than admiration in the good sense, the right feeling, the
worthiness of his counsels on conduct. And Diderot did not merely
moralise at large. All that he says is real, pointed, and apt for
circumstance and person. The petulant damsel to whom they were addressed
would not be likely to yawn over the sharp remonstrances, the vigorous
plain speaking, the downright honesty and visible sincerity of his
friendliness. It appears that she had sense enough not to be offended
with the frankness of her father's old employer, for after he has
plainly told her that she is violent, rude, vain, and not always too
truthful, she still writes to him from Warsaw, from Dresden, from
Bordeaux, praying him to procure a certain bracelet for her, to arrange
her mother's affairs, to find a good investment for twelve thousand
francs. When the mother was in the depths of indigence, Diderot insisted
that she should take her meals at his own table. And all this for no
other reason than that the troublesome pair had been thrown in his way
by the chance of human circumstance, and needed help which he was able,
not without sacrifice, to give. Mademoiselle Jodin was hardly worthy of
so good a friend. Her parents were Protestants, and as she was a
convert, she enjoyed a pension of some eight pounds a year. That did not
prevent her from one day indulging in some too sprightly sallies, as the
host was carried along the street. For this she was put into prison, and
that is our last glimpse of the light creature.[227]

Men knew how to be as wrong-headed and as graceless as women. We have
already mentioned the name of Landois in connection with Diderot's
article on Liberty. Landois seems to have been a marvel of
unreasonableness, but he was a needy man of letters, and that was
enough to make Diderot ready to bear with him and to succour him. He
wound up an epistle abounding, after the manner of the worthless
failures of the world, in reproaches and grievances against his
benefactor, with a cool request about a manuscript that was full of
dangerous matter. "Why, that," replied Diderot, "is a work that might
well be the ruin of me! And it is after you have on two separate
occasions charged me with the most atrocious and deliberate offences
towards you, that you now propose that I should revise and print your
work! You know that I have a wife and child, that I am a marked man,
that you are putting me into the class of hardened offenders; never
mind, you don't t