“How so?”

“I do not know.  I cannot tell you what is wanting.  Imagine that you see a man handsome, well made, amiable, witty-in fact, perfect, according to your most severe judgment.  A woman comes in, sees him, looks at him, and goes away telling you that the man does not please her.  ’But what fault do you find in him, madam?’ ‘None, only he does not please me.’  You look again at the man, you examine him a second time, and you find that, in order to give him a heavenly voice, he has been deprived of that which constitutes a man, and you are compelled to acknowledge that a spontaneous feeling has stood the woman in good stead.”

It was by that comparison that Crebillon explained to me a thing almost inexplicable, for taste and feeling alone can account for a thing which is subject to no rule whatever.

We spoke a great deal of Louis XIV., whom Crebillon had known well for fifteen years, and he related several very curious anecdotes which were generally unknown.  Amongst other things he assured me that the Siamese ambassadors were cheats paid by Madame de Maintenon.  He told us likewise that he had never finished his tragedy of Cromwell, because the king had told him one day not to wear out his pen on a scoundrel.

Crebillon mentioned likewise his tragedy of Catilina, and he told me that, in his opinion, it was the most deficient of his works, but that he never would have consented, even to make a good tragedy, to represent Caesar as a young man, because he would in that case have made the public laugh, as they would do if Madea were to appear previous to her acquaintances with Jason.

He praised the talent of Voltaire very highly, but he accused him of having stolen from him, Crebillon, the scene of the senate.  He, however, rendered him full justice, saying that he was a true historian, and able to write history as well as tragedies, but that he unfortunately adulterated history by mixing with it such a number of light anecdotes and tales for the sake of rendering it more attractive.  According to Crebillon, the Man with the Iron Mask was nothing but an idle tale, and he had been assured of it by Louis XIV. himself.

On the day of my first meeting with Crebillon at Silvia’s, ‘Cenie’, a play by Madame de Graffigny, was performed at the Italian Theatre, and I went away early in order to get a good seat in the pit.

The ladies all covered with diamonds, who were taking possession of the private boxes, engrossed all my interest and all my attention.  I wore a very fine suit, but my open ruffles and the buttons all along my coat shewed at once that I was a foreigner, for the fashion was not the same in Paris.  I was gaping in the air and listlessly looking round, when a gentleman, splendidly dressed, and three times stouter than I, came up and enquired whether I was a foreigner.  I answered affirmatively, and he politely asked me how I liked Paris.  I praised Paris very warmly.  But at that moment a very stout lady, brilliant with diamonds, entered the box near us.  Her enormous size astonished me, and, like a fool, I said to the gentleman: