The seventh volume found nearly a thousand more.[137] Such prodigious success wrought the chagrin of the party of superstition to fever heat.

As each annual volume came from the press and found a wider circle of readers than its predecessor, their malice and irritation waxed a degree more intense.

They scattered malignant rumours abroad; they showered pamphlets; no imputation was too odious or too ridiculous for them.

Diderot, D'Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, were declared to have organised a league of writers, with the deliberate purpose of attacking the public tranquillity and overthrowing society.

They were denounced as heads of a formal conspiracy, a clandestine association, a midnight band, united in a horrible community of pestilent opinions and sombre interests.
In the seventh volume an article appeared which made the ferment angrier than it had ever been.