sly or pitifully into the simple charm
and natural tenderness of life as it comes and passes. Nothing delights
him more than to hear or to tell such a story as this of Madame
D'Epinay. She had given a small lad eighteen sous for a day's work. At
night he went home without a farthing. When his mother asked him
whether they had given him nothing for his work, he said No. The mother
found out that this was untrue, and insisted on knowing what had become
of the eighteen sous. The poor little creature had given them to an
alehouse-keeper, where his father had been drinking all day; and so he
had spared the worthy man a rough scene with his wife when he got
home.[207]

From the pathos of kindly youth to the grace of lovable age the step is
not far. "To-day I have dined with a charming woman, who is only eighty
years old. She is full of health and cheerfulness; her soul is still
all gentleness and tenderness. She talks of love and friendship with
the fire and sensibility of a girl of twenty. There were three men of
us at table with her; she said to us, 'My friends, a delicate
conversation, a true and passionate look, a tear, a touched expression,
those are the good things of the world; as for all besides, it is
hardly worth talking of. There are certain things that were said to me
when I was young, and that I remember to this day, and any one of those
words is to be preferred before ten glorious deeds: by my faith, I
believe if I heard them even now, my old heart would beat the quicker.'
'Madame, the reason is that your heart has grown no older.' 'No, my
son, you are right; it is as young as ever. It is not for having kept
me alive so long that I thank God, but for having kept me kind-hearted,
gentle, and full of feeling.'"[208] All this was after Diderot's own
heart, and he declares such a conversation to be worth more than all
the hours of talk on politics and philosophy that he had been having a
few days before with some English friends. We may understand how, as we
shall presently see, a member of a society that could relish the beauty
of such a scene, would be likely to think Englishmen hard, surly, and
cheerless.

His letters constantly offer us sensible and imaginative reflection. He
amused himself in some country village by talking to an old man of
eighty. "I love children and old men; the latter seem to me like some
singular creatures that have been spared by caprice of fate." He meets
some old schoolfellows at Lang