CHAPTER VI.

SOCIAL LIFE (1759-1770).

Any one must be ignorant of the facts who supposes that the men of the eighteenth century who did not believe in God, and were as little continent as King David, were therefore no better than the reckless vagabonds of Grub Street.  Diderot, after he had once settled down to his huge task, became a very orderly person.  It is true that he had an attachment to a lady who was not his wife.  Marriage was in those days, among the courtiers and the encyclopaedic circle, too habitually regarded as merely an official relation.  Provided that there was no official desertion, and no scandal, the world had nothing to say.  Diderot was no worse than his neighbours, though we may well be sorry that a man of his generous sympathies and fine impulse was no better than his neighbours.  Mademoiselle Voland, after proper deduction made for the manners of the time, was of a respectable and sentimental type.  Her family were of good position; she lived with her mother and sisters, and Diderot was on good terms with them all.  We have a glimpse of the characteristics of the three ladies in a little dialogue between Diderot and some one whom he met, and who happened to have made their acquaintance.  “He informed me that he had passed three months in the country where you are.—­Three months, said he, is more than one needs to go mad about Madame Le Gendre.[192]—­True, but then she is so reserved.—­I scarcely know any woman with such an amount of self-respect.—­She is quite right.—­Madame Voland is a woman of rare merit.—­Yes, and her eldest daughter?—­She has the cleverness of a very devil.—­She is very clever, no doubt; but what I especially like is her frankness.  I would lay a wager that she has never told a voluntary lie since she came to years of discretion."[193] The relations between Diderot and Sophie Voland were therefore not at all on the common footing of a low amour with a coarse or frivolous woman of the world.  All the proprieties of appearance were scrupulously observed.  Their mutual passion, though once not wholly without its gallantries, soon took on that worthy and decorous quality into which the ardour of valiant youth is reluctantly softened by middle age, when we gravely comfort it with names of philosophical compliment.

One of the most interesting of all the documentary memorials of the century is to be found in the letters which Diderot wrote to Mademoiselle Voland.  No doubt has ever been thrown on the authenticity of these letters, and they bear ample evidence of genuineness, so far as the substance of them is concerned, in their characteristic style.  They were first published in 1830, from manuscripts sold to the bookseller the year before by a certain French man of letters, Jeudy-Dugour by name.  He became a naturalised Russian, changed his name to Gouroff, and died in the position of councillor