-
secution, retired in 1759, leaving the indefatigable Diderot to struggle
alone through seven years, composing and revising hundreds of
articles, correcting proofs, supervising the unrivaled illustrations of.
the mechanic arts, while quieting the opposition of the authorities.
The Encyclopædia under Diderot followed no one philosophic
path. Indeed, there are no signs that he ever gave any considera-
tion to either the intellectual or the ethical force of consistency.
His writing indicates his utter carelessness both as to the direction
and as to the pace of his thought. He had an abiding conviction
that Christianity was partly delusion and largely priestcraft, and was
maintained chiefly for upholding iniquitous privilege. His antagonism
was developed primarily from his emotions and sympathies rather
than from his intellect; hence it sometimes swerved, drawing peril-
ously near to formal orthodoxy. Moreover, this vivacious philosopher
sometimes rambled into practical advice, and easily effervesced into
fervid moralizings of the sentimental and almost tearful sort. His
immense natural capacity for sentiment appears in his own account
of his meeting with Grimm after a few months' absence.
His sen-
timentalism, however, had its remarkable counterpoise in a most
practical tendency of mind. In the Encyclopædia the interests of
agriculture and of all branches of manufacture were treated with
great fullness; and the reform of feudal abuses lingering in the laws
of France was vigorously urged in a style more practical than cyclo-
pædic.
Diderot gave much attention to the drama, and his 'Paradoxe sur
le Comédien (Paradox on the Actor) is a valuable discussion. He is
the father of the modern domestic drama. His influence upon the
dramatic literature of Germany was direct and immediate; it appeared
in the plays of Lessing and Schiller, and much of Lessing's criticism
was inspired by Diderot. His 'Père de Famille' (Family-Father) and
'Le Fils Naturel' (The Natural Son) marked the beginning of a new
era in the history of the stage, in the midst of which we are now
living. Breaking with the old traditions, Diderot abandoned the lofty
themes of classic tragedy and portrayed the life of the bourgeoisie.
The influence of England, frequently manifest in the work of the
Encyclopædists, is evident also here. Richardson was then the chief
force in fiction, and the sentimental element so characteristic in him
reappears in the dramas of Diderot.
Goethe was strongly attracted by the genius of Diderot, and
thought it worth his while not only to translate but to supply with
a long and luminous commentary the latter's Essay on Painting. '
It was by a singular trick of fortune, too, that one of Diderot's
most powerful works should first have appeared in German garb, and
## p. 4692 (#486) ###########################################
4692
DENIS DIDEROT
not in the original French until after the author's death. A manu-
script copy of the book chanced to fall into the hands of Goethe,
who so greatly admired it that he at once translated, annotated,
and published it. This was the famous dialogue Le Neveu de
Rameau' (Rameau's Nephew), a work which only Diderot's peculiar
genius could have produced. Depicting the typical parasite, shame-
less, quick-witted for every species of villainy, at home in every pos-
sible meanness, the dialogue is a probably unequaled compound of
satire, high æsthetics, gleaming humor, sentimental moralizing, fine
musical criticism, and scientific character analysis, with passages of
brutal indecency.
Among literary critics of painting, Diderot has his place in the
highest rank. His nine Salons'-criticisms which in his good-nature
he wrote for the use of his friend Grimm, on the annual exhibitions
in the Paris Salon from 1759 onward-have never been surpassed
among non-technical criticisms for brilliancy, freshness, and philo-
sophic suggestiveness. They reveal the man's elemental strength;
which was not in his knowledge, for he was without technical train-
ing in art and had seen scarcely any of the world's masterpieces,
but in his sensuously sympathetic nature, which gave him quickness.
of insight and delicacy in interpretation.
He had the faculty of making and keeping friends, being un-
affected, genial, amiable, enthusiastically generous and helpful to his
friends, and without vindictiveness to his foes. He needed these
qualities to counteract his almost utter lack of conscientiousness, his
gush of sentiment, his unregulated morals, his undisciplined genius,
his unbalanced thought. His style of writing, often vivid and strong,
is as often awkward and dull, and is frequently lacking in finish.
As a philosophic author and thinker his voluminous work is of little
enduring worth, for though plentiful in original power it totally lacks
organic unity; his thought rambles carelessly, his method is con-
fused. It has been said of him that he was a master who produced
no masterpiece. But as a talker, a converser, all witnesses testify
that he was wondrously inspiring and suggestive, speaking sometimes
as from mysterious heights of vision or out of unsearchable deeps of
thought.
## p. 4693 (#487) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4693
FROM RAMEAU'S NEPHEW
BE
E THE weather fair or foul, it is my custom in any case at
five o'clock in the afternoon to stroll in the Palais Royal.
I am always to be seen alone and meditative, on the bench
D'Argenson. I hold converse with myself on politics or love, on
taste or philosophy, and yield up my soul entirely to its own
frivolity. It may follow the first idea that presents itself, be the
idea wise or foolish. In the Allée de Foi one sees our young
rakes following upon the heels of some courtesan who passes on
with shameless mien, laughing face, animated glance, and a pug
nose; but they soon leave her to follow another, teasing them
all, joining none of them. My thoughts are my courtesans.
When it is really too cold or rainy, I take refuge in the Café
de la Régence and amuse myself by watching the chess-players.
Paris is the place of the world and the Café de la Régence the
place of Paris where the best chess is played. There one wit-
nesses the most carefully calculated moves; there one hears the
most vulgar conversation; for since it is possible to be at once
a man of intellect and a great chess-player, like Légal, so also
one may be at once a great chess-player and a very silly person,
like Foubert or Mayot.
One afternoon I was there, observing much, speaking rarely,
and hearing as little as possible, when one of the most singular
personages came up to me that ever was produced by this land
of ours, where surely God has never caused a dearth of singular
characters. He is a combination of high-mindedness and base-
ness, of sound understanding and folly; in his head the concep-
tions of honor and dishonor must be strangely tangled, for the
good qualities with which nature has endowed him he displays
without boastfulness, and the bad qualities without shame. For
the rest, he is firmly built, has an extraordinary power of im-
agination, and possesses an uncommonly strong pair of lungs.
Should you ever meet him and succeed in escaping from the
charm of his originality, it must be by stopping both ears with
your fingers or by precipitate flight. Heavens, what terrible
lungs!
And nothing is less like him than he himself. Sometimes he
is thin and wasted, like a man in the last stages of consump-
tion; you could count his teeth through his cheeks; you would
## p. 4694 (#488) ###########################################
4694
DENIS DIDEROT
think he had not tasted food for several days, or had come from
La Trappe.
A month later he is fattened and filled out as if he had never
left the banquets of the rich or had been fed among the Ber-
nardines. To-day, with soiled linen, torn trousers, clad in rags,
and almost barefoot, he passes with bowed head, avoids those
whom he meets, till one is tempted to call him and bestow upon
him an alms. To-morrow, powdered, well groomed, well dressed,
and well shod, he carries his head high, lets himself be seen, and
you would take him almost for a respectable man.
So he lives from day to day, sad or merry, according to the
circumstances. His first care, when he rises in the morning, is
to take thought where he is to dine. After dinner he bethinks
himself of some opportunity to procure supper, and with the night
come new cares. Sometimes he goes on foot to his little attic,
which is his home if the landlady, impatient at long arrears of
rent, has not taken the key away from him. Sometimes he goes
to one of the taverns in the suburbs, and there, between a bit of
bread and a mug of beer, awaits the day. If he lacks the six
sous necessary to procure him quarters for the night, which is
occasionally the case, he applies to some cabman among his
friends or to the coachman of some great lord, and a place on the
straw beside the horses is vouchsafed him. In the morning he
carries a part of his mattress in his hair. If the season is mild,
he spends the whole night strolling back and forth on the Cours
or in the Champs Élysées. With the day he appears again in
the city, dressed yesterday for to-day and to-day often for the
rest of the week.
For such originals I cannot feel much esteem, but there are
others who make close acquaintances and even friends of them.
Once in the year perhaps they are able to put their spell upon
me, when I meet them, because their character is in such strong
contrast to that of every-day humanity, and they break the oppress-
ive monotony which our education, our social conventions, our
traditional proprieties have produced. When such a man enters
a company, he acts like a cake of yeast that raises the whole, and
restores to each a part of his natural individuality. He shakes
them up, brings things into motion, elicits praise or censure,
drives truth into the open, makes upright men recognizable, un-
masks the rogues, and there the wise man sits and listens and is
enabled to distinguish one class from another.
## p. 4695 (#489) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4695
This particular specimen I had long known; he frequented a
house into which his talents had secured him the entrée. These
people had an only daughter. He swore to the parents that he
would marry their daughter. They only shrugged their shoul-
ders, laughed in his face, and assured him that he was a fool.
But I saw the day come when the thing was accomplished. He
asked me for some money, which I gave him. He had, I know
not how, squirmed his way into a few houses, where a couvert
stood always ready for him, but it had been stipulated that he
should never speak without the consent of his hosts. So there he
sat and ate, filled the while with malice; it was fun to see him
under this restraint. The moment he ventured to break the
treaty and open his mouth, at the very first word the guests all
shouted "O Rameau! " Then his eyes flashed wrathfully, and he
fell upon his food again with renewed energy.
You were curious to know the man's name; there it is. He
is the nephew of the famous composer who has saved us from
the church music of Lulli which we have been chanting for a
hundred years,
and who, having buried the Florentine,
will himself be buried by Italian virtuosi; he dimly feels this, and
so has become morose and irritable, for no one can be in a worse
humor- not even a beautiful woman who in the morning finds
a pimple on her nose - than an author who sees himself threat-
ened with the fate of outliving his reputation, as Marivaux and
Crébillon fils prove.
Rameau's nephew came up to me. "Ah, my philosopher, do
I meet you once again? What are you doing here among the
good-for-nothings? Are you wasting your time pushing bits of
wood about? "
·
·
-
I-No; but when I have nothing better to do, I take a
passing pleasure in watching those who push them about with
skill.
He-A rare pleasure, surely. Excepting Légal and Philidor,
there is no one here that understands it.
·
I-You are hard to please. I see that only the best finds
favor with you.
He-Yes, in chess, checkers, poetry, oratory, music, and such
other trumpery. Of what possible use is mediocrity in these
things?
I-I am almost ready to agree with you.
## p. 4696 (#490) ###########################################
4696
DENIS DIDEROT
He- You have always shown some interest in me, because
I'm a poor devil whom you really despise, but who after all
amuses you.
I-That is true.
He-Then let me tell you. (Before beginning, he drew a
deep sigh, covered his forehead with both hands, then with calm
countenance continued:-) You know I am ignorant, foolish,
silly, shameless, rascally, gluttonous.
I-What a panegyric!
He-It is entirely true.
tradiction, I pray you.
myself, and I don't tell all.
Not a word to be abated; no con-
No one knows me better than I know
I-Rather than anger you, I will assent.
He- Now, just think, I lived with people who valued me pre-
cisely because all these qualities were mine in a high degree.
I-That is most remarkable. I have hitherto believed that
people concealed these qualities even from themselves, or excused
them, but always despised them in others.
He-Conceal them? Is that possible? You may be sure that
when Palissot is alone and contemplates himself, he tells quite a
different story. You may be sure that he and his companion
make open confession to each other that they are a pair of arrant
rogues. Despise these qualities in others? My people were much
more reasonable, and I fared excellently well among them.
I was cock of the walk. When absent, I was instantly missed. I
was pampered. I was their little Rameau, their good Rameau,
the shameless, ignorant, lazy Rameau, the fool, the clown, the
gourmand. Each of these epithets was to me a smile, a caress, a
slap on the back, a box on the ears, a kick, a dainty morsel
thrown upon my plate at dinner, a liberty permitted me after
dinner as if it were of no account; for I am of no account.
People make of me and do before me and with me whatever
they please, and I never give it a thought.
I-You have been giving lessons, I understand, in accom-
paniment and composition?
He-Yes.
I-And you knew absolutely nothing about it?
