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"Then your battle is over, for I consent before I know what you ask. I only make a reserve on one point." "So much the worse, as that may turn out to be just what I want you to do. Tell me what it is." "I was going to Rome, when the Abbe Galiani told me that Donna Lucrezia was here with you." "And can a short delay interfere with your happiness? Are you not your own master?"
People of talent, nevertheless, thronged about M. and Madame Necker. Diderot often went to see them; Galiani, Raynal, Abbe Morellet, M. Suard, quite young yet, were frequenters of the house; Condorcet did not set foot in it, passionately enlisted as he was amongst the disciples of M. Turgot, who were hostile to his successor; Bernardin de St.
Upon the departure of Abbé Galiani from Paris, Mme. d'Epinay and Diderot were intrusted with the revision and printing of his famous Dialogues sur les Blés; Grimm left to them the continuance of his Correspondance Littéraire.
But the remarkable men of this country, it is said, such as the Abbé Galiani, Caraccioli, &c., possessed the highest sense of humour, joined to the most profound reflection, rare powers of the mind! an union without which either pedantry or frivolity would hinder us from knowing the true value of things.
He was a brother to the Marquis de Galiani, of whom I shall speak when we come to my Italian travels. The Abbe Galiani was a man of wit. He had a knack of making the most serious subjects appear comic; and being a good talker, speaking French with the ineradicable Neapolitan accent, he was a favourite in every circle he cared to enter.
Their clearness was not befogged by sentiment, nor, it may be added, were their characters enriched by it. "The women of the eighteenth century loved with their minds and not with their hearts," said the Abbe Galiani. The very absence of the qualities so essential to the highest womanly character, according to the old poetic types, added to their success.
"You are as pretty as you were twenty-six years ago, and if it had not been for the Abbe Galiani I should have left Naples without seeing you." I found Leonilda had developed into a perfect beauty. She was at that time twenty-three years old. Her husband's presence was no constraint upon her; she received me with open arms, and put me completely at my ease.
Among the few women admitted to these dinners was Mme. d'Epinay, for whom d'Holbach, as well as his amiable wife, always entertained the warmest friendship. This woman, whose position was not assured enough to make people overlook her peculiar and unfortunate domestic complications, has told the story of her own life in her long and confidential correspondence with Grimm, Galiani, and Voltaire.
Whatever her faults and weaknesses may have been, the woman who could retain the devoted affection of so brilliant and versatile a man as Grimm for twenty-seven years, who was the lifelong friend and correspondent of Galiani and Voltaire, and the valued confidante of Diderot, must have had some rare attractions of mind, heart, or character.
Each day was like the next; industry, gaiety, bodily comfort, mental activity, diversifying the hours. Grimm was often there, "the most French of all the Germans," and Galiani, the most nimble-witted of men, inexhaustible in story, inimitable in pantomimic narration, and yet with the keenest intellectual penetration shining through all his Neapolitan prank and buffoonery.
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