I have been forced all my life to follow pursuits for which I was not adapted, and to leave on one side those for which I had a call from inclination." Before he was thirty years old, and without any resource but his lessons and the work of every sort he did for third parties, Diderot married; he had not asked the consent of his parents, but this did not prevent him from saddling them before long with his wife and child.

"She started yesterday," he writes quite simply to his father, "she will be with you in three days; you can say anything you like to her, and when you are tired of her, you can send her back." Diderot intended to be free at any price, and he threw off, one after another, the fetters he had forged for himself, not without remorse, however, and not without acknowledging that he was thus wanting to all natural duties.

"What can you expect," he would exclaim, "of a man who has neglected wife and daughter, got into debt, given up being husband and father ?" Diderot never neglected his friends; amidst his pecuniary embarrassments, when he was reduced to coin his brain for a livelihood, his labor and his marvellous facility were always at the service of all.

It was to satisfy the requirements of a dangerous fair friend that he wrote his _Pensees philosophiques,) the sad tale of the _Bijoux indiscrets_ and the _Lettre sur les Aveugles,_ those early attacks upon religious faith which sent him to pass a few months in prison at the Castle of Vincennes.

It was to oblige Grimm that he for the first time gave his mind to painting, and wrote his _Salons,_ intended to amuse and instruct the foreign princes.
"A pleasure which is only for myself affects me but slightly and lasts but a short time," he used to say; "it is for self and friends that I read, reflect, write, meditate, hear, look, feel.