g his writers, to shape their manuscripts, to correct
proof-sheets, to supervise the preparation of the engravings, to write
the text explanatory of them, and all this amid constant apprehension
and alarm from the government and the police. He would have been free
from persecution at Lausanne or at Leyden. The two great sovereigns of
the north who thought it part of the trade of a king to patronise the
new philosophy, offered him shelter at Petersburg or Berlin.[151]

But how could he transport to the banks of the Neva or the Spree his
fifty skilled compositors, his crafty engravers on copper-plate, and all
the host of his industrial army? How could he find in those
half-barbarous lands the looms and engines and thousand cunning
implements and marvellous processes which he had under his eye and ready
to his hand in France? And so he held fast to his post on the fifth
floor of the house in the Rue Saint Benoit, a standing marvel to the
world of letters for all time.

As his toil was drawing to a close, he suddenly received the most
mortifying of all the blows that were struck at him in the course of his
prolonged, hazardous, and tormenting adventure. After the interruption
in 1759, it was resolved to bring out the ten volumes which were still
wanting, in a single issue. Le Breton was entrusted with the business of
printing them. The manuscript was set in type, Diderot corrected the
proof-sheets, saw the revises, and returned each sheet duly marked with
his signature for the press. At this point the nefarious operation of Le
Breton began. He and his foreman took possession of the sheets, and
proceeded to retrench, cut out, and suppress every passage, line, or
phrase, that appeared to them to be likely to provoke clamour or the
anger of the government. They thus, of their own brute authority,
reduced most of the best articles to the condition of fragments
mutilated and despoiled of all that had been most valuable in them. The
miscreants did not even trouble themselves to secure any appearance of
order or continuity in these mangled skeletons of articles. Their
murderous work done, they sent the pages to the press, and to make the
mischief beyond remedy, they committed all the original manuscripts and
proof-sheets to the flames. One day, when the printing was nearly
completed (1764), Diderot having occasion to consult an article under
the letter S, found it entirely spoiled. He stood confounded. An
instant's thought reveal