From the pathos of kindly youth to the grace of lovable age the step is not far.  “To-day I have dined with a charming woman, who is only eighty years old.  She is full of health and cheerfulness; her soul is still all gentleness and tenderness.  She talks of love and friendship with the fire and sensibility of a girl of twenty.  There were three men of us at table with her; she said to us, ’My friends, a delicate conversation, a true and passionate look, a tear, a touched expression, those are the good things of the world; as for all besides, it is hardly worth talking of.  There are certain things that were said to me when I was young, and that I remember to this day, and any one of those words is to be preferred before ten glorious deeds:  by my faith, I believe if I heard them even now, my old heart would beat the quicker.’  ‘Madame, the reason is that your heart has grown no older.’  ’No, my son, you are right; it is as young as ever.  It is not for having kept me alive so long that I thank God, but for having kept me kind-hearted, gentle, and full of feeling.’"[208] All this was after Diderot’s own heart, and he declares such a conversation to be worth more than all the hours of talk on politics and philosophy that he had been having a few days before with some English friends.  We may understand how, as we shall presently see, a member of a society that could relish the beauty of such a scene, would be likely to think Englishmen hard, surly, and cheerless.

His letters constantly offer us sensible and imaginative reflection.  He amused himself in some country village by talking to an old man of eighty.  “I love children and old men; the latter seem to me like some singular creatures that have been spared by caprice of fate.”  He meets some old schoolfellows at Langres, nearly all the rest having gone:  “Well, there are two things that warn us of our end, and set us musing—­old ruins, and the short duration of those who began life with us.”  He is taken by a host over-devoted to such joys, to walk among dung-heaps.  “After all,” he says, “it ought not to offend one’s sense.  To an honest nose that has preserved its natural innocence, ’tis not a goat, but a bemusked and ambre-scented woman, who smelleth ill.”

“When I compare our friendships to our antipathies, I find that the first are thin, small, pinched; we know how to hate, but we do not know how to love.”

“A poet who becomes idle, does excellently well to be idle; he ought to be sure that it is not industry that fails, but that his gift is departing from him.”

“Comfort the miserable; that is the true way to console yourself for my absence.  I recollect saying to the Baron, when he lost his first wife, and was sure that there was not another day’s happiness left for him in this world, ’Hasten out of doors, seek out the wretched, console them, and then you will pity yourself, if you dare.’"[209]