“I can bear without disgust the sight of a peasant-woman.  The bit of coarse canvas that covers her head, the hair falling about her cheeks, the rags that only half cover her, the poor short skirt that goes no more than half-way down her legs, the naked feet covered with mud—­all these things do not wound me; ’tis the image of a condition that I respect, ’tis the sign and summary of a state that is inevitable, that is woful, and that I pity with all my heart.  But my gorge rises, and in spite of the scented air that follows her, I turn my eyes from the courtesan, whose fine lace head-gear and torn cuffs, white stockings and worn-out shoes, show me the misery of the day in company with the opulence of last night.  Such would my house have been, if the imperious scarlet had not forced all into harmony with itself.  I had two engravings that were not without merit, Poussin’s Manna in the Wilderness, and the same painter’s Esther before Ahasuerus; the one is driven out in shame by some old man of Rubens’s, the Fall of the Manna is scattered to the winds by a Storm of Vernet’s.  The old straw chair is banished to the ante-room by a luxurious thing of morocco.  Homer, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, have been taken from their shelf and shut up in a case of grand marqueterie work, an asylum worthier of them than of me.  The wooden table still held its ground, protected by a vast pile of pamphlets and papers heaped pell-mell upon it; they seemed as if they would long protect it from its doom.  Yet one day that too was mastered by fate, and in spite of my idleness pamphlets and papers went to arrange themselves in the shelves of a costly bureau....  It was thus that the edifying retreat of the philosopher became transformed into the scandalous cabinet of the farmer-general.  Thus I too am insulting the national misery.

“Of my early mediocrity there remained only a list carpet.  The shabby carpet hardly matches with my luxury.  I feel it.  But I have sworn and I swear that I will keep this carpet, as the peasant, who was raised from the hut to the palace of his sovereign, still kept his wooden shoes.  When in a morning, clad in the sumptuous scarlet, I enter my room, if I lower my eyes I perceive my old list carpet; it recalls to me my early state, and rising pride stands checked.  No, my friend, I am not corrupted.  My door is open as ever to want; it finds me affable as ever; I listen to its tale, I counsel, I pity, I succour it.” ...

Yet the interior of Socrates-Diderot was as little blessed by domestic sympathy as the interior of the older and greater Socrates.  Of course Diderot was far enough from being faultless.  His wife is described by Rousseau as a shrew and a scold.  It is too plain that she was so; sullen to her husband, impatient with her children, and exacting and unreasonable with her servants.[196] We cannot pretend accurately to divide the blame.  The companionship was very dreary, and the picture grievous and most afflicting