After all this show of pride, confess now that you are cutting a very sorry figure ?"[243] All this was the language of good sense, and there is no evidence that Diderot ever swerved from that fair and honourable attitude in his own dealings with the booksellers.

Yet he was able to treat them with a sturdy spirit when they forgot themselves.

Panckoucke, one of the great publishers of the time, came to him one day.

"He was swollen with the arrogance of a parvenu, and thinking apparently that he could use me like one of those poor devils who depend upon him for a crust of bread, he permitted himself to fly into a passion; but it did not succeed at all.

I let him go on as he pleased; then I got up abruptly, I took him by the arm, and I said to him: 'M.