Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol. 2 of 2)

Chapter XXII: Appendix: Rameau's Nephew: a Translation (3)

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_He._--That is the profit side of the account; you say not a word
of the cost of it all. First, if there was a whisper of a new piece
(no matter how bad the weather), one had to ransack all the garrets
in Paris, until one had found the author; then to get a reading of
the play, and adroitly to insinuate that there was a part in it
which would be rendered in a superior manner by a certain person of
my acquaintance.--"And by whom, if you please?"--"By whom? a pretty
question! There are graces, finesse, elegance."--"Ah, you mean
Mademoiselle Dangeville? Perhaps you know her?"--"Yes, a little;
but 'tis not she."--"Who is it, then?"--I whispered the name very
low. "She?"--"Yes, she," I repeated with some shame, for sometimes
I do feel a touch of shame; and at this name you should have seen
how long the poet's face grew, if indeed he did not burst out
laughing in my face. Still, whether he would or not, I was bound to
take my man to dine; and he, being naturally afraid of pledging
himself, drew back, and tried to say "No, thank you." You should
have seen how I was treated, if I did not succeed in my
negotiation! I was a blockhead, a fool, a rascal; I was not good
for a single thing; I was not worth the glass of water which they
gave me to drink. It was still worse at their performance, when I
had to go intrepidly amid the cries of a public that has a good
judgment of its own, whatever may be said about it, and make my
solitary clap of the hand audible, draw every eye to me, and
sometimes save the actress from hisses, and hear people murmur
around me--"He is one of the valets in disguise belonging to the
man who.... Will that knave be quiet?" They do not know what brings
a man to that; they think it is stupidity, but there is one motive
that excuses anything.

_I._--Even the infraction of the civil laws.

_He._--At length, however, I became known, and people used to say:
"Oh, it is Rameau!" My resource was to throw out some words of
irony to save my solitary applause from ridicule, by making them
interpret it in an opposite sense.

Now agree that one must have a mighty interest to make one thus
brave the assembled public, and that each of these pieces of hard
labour was worth more than a paltry crown? And then at home there
was a pack of dogs to tend, and cats for which I was responsible. I
was only too happy if Micou favoured me with a stroke of his claw
that tore my cuff or my wrist. Criquette is liable to colic; 'tis I
who have to rub her. In old days mademoiselle used to have the
vapours; to-day, it is her nerves. She is beginning to grow a
little stout; you should hear the fine tales they make out of this.

_I._--You do not belong to people of this sort, at any rate?

_He._--Why not?

_I._--Because it is indecent to throw ridicule on one's
benefactors.

_He._--But is it not worse still to take advantage of one's
benefits to degrade the receiver of them?

_I._--But if the receiver of them were not vile in himself, nothing
would give the benefactor the chance.

_He._--But if the personages were not ridiculous in themselves they
would not make subjects for good tales. And then, is it my fault if
they mix with rascaldom? Is it my fault if, after mixing themselves
up with rascaldom, they are betrayed and made fools of? When people
resolve to live with people like us, if they have common sense,
there is an infinite quantity of blackness for which they must make
up their minds. When they take us, do they not know us for what we
are, for the most interested, vile, and perfidious of souls. Then
if they know us, all is well. There is a tacit compact that they
shall treat us well, and that sooner or later we shall treat them
ill in return for the good that they have done us. Does not such an
agreement subsist between a man and his monkey or his parrot?... If
you take a young provincial to the menagerie at Versailles, and he
takes it into his head for a freak to push his hands between the
bars of the cage of the tiger or the panther, whose fault is it? It
is all written in the silent compact, and so much the worse for the
man who forgets or ignores it. How I could justify by this
universal and sacred compact the people whom you accuse of
wickedness, whereas it is in truth yourselves whom you ought to
accuse of folly.... But while we execute the just decrees of
Providence on folly, you who paint us as we are, you execute its
just decrees on us. What would you think of us, if we claimed, with
our shameless manners, to enjoy public consideration? That we are
out of our senses. And those who look for decent behaviour from
people who are born vicious and with vile and bad characters--are
they in their senses? Everything has its true wages in this world.
There are two Public Prosecutors, one at your door, chastising
offences against society; nature is the other. Nature knows all the
vices that escape the laws. Give yourself up to debauchery, and you
will end with dropsy; if you are crapulous, your lungs will find
you out; if you open your door to ragamuffins, and live in their
company, you will be betrayed, laughed at, despised. The shortest
way is to resign, one's self to the equity of these judgments, and
to say to one's self: That is as it should be; to shake one's ears
and turn over a new leaf, or else to remain what one is, but on the
conditions aforesaid....

_I._--You cannot doubt what judgment I pass on such a character as
yours?

_He._--Not at all; I am in your eyes an abject and most despicable
creature; and I am sometimes the same in my own eyes, though not
often: I more frequently congratulate myself on my vices than blame
myself for them; you are more constant in your contempt.

_I._--True; but why show me all your turpitude?

_He._--First, because you already know a good deal of it, and I saw
that there was more to gain than to lose, by confessing the rest.

_I._--How so, if you please?

_He._--It is important in some lines of business to reach
sublimity; it is especially so in evil. People spit upon a small
rogue, but they cannot refuse a kind of consideration to a great
criminal; his courage amazes you, his atrocity makes you shudder.
In all things, what people prize is unity of character.

_I._--But this estimable unity of character you have not quite got:
I find you from time to time vacillating in your principles; it is
uncertain whether you get your wickedness from nature or study, and
whether study has brought you as far as possible.

_He._--I agree with you, but I have done my best. Have I not had
the modesty to recognise persons more perfect in my own line than
myself. Have I not spoken to you of Bouret with the deepest
admiration? Bouret is the first person in the world for me.

_I._--But after Bouret you come.

_He._--No.

_I._--Palissot, then?

_He._--Palissot, but not Palissot alone.

_I._--And who is worthy to share the second rank with him?

_He._--The Renegade of Avignon.

_I._--I never heard of the Renegade of Avignon, but he must be an
astonishing man.

_He._--He is so, indeed.

_I._--The history of great personages has always interested me.

_He._--I can well believe it. This hero lived in the house of a
good and worthy descendant of Abraham, promised to the father of
the faithful in number equal to the stars in the heavens.

_I._--In the house of a Jew?

_He._--In the house of a Jew. He had at first surprised pity, then
goodwill, then entire confidence, for that is how it always
happens: we count so strongly on our kindness, that we seldom hide
our secrets from anybody on whom we have heaped benefits. How
should there not be ingrates in the world, when we expose this man
to the temptation of being ungrateful with impunity? That is a just
reflection which our Jew failed to make. He confided to the
renegade that he could not conscientiously eat pork. You will see
the advantage that a fertile wit knew how to get from such a
confession. Some months passed, during which our renegade redoubled
his attentions; when he believed his Jew thoroughly touched,
thoroughly captivated, thoroughly convinced that he had no better
friend among all the tribes of Israel ... now admire the
circumspection of the man! He is in no hurry; he lets the pear
ripen before he shakes the branch; too much haste might have
ruined his design. It is because greatness of character usually
results from the natural balance between several opposite
qualities.

_I._--Pray leave your reflections, and go straight on with your
story.

_He._--That is impossible. There are days when I cannot help
reflecting; 'tis a malady that must be allowed to run its course.
Where was I?

_I._--At the intimacy that had been established between the Jew and
the renegade.

_He._--Then the pear was ripe.... But you are not listening; what
are you dreaming about?

_I._--I am thinking of the curious inequality in your tone, now so
high, now so low.

_He._--How can a man made of vices be one and the same?... He
reaches his friend's house one night, with an air of violent
perturbation, with broken accents, a face as pale as death, and
trembling in every limb. "What is the matter with you?"--"We are
ruined." "Ruined, how?"--"Ruined, I tell you, beyond all
help."--"Explain."--"One moment, until I have recovered from my
fright."--"Come, then, recover yourself," says the Jew.... "A
traitor has informed against us before the Holy Inquisition, you as
a Jew, me as a renegade, an infamous renegade...." Mark how the
traitor does not blush to use the most odious expressions. It needs
more courage than you may suppose to call one's self by one's right
name; you do not know what an effort it costs to come to that.

_I._--No, I daresay not. But "the infamous renegade----"

_He._--He is false, but his falsity is adroit enough. The Jew takes
fright, tears his beard, rolls on the ground, sees the officers at
his door, sees himself clad in the _Sanbenito_, sees his
_auto-da-fe_ all made ready. "My friend," he cries, "my good,
tender friend, my only friend, what is to be done?"

"What is to be done? Why show ourselves, affect the greatest
security, go about our business just as we usually do. The
procedure of the tribunal is secret but slow; we must take
advantage of its delays to sell all you have. I will hire a boat,
or I will have it hired by a third person--that will be best; in it
we will deposit your fortune, for it is your fortune that they are
most anxious to get at; and then we will go, you and I, and seek
under another sky the freedom of serving our God, and following in
security the law of Abraham and our own consciences. The important
point in our present dangerous situation is to do nothing
imprudent."

No sooner said than done. The vessel is hired, victualled, and
manned, the Jew's fortune put on board; on the morrow, at dawn,
they are to sail, they are free to sup gaily and to sleep in all
security; on the morrow they escape their prosecutors. In the
night, the renegade gets up, despoils the Jew of his portfolio, his
purse, his jewels, goes on board, and sails away. And you think
that this is all? Good: you are not awake to it. Now when they told
me the story, I divined at once what I have not told you, in order
to try your sagacity. You were quite right to be an honest man; you
would never have made more than a fifth-rate scoundrel. Up to this
point the renegade is only that; he is a contemptible rascal whom
nobody would consent to resemble. The sublimity of his wickedness
is this, that he was himself the informer against his good friend
the Israelite, of whom the Inquisition took hold when he awoke the
next morning, and of whom a few days later they made a famous
bonfire. And it was in this way that the renegade became the
tranquil possessor of the fortune of the accursed descendant of
those who crucified our Lord.

_I._--I do not know which of the two is most horrible to me--the
vileness of your renegade, or the tone in which you speak of it.

_He._--And that is what I said: the atrocity of the action carries
you beyond contempt, and hence my sincerity. I wished you to know
to what a degree I excelled in my art, to extort from you the
admission that I was at least original in my abasement, to rank me
in your mind on the line of the great good-for-noughts, and to hail
me henceforth--_Vivat Mascarillus, fourbum imperator_!

[Here the discussion is turned aside, by Rameau's pantomimic performance of a fugue, to various topics in music.[224]]

[224] Vol. v. pp. 457-468.

_I._--How does it happen that with such fine tact, such great
sensibility for the beauties of the musical art, you are so blind
to the fine things of morality, so insensible to the charms of
virtue?

_He._--It must be because there is for the one a sense that I have
not got, a fibre that has not been given to me, a slack string that
you may play upon as much as you please, but it never vibrates. Or
it may be because I have always lived with those who were good
musicians but bad men, whence it has come to pass that my ear has
grown very fine, and my heart has grown very deaf. And then there
is something in race. The blood of my father and the blood of my
uncle is the same blood; my blood is the same as that of my father;
the paternal molecule was hard and obtuse, and that accursed first
molecule has assimilated to itself all the rest.

_I._--Do you love your child?

_He._--Do I love it, the little savage! I dote on it.

_I._--Will you not then seriously set to work to arrest in it the
consequences of the accursed paternal molecule?

_He._--I shall labour in vain, I fancy. If he is destined to grow
into a good man, I shall not hurt him; but if the molecule meant
him for a ne'er-do-well like his father, then all the pains that I
might have taken to make a decent man of him would only be very
hurtful to him, Education incessantly crossing the inclination of
the molecule, he would be drawn as it were by two contrary forces,
and would walk in zigzags along the path of life, as I see an
infinity of other people doing, equally awkward in good and evil.
These are what we call _especes_, of all epithets the most to be
dreaded, because it marks mediocrity and the very lowest degree of
contempt. A great scoundrel is a great scoundrel, but he is not an
_espece_. Before the paternal molecule had got the upper hand, and
had brought him to the perfect abjection at which I have arrived,
it would take endless time, and he would lose his best years. I do
not meddle at present; I let him come on. I examine him; he is
already greedy, cunning, idle, lying, and a cheat; I'm much afraid
that he is a chip of the old block.

_I._--And you will make him a musician, so that the likeness may be
exact?

_He._--A musician! Sometimes I look at him and grind my teeth,
saying: If thou wert ever to know a note of music, I believe I
would wring thy neck.

_I._--And why so, if you please?

_He._--Music leads to nothing.

_I._--It leads to everything.

_He._--Yes, when people are first-rate. But who can promise himself
that his child shall be first-rate. The odds are ten thousand to
one that he will never be anything but a wretched scraper of
catgut. Are you aware that it would perhaps be easier to find a
child fit to govern a realm, fit to be a great king, than one fit
for a great violin player.

_I._--It seems to me that agreeable talents, even if they are
mediocre, among a people who are without morals, and are lost in
debauchery and luxury, get a man rapidly on in the path of fortune.

_He._--No doubt, gold and gold; gold is everything, and all the
rest without gold is nothing. So instead of cramming his head with
fine maxims which he would have to forget, on pain of remaining a
beggar all the days of his life, what I do is this: when I have a
louis, which does not happen to me often, I plant myself in front
of him, I pull the louis out of my pocket, I show it to him with
signs of admiration, I raise my eyes to heaven, I kiss the louis
before him, and to make him understand still better the importance
of the sacred coin, I point to him with my finger all that he can
get with it, a fine frock, a pretty cap, a rich cake; then I thrust
the louis into my pocket, I walk proudly up and down, I raise the
lappet of my waistcoat, I strike my fob; and in that way I make him
see that it is the louis in it that gives me all this assurance.

_I._--Nothing could be better. But suppose it were to come to pass
that, being so profoundly penetrated by the value of the louis, he
were one day....

_He._--I understand you. One must close one's eyes to that; there
is no moral principle without its own inconvenience. At the worst
'tis a bad quarter of an hour, and then all is over.

_I._--Even after hearing views so wise and so bold, I persist in
thinking that it would be good to make a musician of him. I know no
other means of getting so rapidly near great people, of serving
their vices better, or turning your own to more advantage.

_He._--That is true; but I have plans for a speedier and surer
success. Ah, if it were only a girl! But as we cannot do all that
we should like, we must take what comes, and make the best of it,
and not be such idiots as most fathers, who could literally do
nothing worse, supposing them to have deliberately planned the
misery of their children--namely, give the education of Lacedaemon
to a child who is destined to live in Paris. If the education is
bad, the morals of my country are to blame for that, not I. Answer
for it who may; I wish my son to be happy, or what is the same
thing, rich, honoured, and powerful. I know something about the
easiest ways of reaching this end, and I will teach them to him
betimes. If you blame me, you sages, the multitude and success
will acquit me. He will put money in his purse, I can tell you. If
he has plenty of that, he will lack nothing else, not even your
esteem and respect.

_I._--You may be mistaken.

_He._--Then perhaps he will do very well without it, like many
other people.

* * * * *

[There was in all this a good deal of what passes through many
people's minds, and much of the principle according to which they
shape their own conduct; but they never talk about it. There, in
short, is the most marked difference between my man and most of
those about us. He avowed the vices that he had, and that others
have; but he was no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less
abominable than they; he was only more frank, and more consistent,
and sometimes he was profound in the midst of his depravity. I
trembled to think what his child might become under such a master.
It is certain that after ideas of bringing-up, so strictly traced
on the pattern of our manners, he must go far, unless prematurely
stopped on the road.]

_He._--Oh, fear nothing. The important point, the difficult point,
to which a good father ought to attend before everything else, is
not to give to his child vices that enrich, or comical tricks such
as make him valuable to people of quality--all the world does that,
if not on system as I do, at least by example and precept. The
important thing is to impress on him the just proportion, the art
of keeping out of disgrace and the arm of the law. There are
certain discords in the social harmony that you must know exactly
how to place, to prepare, and to hold. Nothing so tame as a
succession of perfect chords; there needs something that
stimulates, that resolves the beam, and scatters its rays.

_I._--Quite so; by your image you bring me back from morals to
music, and I am very glad, for, to be quite frank with, you, I
like you better as musician than as moralist.

_He._--Yet, I am a mere subaltern in music, and a really superior
figure in morals.

_I._--I doubt that; but even if it were so, I am an honest man, and
your principles are not mine.

_He._--So much the worse for you. Ah, if I only had your talents!

_I._--Never mind my talents; let us return to yours.

_He._--If I could only express myself like you! But I have an
infernally absurd jargon--half the language of men of the world and
of letters, half of Billingsgate.

_I._--Nay, I am a poor talker enough. I only know how to speak the
truth, and that does not always answer, as you know.

_He._--But it is not for speaking the truth--on the contrary, it is
for skilful lying that I covet your gift. If I knew how to write,
to cook up a book, to turn a dedicatory epistle, to intoxicate a
fool as to his own merits, to insinuate myself into the good graces
of women!

_I._--And you do know all that a thousand times better than I. I
should not be worthy to be so much as your pupil.

_He._--How many great qualities lost, of which you do not know the
price.

_I._--I get the price that I ask.

_He._--If that were true, you would not be wearing that common
suit, that rough waistcoat, those worsted stockings, those thick
shoes, that ancient wig.

_I._--I grant that; a man must be very maladroit not to be rich, if
he sticks at nothing in order to become rich. But the odd thing is
that there are people like me who do not look on riches as the most
precious thing in the world; bizarre people, you know.

_He._--Bizarre enough. A man is not born with such a twist as that.
He takes the trouble to give it to himself, for it is not in
nature.

_I._--In the nature of man?

_He._--No; for everything that lives, without exception, seeks its
own wellbeing at the expense of any prey that is proper to its
purpose; and I am perfectly sure that if I let my little savage
grow up without saying a word to him on the matter, he would wish
to be richly clad, sumptuously fed, cherished by men, loved by
women, and to heap upon himself all the happiness of life.

_I._--If your little savage were left to himself, let him only
preserve all his imbecility, and add to the scanty reason of the
child in the cradle the violent passions of a man of thirty--why he
would strangle his father and dishonour his own mother.

_He._--That proves the necessity of a good education, and who
denies it? And what is a good education but one that leads to all
sorts of enjoyments without danger and without inconvenience?

_I._--I am not so far from your opinion, only let us keep clear of
explanations.

_He._--Why?

_I._--Because I am afraid that we only agree in appearance, and
that if we once begin to discuss what are the dangers and the
inconveniences to avoid, we should cease to understand one another.

_He._--What of that?

_I._--Let us leave all this, I tell you; what I know about it I
shall never get you to learn, and you will more easily teach me
what I do not know, and you do know, in music. Let us talk about
music, dear Rameau, and tell me how it has come about that with the
faculty for feeling, retaining, and rendering the finest passages
in the great masters, with the enthusiasm that they inspire in you,
and that you transmit to others, you have done nothing that is
worth....

Instead of answering me, he shrugged his shoulders, and pointing to
the sky with his finger, he cried: The star! the star! When Nature
made Leo, Vinci, Pergolese, Duni, she smiled. She put on a grave
and imposing air in shaping my dear uncle Rameau, who for half a
score years they will have called the great Rameau, and of whom
very soon nobody will say a word. When she tricked up his nephew,
she made a grimace, and a grimace, and again a grimace. [And as he
said this, he put on all sorts of odd expressions: contempt,
disdain, irony; and he seemed to be kneading between his fingers a
piece of paste, and to be smiling at the ridiculous shapes that he
gave it; that done, he flung the incongruous pagod[225] away from
him, and said:] It was thus she made me, and flung me by the side
of the other pagods, some with huge wrinkled paunches, and short
necks, and great eyes projecting out of their heads, stamped with
apoplexy; others with wry necks; some again with wizened faces,
keen eyes, hooked noses. All were ready to split with laughing when
they espied me, and I put my hands to my sides and split with
laughter when I espied them, for fools and madmen tickle one
another; they seek and attract one another. If when I got among
them, I had not found ready-made the proverb about _the money of
fools being the patrimony of people with wits_, they would have
been indebted to me for it. I felt that nature had put my lawful
inheritance into the purses of the pagods, and I devised a thousand
means of recovering my rights.

[225] These little china images of gods, with nodding heads, were
then a fashionable toy in Paris.

_I._--Yes, I know all about your thousand means; you have told me
of them, and I have admired them vastly. But with so many
resources, why not have tried that of a fine work?...

_He._--When I am alone I take up my pen and intend to write; I bite
my nails and rub my brow; your humble servant, good-bye, the god is
absent. I had convinced myself that I had genius; at the end of the
time I discover that I am a fool, a fool, and nothing but a fool.
But how is one to feel, to think, to rise to heights, to paint in
strong colours, while haunting with such creatures as those whom
one must see if one is to live; in the midst of such talk as one
has to make and to hear, and such idle gossip: "How charming the
boulevard was to-day!" "Have you heard the little Marmotte? Her
playing is ravishing." "Mr. So-and-so had the handsomest pair of
grays in his carriage that you can possibly imagine." "The
beautiful Mrs. So-and-so is beginning to fade; who at the age of
five-and-forty would wear a headdress like that?" "Young
Such-and-such is covered with diamonds, and she gets them cheap."

"You mean she gets them dear."

"No, I do not."

"Where did you see her?"

"At the play."

"The scene of despair was played as it had never been played
before." "The Polichinelle of the Fair has a voice, but no
delicacy, no soul." "Madame So-and-so has produced two at a birth;
each father will have his own child...." And yet you suppose that
this kind of thing, said and said again, and listened to every day
of the week, sets the soul aglow and leads to mighty things.

_I._--Nay, it were better to turn the key of one's garret, drink
cold water, eat dry bread, and seek one's true self.

_He._--Maybe, but I have not the courage. And then the idea of
sacrificing one's happiness for the sake of a success that is
doubtful! And the name that I bear? Rameau! It is not with talents
as it is with nobility; nobility transmits itself, and increases in
lustre by passing from grandfather to father, and from father to
son, and from son to grandson, without the ancestor impressing a
spark of merit on his descendant; the old stock ramifies into an
enormous crop of fools; but what matter? It is not so with talents.
Merely to obtain the renown of your father, you must be cleverer
than he was; you must have inherited his fibre. The fibre has
failed me, but the wrist is nimble, the fiddle-bow scrapes away,
and the pot boils; if there is not glory, there is broth.

_I._--If I were in your place, I would not take it for granted; I
would try.... Whatever it be that a man applies himself to, nature
meant him for it.

_He._--She makes mighty blunders. For my part, I do not look down
from heights, whence all seems confused and blurred,--the man who
prunes a tree with his knife, all one with the caterpillar who
devours its leaf; a couple of insects, each at his proper task. Do
you, if you choose, perch yourself on the epicycle of the planet
Mercury, and thence distribute creation, in imitation, of Reaumur;
he, the classes of flies into seamstresses, surveyors, reapers;
you, the human species into joiners, dancers, singers, tilers. That
is your affair, and I will not meddle with it. I am in this world,
and in this world I rest. But if it is in nature to have an
appetite--for it is always to appetite that I come back, and to the
sensation that is ever present to me--then I find that it is by no
means consistent with good order not to have always something to
eat. What a precious economy of things! Men who are over-crammed
with everything under the sun, while others, who have a stomach
just as importunate as they, a hunger that recurs as regularly as
theirs, have not a bite. The worst is the constrained posture to
which want pins us down. The needy man does not walk like anybody
else; he jumps, he crawls, he wriggles, he limps, he passes his
whole life in taking and executing artificial postures.

_I._--What are postures?

_He._--Ask Noverre.[226] The world offers far more of them than his
art can imitate.

[226] A famous dancing-master of the time.

_I._--Ah, there are you too--to use your expression or
Montaigne's--_perched on the epicycle of Mercury_, and eyeing the
various pantomimes of the human race.

_He._--No, no, I tell you; I'm too heavy to raise myself so high.
No sojourn in the fogs for me. I look about me, and I assume my
postures, or I amuse myself with the postures that I see others
taking. I am an excellent pantomime as you shall judge.

* * * * *

[Then he set himself to smile, to imitate the admirer, the
suppliant, the fawning complaisant; he expects a command, receives
it, starts off like an arrow, returns, the order is executed, he
reports what he has done; he is attentive to everything; he picks
up something that has fallen; he places a pillow or a footstool; he
holds a saucer; he brings a chair, opens a door, closes a window,
draws the curtains, gazes on the master and mistress; he stands
immovable, his arms hanging by his side, his legs exactly straight;
he listens, he seeks to read their faces, and then he adds:--That
is my pantomime, very much the same as that of all flatterers,
courtiers, valets, and beggars.

The buffooneries of this man, the stories of the abbe Galiani, the
extravagances of Rabelais, have sometimes thrown me into profound
reveries. They are three stores whence I have provided myself with
ridiculous masks that I place on the faces of the gravest
personages, and I see Pantaloon in a prelate, a satyr in a
president, a pig in a monk, an ostrich in a minister, a goose in
his first clerk.]

* * * * *

_I._--But according to your account, I said to my man, there are
plenty of beggars in the world, and yet I know nobody who is not
acquainted with some of the steps of your dance.

_He._--You are right. In a whole kingdom there is only one man who
walks, and that is the sovereign.

_I._--The sovereign? There is something to be said on that. For do
you suppose that one may not from time to time find even by the
side of him, a dainty foot, a pretty neck, a bewitching nose, that
makes him execute his pantomime. Whoever has need of another is
indigent, and assumes a posture. The king postures before his
mistress, and before God he treads his pantomimic measure. The
minister dances the step of courtier, flatterer, valet, and beggar
before his king. The crowd of the ambitious cut a hundred capers,
each viler than the rest, before the minister. The abbe, with his
bands and long cloak, postures at least once a week before the
patron of livings. On my word, what you call the pantomime of
beggars is only the whole huge bustle of the earth....

_He._--But let us bethink ourselves what o'clock it is, for I must
go to the opera.

_I._--What is going on?

_He._--Dauvergne's _Trocqueurs_. There are some tolerable things in
the music; the only pity is that he has not been the first to say
them. Among those dead, there are always some to dismay the living.
What would you have? _Quisque suos patimur manes._ But it is
half-past five, I hear the bell ringing my vespers. Good day, my
philosopher; always the same, am I not?

_I._--Alas, you are; worse luck.

_He._--Only let me have that bad luck for forty years to come! Who
laughs last has the best of the laugh.

THE END.

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh._

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Transcriber's Notes & Errata |
| |
| Italic text is enclosed in underscores (_). |
| |
| Bold text is enclosed in 'equals' signs (=). |
| |
| 'OE' and 'oe' ligatures have been transcribed as 'o' and |
| 'e', and 'O' and 'e'. |
| |
| The following words were found in both unhyphenated and |
| hyphenated forms. The number of instances of each are given |
| in parentheses. |
| |
| |apiece (1) |a-piece (1) | |
| |demigods (1) |demi-gods (2) | |
| |nightcap (1) |night-cap (1) | |
| |wellbeing (4) |well-being (3) | |
| |
| The following typographical errors have been corrected. |
| |
| |Error |Correction ||
| | | ||
| |sociey |society ||
| | | ||
| |It would, as Mill has said, |It would, as Mill has said, ||
| | imply ignorance of the | imply ignorance of the ||
| | history of philosophy and | history of philosophy and ||
| | of general literature not | of general literature not ||
| | to be aware that in all | to be aware that in all ||
| | ages of philosophy and of | ages of philosophy one of ||
| | general literature, not | its schools has been ||
| | to be aware that in all | utilitarian, not only from ||
| | ages of philosophy one of | the time of Epicurus, but ||
| | its schools has been | long before. ||
| | utilitarian, not only | ||
| | from the time of Epicurus, | ||
| | but long before. | ||
| | | ||
| |beween |between ||
| | | ||
| |sense how |sense of how ||
| | | ||
| |arbitary |arbitrary ||
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

End of Project Gutenberg's Diderot and the Encyclopaedists, by John Morley

Comments

Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol. 2 of 2)Chapter XXII: Appendix: Rameau's Nephew: a Translation (3)

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