have nothing to say against them. If the public were
called upon to judge between you and them, my friend, you would be
covered with shame."

"What, can it be you, Diderot, who thus take the side of the
booksellers?"

"My grievances against them do not prevent me from seeing their
grievances against you. After all this show of pride, confess now that
you are cutting a very sorry figure?"[243]

All this was the language of good sense, and there is no evidence that
Diderot ever swerved from that fair and honourable attitude in his own
dealings with the booksellers. Yet he was able to treat them with a
sturdy spirit when they forgot themselves. Panckoucke, one of the great
publishers of the time, came to him one day. "He was swollen with the
arrogance of a parvenu, and thinking apparently that he could use me
like one of those poor devils who depend upon him for a crust of bread,
he permitted himself to fly into a passion; but it did not succeed at
all. I let him go on as he pleased; then I got up abruptly, I took him
by the arm, and I said to him: 'M. Panckoucke, in whatever place it may
be, in the street, in church, in a bad house, and to whomsoever it may
be, it is always right to keep a civil tongue in one's head. But that is
all the more necessary still, when you speak to a man who has as little
patience as I have, and that, too, in his own house. Go to the devil,
you and your work. If you would give me twenty thousand louis, and I
could do your business for you in the twinkling of an eye, I would not
stir a finger. Be kind enough to be off."[244]

Before returning from the author to his books, it is interesting to know
how he and his circle appeared at this period to some who did not belong
to them. Gibbon, for instance, visited Paris in the spring of 1763. "The
moment," he says, "was happily chosen. At the close of a successful war
the British name was respected on the continent; _clarum et venerabile
nomen gentibus_. Our opinions, our fashions, even our games were adopted
in France, a ray of national glory illuminated each individual, and
every Englishman was supposed to be born a patriot and philosopher." He
mentions D'Alembert and Diderot as those among the men of letters whom
he saw, who "held the foremost rank in merit, or at least in fame."[245]

Horace Walpole was often in Paris, and often saw the philosophic
circle, but it did not please his supercilious humour.

"There was no soul in Paris but ph