e Chapelle were with him. As I
went in, I saw no one but himself. With a single hound and a cry, I
pressed his face close to mine, I clasped him tightly in my arms,
without speaking to him save by my tears and sobs; I was choking with
tenderness and joy."[86] After this Rousseau used to walk over to see
him two or three times a week. It was during one of these walks on a hot
summer afternoon, that he first thought of that memorable literary
effort, the essay against civilisation. He sank down at the foot of a
tree, and feverishly wrote a page or two to show to his friend. He tells
us that but for Diderot's encouragement he should hardly have executed
his design. There is a story that it was Diderot who first suggested to
Rousseau to affirm that arts and sciences had corrupted manners. There
is no violent improbability in this. Diderot, for all the robustness and
penetration of his judgment, was yet often borne by his natural
impetuosity towards the region of paradox. His own curious and bold
_Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville_ is entirely in the vein of
Rousseau's discourse on the superiority of primitive over civilised
life. "Prodigious sibyl of the eighteenth century," cries Michelet, "the
mighty magician Diderot! He breathed out one day a breath; lo, there
sprang up a man--Rousseau."[87] It is hard to believe that such an
astonishing genius for literature as Rousseau's could have lain
concealed, after he had once inhaled the vivifying air of Paris. Yet the
fire and inspiring energy of Diderot may well have been the quickening
accident that brought his genius into productive life. All the testimony
goes to show that it was so. Whether, however, Diderot is really
responsible for the perverse direction of Rousseau's argument is a
question of fact, and the evidence is not decisive.[88] It would be an
odd example of that giant's nonchalance which is always so amazing in
Diderot, if he really instigated the most eloquent and passionate writer
then alive to denounce art and science as the scourge of mankind, at the
very moment when he was himself straining his whole effort to spread the
arts and sciences, and to cover them with glory in men's eyes.

Among Diderot's other visitors was Madame de Puisieux. One day she came
clad in gay apparel, bound for a merry-making at a neighbouring village.
Diderot, conceiving jealous doubts of her fidelity, received assurance
that she would be solitary and companionless at the feast, th