on his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, which was his first work.  When this was finished, the difficulty was to find a bookseller who would take it.  The booksellers of Paris are shy of every author at his beginning, and metaphysics, not much then in vogue, were no very inviting subject.  I spoke to Diderot of Condillac and his work, and I afterwards brought them acquainted with each other.  They were worthy of each other’s esteem, and were presently on the most friendly terms.  Diderot persuaded the bookseller, Durand, to take the manuscript from the abbe, and this great metaphysician received for his first work, and almost as a favor, a hundred crowns, which perhaps he would not have obtained without my assistance.  As we lived in a quarter of the town very distant from each other, we all assembled once a week at the Palais Royal, and went to dine at the Hotel du Panier Fleuri.  These little weekly dinners must have been extremely pleasing to Diderot; for he who failed in almost all his appointments never missed one of these.  At our little meeting I formed the plan of a periodical paper, entitled ’le Persifleur’—­[The Jeerer] —­which Diderot and I were alternately to write.  I sketched out the first sheet, and this brought me acquainted with D’Alembert, to whom Diderot had mentioned it.  Unforeseen events frustrated our intention, and the project was carried no further.

These two authors had just undertaken the ‘Dictionnaire Encyclopedique’, which at first was intended to be nothing more than a kind of translation of Chambers, something like that of the Medical Dictionary of James, which Diderot had just finished.  Diderot was desirous I should do something in this second undertaking, and proposed to me the musical part, which I accepted.  This I executed in great haste, and consequently very ill, in the three months he had given me, as well as all the authors who were engaged in the work.  But I was the only person in readiness at the time prescribed.  I gave him my manuscript, which I had copied by a laquais, belonging to M. de Francueil of the name of Dupont, who wrote very well.  I paid him ten crowns out of my own pocket, and these have never been reimbursed me.  Diderot had promised me a retribution on the part of the booksellers, of which he has never since spoken to me nor I to him.

This undertaking of the ‘Encyclopedie’ was interrupted by his imprisonment.  The ‘Pensees Philosophiquiest’ drew upon him some temporary inconvenience which had no disagreeable consequences.  He did not come off so easily on account of the ‘Lettre sur les Aveugles’, —­[Letter concerning blind persons.]—­in which there was nothing reprehensible, but some personal attacks with which Madam du Pre St. Maur, and M. de Raumur were displeased:  for this he was confined in the dungeon of Vincennes.  Nothing can describe the anguish I felt on account of the misfortunes of my friend.  My wretched imagination, which always sees everything in the worst