was seen such a
collection of soured, malignant, venomous beasts. You hear nothing
but the names of Buffon, Duclos, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire,
D'Alembert, Diderot; and God knows the epithets that bear them
company! Nobody can have any parts if he is not as stupid as
ourselves. That is the plan on which Palissot's play of _The
Philosophers_ has been conceived. And you are not spared in it, any
more than your neighbours.

_I._--So much the better. Perhaps they do me more honour than I
deserve. I should be humiliated if those who speak ill of so many
clever and worthy people took it into their heads to speak well of
me.

_He._--Everybody must pay his scot. After sacrificing the greater
animals, then we immolate the others.

_I._--Insulting science and virtue for a living, that is
dearly-earned bread!

_He._--I have already told you, we are without any consistency; we
insult all the world, and afflict nobody. We have sometimes the
heavy Abbe d'Olivet, the big Abbe Le Blanc, the hypocrite Batteux.
The big abbe is only spiteful before he has had his dinner; his
coffee taken, he throws himself into an arm-chair, his feet against
the ledge of the fireplace, and sleeps like an old parrot on its
perch. If the noise becomes violent he yawns, stretches his arms,
rubs his eyes, and says: "Well, well, what is it?" "It is whether
Piron has more wit than Voltaire." "Let us understand; is it wit
that you are talking about, or is it taste? For as to taste, your
Piron has not a suspicion of it." "Not a suspicion of it?" "No."
And there we are, embarked in a dissertation upon taste. Then the
patron makes a sign with his hand for people to listen to him, for
if he piques himself upon one thing more than another, it is taste.
"Taste," he says, "taste is a thing...." But, on my soul, I don't
know what thing he said that it was, nor does he.

Then sometimes we have friend Robbe. He regales us with his
equivocal stories, with the miracles of the convulsionnaires which
he has seen with his own eyes, and with some cantos of a poem on a
subject that he knows thoroughly. His verses I detest, but I love
to hear him recite them--he has the air of an energumen. They all
cry out around him: "There is a poet worth calling a poet!..."

Then there comes t