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Palissot,* at sixty years old, was destined to expiate in a prison a satire upon Rousseau, written when he was only twenty, and escaped, not by the interposition of justice, but by the efficacity of a bon mot. * Palissot was author of "The Philosophers," a comedy, written thirty years ago, to ridicule Rousseau.
This was very true of Voltaire, who was as thin-skinned as he was violent; and who is believed to have tried sometimes to silence his opponents by the arbitrary method of procuring from some man in power a royal order to have them locked up. Palissot, in a very readable comedy, makes fun of Diderot and his friends. As for invective, the supply is endless on both sides.
Scattered among the more serious fragments of the dialogue is some excellent by-play of sarcasm upon Palissot, and one or two of the other assailants of the new liberal school. Palissot is an old story. The Palissots are an eternal species. The family never dies out, and it thrives in every climate.
A force d'attentats il se croit illustré; Et s'il n'était méchant, il serait ignoré. Palissot began with a tragedy. He proceeded to an angry pamphlet against the Encyclopædists and the fury for innovation. Then he achieved immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter heads of the town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert, and the others, up to hatred and ridicule.
Chaudon and Nonnotte prepared a series of articles, arranged in the form of a dictionary, in which the Catholic doctrine is set forth, sometimes clearly and forcibly. Dictionnaire antiphilosophique, republished and enlarged by Grosse under the title Dictionnaire d'antiphilosophisme, Palissot, Les philosophes.
The bookseller Duchesne, with whom I was not at that time acquainted, sent me the comedy when it was printed, and this I suspect was by the order of Palissot, who, perhaps, thought I should have a pleasure in seeing a man with whom I was no longer connected defamed. He was greatly deceived.
The Conservators, LE BLOND, COQUILLE, and PALISSOT, whose complaisance is never tired, are well known in the Republic of Letters. It is open to the public every day, from ten o'clock to two, Sundays, Thursdays, and the days of national fetes excepted.
Choiseul very wisely determined to encounter Frederic at Frederic's own weapons, and applied for assistance to Palissot, who had some skill as a versifier, and some little talent for satire. Palissot produced some very stinging lines on the moral and literary character of Frederic, and these lines the Duke sent to Voltaire.
Palissot produced his comedy to please the devout at the expense of the philosophers . Madame de Robecq, daughter of Rousseau's marshal of Luxembourg, instigated and protected him, for Diderot had offended her. Morellet replied in a piece in which the keen vision of feminine spite detected a reference to Madame de Robecq.
It was in the salon of the delicate but ardent young Princesse de Robecq that Palissot was inspired to write the satirical comedy of "The Philosophers," in which Rousseau was represented as entering on all fours, browsing a lettuce, and the Encyclopedists were so mercilessly ridiculed.
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