Diderot with a laugh sat down and wrote what was wanted.

The graver occasions of life found him no less ready.

Damilaville lost one of his children, and his wife was inconsolable.

It was Diderot who was summoned, and who cheerfully went for days together to soothe and divert her mind.

For his correspondent and for us he makes the tedium of his story beautiful by recalling the fine saying of a grief-stricken woman in Metastasio, when they tried to console her by the example of Abraham, who was ready even to slay his son at the command of God: _Ah, God would never have given such an order to his mother!_ The abbe Le Monnier wrote the worst verses that ever were read, a play that was instantly damned, and a translation of Terence that came into the world dead.