papers heaped pell-mell upon it; they seemed as if they
would long protect it from its doom. Yet one day that too was mastered
by fate, and in spite of my idleness pamphlets and papers went to
arrange themselves in the shelves of a costly bureau.... It was thus that
the edifying retreat of the philosopher became transformed into the
scandalous cabinet of the farmer-general. Thus I too am insulting the
national misery.

"Of my early mediocrity there remained only a list carpet. The shabby
carpet hardly matches with my luxury. I feel it. But I have sworn and I
swear that I will keep this carpet, as the peasant, who was raised from
the hut to the palace of his sovereign, still kept his wooden shoes.
When in a morning, clad in the sumptuous scarlet, I enter my room, if I
lower my eyes I perceive my old list carpet; it recalls to me my early
state, and rising pride stands checked. No, my friend, I am not
corrupted. My door is open as ever to want; it finds me affable as ever;
I listen to its tale, I counsel, I pity, I succour it." ...

Yet the interior of Socrates-Diderot was as little blessed by domestic
sympathy as the interior of the older and greater Socrates. Of course
Diderot was far enough from being faultless. His wife is described by
Rousseau as a shrew and a scold. It is too plain that she was so; sullen
to her husband, impatient with her children, and exacting and
unreasonable with her servants.[196] We cannot pretend accurately to
divide the blame. The companionship was very dreary, and the picture
grievous and most afflicting to our thoughts. Diderot returns in the
evening from Holbach's, throws his carpet-bag in at the door, flies off
to seek a letter from Mademoiselle Voland, writes one to her, gets back
to his house at midnight, finds his daughter ill, puts cheerful and
cordial questions to his wife, she replies with a tartness that drives
him back into silence.[197] Another time the scene is violent. A torrent
of injustice and unreasonableness flows over him for two long hours, and
he wonders what the woman will profit, after she has made him burst a
blood-vessel; he groans in anguish, "Ah, how hard life seems to me to
bear! How many a time would I accept the end of it with joy!"[198] So
sharp are the goads in a divided house; so sorely, with ache and smart
and deep-welling tears, do men and women rend into shreds the fine web
of one another's lives. But the pity of it, O the pity of it!

There are many b