I will note here the date of my first acquaintance with Mme d’Épinay, whose name will often recur in these memoirs. She had been a Mlle d’Esclavelles, and had just married M. d’Épinay, son of M. de Lalive de Bellegarde, the farmer-general. Her husband, like M. de Francueil, was a music lover. She was musical too, and devotion to the art led to a great intimacy between these three. M. de Francueil introduced me to Mme de Épinay, and I went with him sometimes to supper with her. She was pleasant, witty, and talented, and certainly a desirable acquaintance to make. But she had a friend, a Mlle d’Ette, who was said to be very spiteful, and who lived with the Chevalier de Valory, whose reputation was not good. I think that the society of this couple harmed Mme d’Épinay, who although of a very exacting disposition had excellent natural qualities to correct or atone for her extravagances. M. de Francueil inspired in her some of the friendship which he himself felt for me, and told me of the relationship between them, of which, for that reason, I would not speak here if it had not become so public as not even to be concealed from M. d’Épinay. M. de Francueil told me some very strange secrets about that lady, which she never confided to me herself, and which she never supposed that I knew. For I never opened, and never will open, my lips on the subject, to her or to anyone else. All these confidences from one side and another made my situation most embarrassing, particularly with Mme de Francueil, who knew me well enough not to distrust me even though I was intimate with her rival. As best I could I consoled that poor woman, whose husband certainly did not return-the love she felt for him. I listened to each of the three separately, and kept their confidences so scrupulously that not one of them ever extracted from me any of the secrets of the other two; and at the same time I did not conceal from either lady my affection for her rival. Mme de Francueil tried to make use of me in several directions but had to stomach formal refusals; and Mme d’épinay, when once she wanted to entrust me with a letter for Francueil, not only received a refusal but a plain declaration that if she wanted to dismiss me from her house for ever she had only to make me the same proposal a second time. But I must be fair to Mme d’Épinay. Far from seeming annoyed by my behaviour, she praised it to Francueil, and welcomed me no less warmly thereafter. In this way, despite the stormy relations between these three people, whom I had to manage, on whom I to some extent depended, and of whom I was sincerely fond, I preserved their friendship, their esteem, and their confidence to the end, whilst behaving myself gently and considerately, though always with honesty and firmness. Notwithstanding my stupidity and awkwardness, Mme d’Épinay persisted in taking me to the entertainments at La Chevrette, a château near Saint-Denis, belonging to M. de Bellegarde. There was a stage there where they often acted plays. I was given a part which I studied for six months without a break, but 1 had to be prompted from beginning to end of the performance. After this trial no more parts were offered me.
In making Mme d’Épinay’s acquaintance I also made that of her stepsister, Mlle de Bellegarde, who soon afterwards became Countess de Houdetot. The first time I saw her was just before her marriage; she chatted to me for a long time with that charming familiarity that is natural to her. I found her very pleasant; but I was far from foreseeing that one day this young person would decide my fate, and drag me, though in all innocence, into the abyss where I am to-day.
Although I have not mentioned Diderot since my return from Venice, nor my friend M. Roguin either, I had not neglected either of them, and had indeed grown daily more intimate at least with the former. He had a Nanette, as I had a Thérèse, which gave us one more circumstance in common. But there was a difference. My Thérèse, though as good looking a woman as his Nanette, possessed just that mildness of disposition and pleasantness of character that will attract any decent man, while his Nanette was a foul-mouthed shrew and displayed no qualities that could compensate, in others’ eyes, for her lack of education. He married her all the same; which was very laudable, if he had promised to do so. But I had made no such promise, and was in no hurry to imitate him.
I had also become intimate with the Abbé de Condillac, who, like myself, cut no figure in the literary world, but who was born to be what he has become to-day. I was the first, perhaps, to see his stature, and to estimate him at his true worth. He seemed also to have taken a liking to me; and whilst I was confined to my room in the Rue Jean-Saint-Denis near the Opera, writing my Hesiod act, he sometimes came to take a solitary Dutch treat of a dinner with me. He was then engaged on his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, which was his first work. When it was finished, the problem was to find a bookseller who would undertake it. Paris booksellers are hard and overbearing with authors who are just beginning; and metaphysics, not then in fashion, did not offer a very attractive subject. I spoke to Diderot about Condillac and his work; and introduced them to one another. They were born to agree, and they did so. Diderot induced Durand the bookseller to take the Abbé’s manuscript, and that great metaphysician received from his first book – and that almost as a favour - a hundred crowns, which perhaps he would not have earned but for me. As we all lived in widely different quarters the three of us met once a week at the Palais-Royal, and went to dine together at the Hôtel du Panier-Fleuri. These little weekly dinners must greatly have pleased Diderot; for though he almost always failed to keep his appointments, even with women, he never missed one of them. There I drew up the plan for a periodical to be called Le Persifleur* which Diderot and I were to write alternately, and this led to my becoming acquainted with d’Alembert,† to whom Diderot had spoken of it. Unforeseen events stood in our way, however, and this plan went no further.
These two authors had just undertaken The Encyclopaedic Dictionary,‡ which was at first to be merely a sort of translation of Chambers, more or less resembling James’s Dictionary of Medicine, which Diderot had just completed. He wanted me to take some part in this second enterprise, and suggested that I should undertake the articles on music. I agreed, and wrote them very badly in a great hurry within the three months he had given me, in common with all the writers chosen to collaborate in that work. But I was the only one who was ready by the appointed date. I handed him my manuscript which I had had copied by a lackey of M. de Francueil’s by the name of Dupont, who wrote a very good hand and to whom I paid ten crowns out of my own pocket, for which I have never been reimbursed. Diderot had promised me on behalf of the booksellers a fee, which he has never mentioned to me again; nor have I mentioned it to him.
This project of the Encyclopaedia was interrupted by his arrest. His Philosophical Thoughts§ had involved him in some trouble which had led to no consequences. He did not come off so easily, however, with his Letter on the Blind, || which contained nothing blameworthy except for a few personal allusions, which shocked Mme Dupré de Saint-Maur and M. de Réaumur, and for which he was confined in the keep of Vincennes. No words could ever express the anguish I felt at my friend’s misfortune. My melancholy imagination took alarm, for it always paints things at their blackest. I thought that he would be there for the rest of his life, and the idea almost drove me mad. I wrote to Mme de Pompadour, begging her to procure his release, or to get permission for me to be imprisoned with him. I received no reply to my letter; it was too unreasonable to be effective, and I do not flatter myself that it contributed to the easing of poor Diderot’s hardships, though the severity of his confinement was subsequently relaxed. But if it had continued to be as rigorous as at first, I think that I should have died of despair at the foot of that accursed keep. However, if my letter produced little effect I did not claim much credit for it, for I only mentioned it to one or two people and never to Diderot himself.
BOOK EIGHT
1749 I had to pause at the end of the last book. With this one starts the long chain of my misfortunes, in its very beginnings.
Having lived in two of the most brilliant houses in Paris, I had not failed, despite my lack of address, to make some acquaintances in them. At Mme Dupin’s I had got to know, amongst o
thers, the young hereditary Prince of Saxe-Gotha and his tutor Baron de Thun; and at Mme de La Popelinière’s M. Seguy, Baron de Thun’s friend, who was known in the literary world for his fine edition of the poet Rousseau. The Baron invited M. Seguy and myself to spend a day or two at Fontenay-sous-Bois, where the Prince had a house. We went, and as I passed Vincennes and saw the keep I felt a pang at my heart, of which the Baron saw signs in my face. At supper the Prince spoke of Diderot’s imprisonment; and the Baron, in order to make me speak, accused the prisoner of imprudence, a quality which I myself displayed by the impetuous manner in which I defended him. This excess of zeal was pardoned in one moved by the misfortunes of a friend, and the subject was changed. There were two Germans there, members of the Prince’s suite. One, M. Klupffel* by name, a man of great intelligence, was his chaplain, and later, after supplanting the Baron, became his tutor; the other was a young man called M. Grimm, who was acting as his reader until he could find some other place, which his very modest wardrobe betrayed his urgent need of doing. On that first evening Klupffel and I began a relationship which soon became a friendship. My acquaintance with Master Grimm did not progress quite so fast; he hardly obtruded himself, and was far from assuming that confident tone which came to him with his subsequent prosperity. At dinner next day he talked about music: he talked well. I was quite delighted when I heard that he could accompany on the clavichord. After dinner music was brought in, and we played for the rest of the day on the Prince’s instrument. And so began a friendship which was so sweet to me at first, but afterwards so fatal, and of which I shall have so much to say hereafter.
On returning to Paris I received the agreeable news that Diderot had been released from the keep and that he was now confined, upon parole, to the castle and park of Vincennes, with permission to see his friends. How painful it was that I could not hurry there that very moment! But I was detained at Mme Dupin’s for two or three days by duties that could not be neglected, and only after three or four centuries of impatience did I fly into my friend’s arms! An indescribable moment! He was not alone; d’Alembert and the treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle were with him. I saw only him as I entered; I made one bound, uttered one cry, pressed my face to his, and embraced him tightly, speaking to him only with my tears and sighs, for my joy and affection choked me. His first movement as he emerged from my arms was to turn to the priest and say, ‘You see, sir, how my friends love me.’ Entirely overcome by my feelings, I did not reflect at the time on-his method of turning them to his advantage; but on thinking it over sometimes since then I have invariably concluded that, had I been in Diderot’s place, that would not have been the first idea which would have occurred to me.
I found him much affected by his imprisonment. Close confinement had had a terrible effect on him; and though he was comfortable at the castle and free to take walks in the park, which is not even walled, he needed his friends’ company to save him from giving way to his melancholy. I was certainly the one who had most sympathy for his sufferings. I thought I should also be the one whose presence would be the most consoling; and every other day at least, although my employment was most exacting, I went, either alone or with his wife, to spend the afternoon with him.
The summer of that year 1749 was excessively hot. Vincennes is some six miles from Paris. In no condition to pay for cabs, I walked there at two in the afternoon when I was alone, and I went fast so as to arrive early. The trees along the road, always lopped according to the custom of the country, hardly gave any shade; and often I was so prostrated with heat and weariness that I lay down on the ground, unable to go further. In order to slacken my pace, I thought of taking a book with me. One day I took the Mercure de France and, glancing through it as I walked, I came upon this question propounded by the Dijon Academy for the next year’s prize: Has the progress of the sciences and arts done more to corrupt morals or improve them?
The moment I read this I beheld another universe and became another man. Although I have a lively recollection of the effect they produced upon me, the details have escaped me since I recorded them in one of my four letters to M. de Malesherbes. This is one of the peculiarities of my memory, which is worth noting down. It only serves me for so long as I need to rely on it; as soon as I commit its burden to paper it deserts me; and once I have written a thing down, I entirely cease to remember it. This peculiarity extends also to the matter of music. Before I studied it I knew great numbers of songs by heart; but since I learned to sing from written music, I have been unable to remember any of them, and I doubt whether to-day I could repeat a single one of all my favourites right through.
What I remember quite distinctly about this occasion is that when I reached Vincennes I was in a state of agitation bordering on delirium. Diderot noticed it; I told him the cause and read him Fabricius’s Soliloquy which I had written in pencil under an oak tree. He encouraged me to give my ideas wings and compete for the prize. I did so, and from that moment I was lost. All the rest of my life and of my misfortunes followed inevitably as a result of that moment’s madness.
My feelings rose with the most inconceivable rapidity to the level of my ideas. All my little passions were stifled by an enthusiasm for truth, liberty, and virtue; and the most astonishing thing is that this fermentation worked in my heart for more than four or five years as intensely perhaps as it has ever worked in the heart of any man on earth.
I composed this essay in a most singular manner, and one which I have almost always followed for my other works. I devoted the night hours to it when I could not sleep. I meditated in bed with closed eyes, and shaped and reshaped my sentences in my head with incredible labour. Then, when I was finally content with them, I committed them to my memory till such time as I could put them on paper. But the break caused by my getting up and dressing made me lose everything, and when I had sat down before my paper hardly a sentence came to me of all those I had composed. It occurred to me, therefore, to take Mme Le Vasseur as my secretary. I had established her, with her daughter and her husband, rather nearer to me now and, to spare the cost of a servant, she came every morning to light my fire and attend to my minor wants. When she arrived I dictated to her from my bed my work of the preceding night; and this method, which I have followed for a long while, has saved for me much that I might otherwise have forgotten.
When this essay was finished I showed it to Diderot, who was pleased with it and suggested a few corrections. The work, however, though full of strength and fervour, is completely lacking in logic and order. Of all those that have proceeded from my pen it is the most feebly argued, the most deficient in proportion and harmony. But, whatever talents one may have been born with, the art of writing is not learned all at once.