the real Holbach as of the
imaginary Wolmar. We have already seen him as the intimate friend and
constant host of Diderot. He was one of the best-informed men of his
time (1723-89). He had an excellent library, a collection of pictures,
and a valuable cabinet of natural history; and his poorer friends were
as freely welcome to the use of all of them as the richest. His manners
were cheerful, courteous, and easy; he was a model of simplicity, and
kindliness was written on every feature. His hospitality won him the
well-known nickname of the maitre d'hotel of philosophy, and his house
was jestingly called the Cafe de l'Europe. On Sundays and Thursdays,
without prejudice to other days, from ten to a score of men of letters
and eminent foreign visitors, including Hume, Wilkes, Shelburne,
Garrick, Franklin, Priestley, used to gather round his good dishes and
excellent wine. It was noted, as a mark of the attractiveness of the
company, that the guests, who came at two in the afternoon, constantly
remained until as late as seven and eight in the evening. To one of
those guests, who afterwards became the powerful enemy of the
Encyclopaedic group, the gaiety, the irreverence, the hardihood of
speculation and audacity of discourse, were all as gall and wormwood.
Rousseau found their atheistic sallies offensive beyond endurance. Their
hard rationalism was odious to the great emotional dreamer, and after he
had quarrelled with them all, he transformed his own impressions of the
dreariness of atheism into the passionate complaint of Julie. "Conceive
the torment of living in retirement with the man who shares our
existence, and yet cannot share the hope that makes existence dear; of
never being able with him either to bless the works of God, or to speak
of the happy future that is promised us by the goodness of God; of
seeing him, while doing good on every side, still insensible to
everything that makes the delight of doing good; of watching him, by the
most bizarre of contradictions, think with the impious, and yet live
like a Christian. Think of Julie walking with her husband; the one
admiring in the rich and splendid robe of the earth the handiwork and
the bounteous gifts of the author of the universe; the other seeing
nothing in it all save a fortuitous combination, the product of blind
force! Alas! she cries, the great spectacle of nature, for us so
glorious, so animated, is dead in the eyes of the unhappy Wolmar, and in
that gre