oat, he marches about with head erect and open mien, and you would
almost take him for a decent worthy creature. He lives from day to day,
from hand to mouth, downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first
care of a morning when he gets up is to know where he will dine; after
dinner, he begins to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings
disquiets of its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret he has, unless
the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from
him; or else he shrinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town,
where he waits for daybreak over a crust of bread and a mug of beer.
When he has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes happens, he has
recourse either to a hackney-carriage belonging to a friend, or to a
coachman of some man of quality, who gives him a bed on the straw beside
the horses. In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in his
hair. If the weather is mild, he measures the Champs Elysees all night
long. With the day he reappears in the town, dressed over night for the
morrow, and from the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of the week."

Diderot is accosted by this curious being one afternoon on a bench in
front of the Cafe de la Regence in the Palais Royal. They proceed in the
thoroughly natural and easy manner of interlocutors in a Platonic
dialogue. It is not too much to say that _Rameau's Nephew_ is the most
effective and masterly use of that form of discussion since Plato.
Diderot's vein of realism is doubtless in strong contrast with Plato's
poetic and idealising touch. Yet imaginative strokes are not wanting to
soften the repulsive theme, and to bring the sordid and the foul within
the sphere of art. For an example. "Time has passed," says Rameau, "and
that is always so much gained."

"_I._--So much lost, you mean.

"_He._--No, no; gained. People grow rich every moment; a day less to
live, or a crown piece to the good, 'tis all one. When the last moment
comes, one is as rich as another. Samuel Bernard, who by pillaging and
stealing and playing bankrupt, leaves seven-and-twenty million francs in
gold, is no better than Rameau, who leaves not a penny, and will be
indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap about him. The dead man hears
not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a hundred priests bawl
dirges for him, in vain that a long file of blazing torches go before.
His soul walks not by the side of the master of the funeral ceremo