h hospitality characteristic of their domicile." She prevails on
them to leave the house, get rid of all their belongings (down to
clothes) which could possibly be identified, change their name, move to
another quarter of Paris, and set up as _devotes_ under the full
protection of the local clergy. Then she manages an introduction, of an
apparently accidental kind, to the Marquis. He falls in love at once
with the daughter, who is very pretty, and with masculine (or at least
_some_ masculine) fatuity, makes Madame de la Pommeraye his confidante.
She gives him rope, but he uses it, of course, only to hang himself. He
tries the usual temptations; but though the mother at least would not
refuse them, Madame de la Pommeraye's hand on the pair is too tight. At
last he offers marriage, and--with her at least apparent consent--is
married. The next day she tells him the truth. But her diabolism fails.
At first there is of course a furious outburst. But the girl is
beautiful, affectionate, and humble; the mother is pensioned off; the
Marquis and Marquise des Arcis retire for some years to those invaluable
_terres_, after a sojourn at which everything is forgotten; and the
story ends. Diderot, by not too skilfully throwing in casuistical
attacks and defences of the two principal characters, but telling us
nothing of Madame de la Pommeraye's subsequent feelings or history, does
what he can, unluckily after his too frequent fashion, to spoil or at
least to blunt his tale. It is not necessary to imitate him by
discussing the _pros_ and _cons_ at length. I think myself that the
Marquis, both earlier and later, is made rather too much of a _benet_,
or, in plain English, a nincompoop. But nincompoops exist: in fact how
many of us are not nincompoops in certain circumstances? Madame de la
Pommeraye is, I fear, rather true, and is certainly sketched with
extraordinary ability. On a larger scale the thing would probably, at
that time and by so hasty and careless a workman, have been quite
spoilt. But it is obviously the skeleton--and something more--of a
really great novel.

[Sidenote: _La Religieuse._]

It may seem that a critic who speaks in this fashion, after an initial
promise of laudation, is a sort of Balaam topsyturvied, and merely
curses where he is expected to bless. But ample warning was given of the
peculiar position of Diderot, and when we come to his latest known and
by far his best novel, _La Religieuse_, the paradox (he w