His wife was over thirty.  She was dutiful, sage, and pious.  She had plenty of that devotion which in small things women so seldom lack.  While her husband went to dine out, she remained at home to dine and sup on dry bread, and was pleased to think that the next day she would double the little ordinary for him.  Coffee was too dear to be a household luxury, so every day she handed him a few halfpence to have his cup, and to watch the chess-players at the Cafe de la Regence.  When after a year or two she went to make her peace with her father-in-law at Langres, she wound her way round the old man’s heart by her affectionate caresses, her respect, her ready industry in the household, her piety, her simplicity.  It is, however, unfortunately possible for even the best women to manifest their goodness, their prudence, their devotion, in forms that exasperate.  Perhaps it was so here.  Diderot at fifty was an orderly and steadfast person, but at thirty the blood of vagabondage was still hot within him.  He needed in his companion a robust patience, to match his own too robust activity.  One may suppose that if Mirabeau had married Hannah More, the union would have turned out ill, and Diderot’s marriage was unluckily of such a type.  His wife’s narrow pieties and homely solicitudes fretted him.  He had not learned to count the cost of deranging the fragile sympathy of the hearth.  While his wife was away on her visit to his family, he formed a connection with a woman (Madame Puisieux) who seems to have been as bad and selfish as his wife was the opposite.  She was the authoress of some literary pieces, which the world willingly and speedily let die; but even very moderate pretensions to bel-esprit may have seemed wonderfully refreshing to a man wearied to death by the illiterate stupidity of his daily companion.[17] This lasted some three or four years down to 1749.  As we shall see, he discovered the infidelity of his mistress and broke with her.  But by this time his wife’s virtues seem to have gone a little sour, as disregarded prudence and thwarted piety are so apt to do.  It was too late now to knit up again the ravelled threads of domestic concord.  During a second absence of his wife in Champagne (1754), he formed a new attachment to the daughter of a financier’s widow (Mdlle.  Voland).  This lasted to the end of the lady’s days (1783 or 1784).

There is probably nothing very profitable to be said about all this domestic disorder.  We do not know enough of the circumstances to be sure of allotting censure in exact and rightful measure.  We have to remember that such irregularities were in the manners of the time.  To connect them by way of effect with the new opinions in religion, would be as impertinent as to trace the immoralities of Dubois or Lewis the Fifteenth or the Cardinal de Rohan to the old opinions.

CHAPTER III.

EARLY WRITINGS.