This was the famous
dialogue
Le Neveu de
Rameau' (Rameau's Nephew), a work which only Diderot's peculiar
genius could have produced.
Rameau' (Rameau's Nephew), a work which only Diderot's peculiar
genius could have produced.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v08 - Dah to Dra
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?
He-No, by Heaven; and for that very reason I was a much
better teacher than those who imagine they know something
about it. At all events, I didn't spoil the taste nor ruin the hands
## p. 4697 (#491) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4697
of my young pupils. If when they left me they went to a com-
petent master, they had nothing to unlearn, for they had learned.
nothing, and that was just so much time and money saved.
I-But how did you do it?
――
He The way they all do it. I came, threw myself into a
chair:-"How bad the weather is! How tired the pavement
makes one! " Then some scraps of town gossip:
« At
the last Amateur Concert there was an Italian woman who sang
like an angel.
Poor Dumênil doesn't know what to say
or do," etc. , etc.
"Come, mademoiselle, where is your
music-book? " And as mademoiselle displays no great haste,
searches every nook and corner for the book, which she has mis-
laid, and finally calls the maid to help her, I continue:- « Little
Clairon is an enigma. There is talk of a perfectly absurd mar-
riage of what is her name? " "Nonsense, Rameau, it isn't
possible. "—"They say the affair is all settled. "
"There
is a rumor that Voltaire is dead. "-"All the better. " — "Why
all the better? "-"Then he is sure to treat us to some droll
skit. That's a way he has, a fortnight before his death. " What
more should I say? I told a few scandals about the families in
the houses where I am received, for we are all great scandal-
mongers. In short, I played the fool; they listened and laughed,
and exclaimed, "He is really too droll, isn't he? " Meanwhile
the music-book had been found under a chair, where a little dog
or a little cat had worried it, chewed it, and torn it. Then the
pretty child sat down at the piano and began to make a frightful
noise upon it. I went up to her, secretly making a sign of
approbation to her mother. "Well, now, that isn't so bad," said
the mother; "one needs only to make up one's mind to a thing;
but the trouble is, one will not make up one's mind; one would
rather kill time by chattering, trifling, running about, and God
knows what. Scarcely do you turn your back but the book is
closed, and not until you are at her side again is it opened.
Besides, I have never heard you reprimand her. " In the mean
time, since something had to be done, I took her hands and
placed them differently. I pretended to lose my patience; I
shouted, "Sol, sol, sol, mademoiselle, it's a sol. " The mother:
"Mademoiselle, have you no ears? I'm not at the piano, I'm
not looking at your notes, but my own feeling tells me that it
ought to be a sol. You give the gentleman infinite trouble.
You remember nothing, and make no progress. " To break the
―
-
-
·
## p. 4698 (#492) ###########################################
4698
DENIS DIDEROT
force of this reproof a little, I tossed my head and said: "Pardon
me, madame, pardon me. It would be better if mademoiselle
would only practice a little, but after all it is not so bad. "—" In
your place I would keep her a whole year at one piece. ”—“Rest
assured, I shall not let her off until she has mastered every diffi-
culty; and that will not take so long, perhaps, as mademoiselle
thinks. "—"Monsieur Rameau, you flatter her; you are too good. "
And that is the only thing they would remember of the whole
lesson, and would upon occasion repeat to me. So the lesson
came to an end. My pupil handed me the fee, with a grace ful
gesture and a courtesy which her dancing-master had taught her.
I put the money into my pocket, and the mother said, "That's
very nice, mademoiselle. If Favillier were here, he would praise
you. " For appearance's sake I chattered for a minute or two
more; then I vanished; and that is what they called in those
days a lesson in accompaniment.
I-And is the case different now?
He-Heavens! I should think so. I come in, I am serious,
throw my muff aside, open the piano, try the keys, show signs
of great impatience, and if I am kept a moment waiting I shout
as if my purse had been stolen. In an hour I must be there or
there; in two hours with the Duchess So-and-so; at noon I must
go to the fair Marquise; and then there is to be a concert at
Baron de Bagge's, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs.
I-And meanwhile no one expects you at all.
He-Certainly not.
And precisely because I can
further my fortune through vices which come natural to me,
which I acquired without labor and practice without effort, which
are in harmony with the customs of my countrymen, which are
quite to the taste of my patrons, and better adapted to their
special needs than inconvenient virtues would be, which from
morning to night would be standing accusations against them, it
would be strange indeed if I should torture myself like one of
the damned to twist and turn and make of myself something
which I am not, and hide myself beneath a character foreign to
me, and assume the most estimable qualities, whose worth I will
not dispute, but which I could acquire and live up to only by
great exertions, and which after all would lead to nothing,— per-
haps to worse than nothing. Moreover, ought a beggar like me,
who lives upon the wealthy, constantly to hold up to his patrons
a mirror of good conduct? People praise virtue but hate it; they
.
## p. 4699 (#493) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4699
fly from it, let it freeze; and in this world a man has to keep
his feet warm. Besides, I should always be in the sourest humor:
for why is it that the pious and the devotional are so hard, so
repellent, so unsociable? It is because they have imposed upon
themselves a task contrary to their nature. They suffer, and
when a man suffers he makes others suffer. Now, that is no
affair of mine or of my patrons'. I must be in good spirits, easy,
affable, full of sallies, drollery, and folly. Virtue demands rever-
ence, and reverence is inconvenient; virtue challenges admiration,
and admiration is not entertaining. I have to do with people
whose time hangs heavy on their hands; they want to laugh.
Now consider the folly: the ludicrous makes people laugh, and I
therefore must be a fool; I must be amusing, and if nature had
not made me so, then by hook or by crook I should have made
myself seem so. Fortunately I have no need to play the hypo-
crite. There are hypocrites enough of all colors without me,
and not counting those who deceive themselves.
Should
it ever occur to friend Rameau to play Cato, to despise fortune,
women, good living, idleness, what would he be ? A hypocrite.
Let Rameau remain what he is, a happy robber among wealthy
robbers, and a man without either real or boasted virtue. In
short, your idea of happiness, the happiness of a few enthusiastic
dreamers like you, has no charm for me.
I-He earns his bread dearly, who in order to live must
assail virtue and knowledge.
He I have already told you that we are of no consequence.
We slander all men and grieve none.
[The dialogue reverts to music. ]
-
I- Every imitation has its original in nature. What is the
musician's model when he breaks into song?
He-Why do you not grasp the subject higher up? What is
song?
I-That, I confess, is a question beyond my powers. That's
the way with us all. The memory is stored with words only,
which we think we understand because we often use them and
even apply them correctly, but in the mind we have only indefi-
nite conceptions. When I use the word "song," I have no more
definite idea of it than you and the majority of your kind have
when you say reputation, disgrace, honor, vice, virtue, shame,
propriety, mortification, ridicule.
## p. 4700 (#494) ###########################################
4700
DENIS DIDEROT
He-Song is an imitation in tones, produced either by the
voice or by instruments, of a scale invented by art, or if you
will, established by nature; an imitation of physical sounds or
passionate utterances; and you see, with proper alterations this
definition could be made to fit painting, oratory, sculpture, and
poetry. Now to come to your question, What is the model of
the musician or of song? It is the declamation, when the model
is alive or sensate; it is the tone, when the model is insensate.
The declamation must be regarded as a line, and the music as
another line which twines about it. The stronger and the more
genuine is this declamation, this model of song, the more numer-
ous the points at which the accompanying music intersects it,
the more beautiful will it be. And this our younger composers
have clearly perceived. When one hears "Je suis un pauvre
diable," one feels that it is a miser's complaint. If he didn't
sing, he would address the earth in the very same tones when
he intrusts to its keeping his gold: "O terre, reçois mon trésor. "
. In such works with the greatest variety of characters,
there is a convincing truth of declamation that is unsurpassed.
I tell you, go, go, and hear the aria where the young man who
feels that he is dying, cries out, "Mon cœur s'en va. " Listen
to the air, listen to the accompaniment, and then tell me what
difference there is between the true tones of a dying man and
the handling of this music. You will see that the line of the
melody exactly coincides with the line of declamation.
I say
nothing of the time, which is one of the conditions of song; I
confine myself to the expression, and there is nothing truer than
the statement which I have somewhere read, "Musices seminarium
accentus," the accent is the seed-plot of the melody.
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?
He-No, by Heaven; and for that very reason I was a much
better teacher than those who imagine they know something
about it. At all events, I didn't spoil the taste nor ruin the hands
## p. 4697 (#491) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4697
of my young pupils. If when they left me they went to a com-
petent master, they had nothing to unlearn, for they had learned.
nothing, and that was just so much time and money saved.
I-But how did you do it?
――
He The way they all do it. I came, threw myself into a
chair:-"How bad the weather is! How tired the pavement
makes one! " Then some scraps of town gossip:
« At
the last Amateur Concert there was an Italian woman who sang
like an angel.
Poor Dumênil doesn't know what to say
or do," etc. , etc.
"Come, mademoiselle, where is your
music-book? " And as mademoiselle displays no great haste,
searches every nook and corner for the book, which she has mis-
laid, and finally calls the maid to help her, I continue:- « Little
Clairon is an enigma. There is talk of a perfectly absurd mar-
riage of what is her name? " "Nonsense, Rameau, it isn't
possible. "—"They say the affair is all settled. "
"There
is a rumor that Voltaire is dead. "-"All the better. " — "Why
all the better? "-"Then he is sure to treat us to some droll
skit. That's a way he has, a fortnight before his death. " What
more should I say? I told a few scandals about the families in
the houses where I am received, for we are all great scandal-
mongers. In short, I played the fool; they listened and laughed,
and exclaimed, "He is really too droll, isn't he? " Meanwhile
the music-book had been found under a chair, where a little dog
or a little cat had worried it, chewed it, and torn it. Then the
pretty child sat down at the piano and began to make a frightful
noise upon it. I went up to her, secretly making a sign of
approbation to her mother. "Well, now, that isn't so bad," said
the mother; "one needs only to make up one's mind to a thing;
but the trouble is, one will not make up one's mind; one would
rather kill time by chattering, trifling, running about, and God
knows what. Scarcely do you turn your back but the book is
closed, and not until you are at her side again is it opened.
Besides, I have never heard you reprimand her. " In the mean
time, since something had to be done, I took her hands and
placed them differently. I pretended to lose my patience; I
shouted, "Sol, sol, sol, mademoiselle, it's a sol. " The mother:
"Mademoiselle, have you no ears? I'm not at the piano, I'm
not looking at your notes, but my own feeling tells me that it
ought to be a sol. You give the gentleman infinite trouble.
You remember nothing, and make no progress. " To break the
―
-
-
·
## p. 4698 (#492) ###########################################
4698
DENIS DIDEROT
force of this reproof a little, I tossed my head and said: "Pardon
me, madame, pardon me. It would be better if mademoiselle
would only practice a little, but after all it is not so bad. "—" In
your place I would keep her a whole year at one piece. ”—“Rest
assured, I shall not let her off until she has mastered every diffi-
culty; and that will not take so long, perhaps, as mademoiselle
thinks. "—"Monsieur Rameau, you flatter her; you are too good. "
And that is the only thing they would remember of the whole
lesson, and would upon occasion repeat to me. So the lesson
came to an end. My pupil handed me the fee, with a grace ful
gesture and a courtesy which her dancing-master had taught her.
I put the money into my pocket, and the mother said, "That's
very nice, mademoiselle. If Favillier were here, he would praise
you. " For appearance's sake I chattered for a minute or two
more; then I vanished; and that is what they called in those
days a lesson in accompaniment.
I-And is the case different now?
He-Heavens! I should think so. I come in, I am serious,
throw my muff aside, open the piano, try the keys, show signs
of great impatience, and if I am kept a moment waiting I shout
as if my purse had been stolen. In an hour I must be there or
there; in two hours with the Duchess So-and-so; at noon I must
go to the fair Marquise; and then there is to be a concert at
Baron de Bagge's, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs.
I-And meanwhile no one expects you at all.
He-Certainly not.
And precisely because I can
further my fortune through vices which come natural to me,
which I acquired without labor and practice without effort, which
are in harmony with the customs of my countrymen, which are
quite to the taste of my patrons, and better adapted to their
special needs than inconvenient virtues would be, which from
morning to night would be standing accusations against them, it
would be strange indeed if I should torture myself like one of
the damned to twist and turn and make of myself something
which I am not, and hide myself beneath a character foreign to
me, and assume the most estimable qualities, whose worth I will
not dispute, but which I could acquire and live up to only by
great exertions, and which after all would lead to nothing,— per-
haps to worse than nothing. Moreover, ought a beggar like me,
who lives upon the wealthy, constantly to hold up to his patrons
a mirror of good conduct? People praise virtue but hate it; they
.
## p. 4699 (#493) ###########################################
DENIS DIDEROT
4699
fly from it, let it freeze; and in this world a man has to keep
his feet warm. Besides, I should always be in the sourest humor:
for why is it that the pious and the devotional are so hard, so
repellent, so unsociable? It is because they have imposed upon
themselves a task contrary to their nature. They suffer, and
when a man suffers he makes others suffer. Now, that is no
affair of mine or of my patrons'. I must be in good spirits, easy,
affable, full of sallies, drollery, and folly. Virtue demands rever-
ence, and reverence is inconvenient; virtue challenges admiration,
and admiration is not entertaining. I have to do with people
whose time hangs heavy on their hands; they want to laugh.
Now consider the folly: the ludicrous makes people laugh, and I
therefore must be a fool; I must be amusing, and if nature had
not made me so, then by hook or by crook I should have made
myself seem so. Fortunately I have no need to play the hypo-
crite. There are hypocrites enough of all colors without me,
and not counting those who deceive themselves.
Should
it ever occur to friend Rameau to play Cato, to despise fortune,
women, good living, idleness, what would he be ? A hypocrite.
Let Rameau remain what he is, a happy robber among wealthy
robbers, and a man without either real or boasted virtue. In
short, your idea of happiness, the happiness of a few enthusiastic
dreamers like you, has no charm for me.
I-He earns his bread dearly, who in order to live must
assail virtue and knowledge.
He I have already told you that we are of no consequence.
We slander all men and grieve none.
[The dialogue reverts to music. ]
-
I- Every imitation has its original in nature. What is the
musician's model when he breaks into song?
He-Why do you not grasp the subject higher up? What is
song?
I-That, I confess, is a question beyond my powers. That's
the way with us all. The memory is stored with words only,
which we think we understand because we often use them and
even apply them correctly, but in the mind we have only indefi-
nite conceptions. When I use the word "song," I have no more
definite idea of it than you and the majority of your kind have
when you say reputation, disgrace, honor, vice, virtue, shame,
propriety, mortification, ridicule.
## p. 4700 (#494) ###########################################
4700
DENIS DIDEROT
He-Song is an imitation in tones, produced either by the
voice or by instruments, of a scale invented by art, or if you
will, established by nature; an imitation of physical sounds or
passionate utterances; and you see, with proper alterations this
definition could be made to fit painting, oratory, sculpture, and
poetry. Now to come to your question, What is the model of
the musician or of song? It is the declamation, when the model
is alive or sensate; it is the tone, when the model is insensate.
The declamation must be regarded as a line, and the music as
another line which twines about it. The stronger and the more
genuine is this declamation, this model of song, the more numer-
ous the points at which the accompanying music intersects it,
the more beautiful will it be. And this our younger composers
have clearly perceived. When one hears "Je suis un pauvre
diable," one feels that it is a miser's complaint. If he didn't
sing, he would address the earth in the very same tones when
he intrusts to its keeping his gold: "O terre, reçois mon trésor. "
. In such works with the greatest variety of characters,
there is a convincing truth of declamation that is unsurpassed.
I tell you, go, go, and hear the aria where the young man who
feels that he is dying, cries out, "Mon cœur s'en va. " Listen
to the air, listen to the accompaniment, and then tell me what
difference there is between the true tones of a dying man and
the handling of this music. You will see that the line of the
melody exactly coincides with the line of declamation.
I say
nothing of the time, which is one of the conditions of song; I
confine myself to the expression, and there is nothing truer than
the statement which I have somewhere read, "Musices seminarium
accentus," the accent is the seed-plot of the melody.
