The eighteenth century did not practise on its own account that respect for conscience which it, nevertheless, powerfully and to its glory promoted.
Diderot died on the 29th of July, 1784, still poor, an invalid for some time past, surrounded to the end by his friends, who rendered back to him that sincere and devoted affection which he made the pride of his life.
Hearing of his sufferings from Grimm, the Empress Catherine had hired a furnished apartment for him; he had just installed himself in it when he expired; without having retracted any one of his works, nearly all published under the veil of the anonymous, he was, nevertheless, almost reconciled with the church, and was interred quietly in the chapel of the Virgin at St.Roch.

The charm of his character had often caused people to forget his violence, which he himself no longer remembered the next day.

"I should like to know this hot-headed metaphysician," was the remark made to Buffon by President De Brosses, who happened to be then at Paris; and he afterwards added, "He is a nice fellow, very pleasant, very amiable, a great philosopher, a mighty arguer, but a maker of perpetual digressions.

Yesterday he made quite five and twenty between nine o'clock and one, during which time he remained in my room.

O, how much more lucid is Buffon than all those gentry!" The magistrate's mind understood and appreciated the great naturalist's genius.