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The payment received by Diderot is a little doubtful, and the terms were evidently changed from time to time. His average salary, after D'Alembert had quitted him, seems to have amounted to about three thousand livres, or one hundred and thirty pounds sterling, per annum.
It is more than likely that the great philosopher believed her story, but if so he did not allow her the satisfaction of knowing his belief, declaring always that Madame Tencin could "not be nearer than a step-mother to him, since his mother was the wife of the glazier." D'Alembert did much for the cause of science by his example as well as by his discoveries.
I made a gift of them to the French Academy, which sent me a very flattering letter through the permanent secretary, d'Alembert. My presentation of these two portraits to the Academy also secured me the honour of a visit from d'Alembert, a dried up morsel of a man of exquisitely polished manners. He stayed a long time and looked my study all over, while he paid me a thousand compliments.
But if we compare the first with the new Encyclopedie, the former concocted by Voltaire, D'Alembert and Diderot, the latter by Pierre Leroux and his associates, we shall find that Infidelity has assumed greater hardihood, and has appeared under less restraint in recent than in former times; while the speculations of Comte and Crousse are as thoroughly atheistic as those of D'Holbach himself.
This great edifice, "built half of marble, half of mud," as Voltaire himself said, had as its chief architects Diderot and D'Alembert. Nothing contributed more to undermine the foundations on which all institutions, and not least royalty, were built. A little later than Voltaire came Rousseau, "the valet who did not become a cardinal."
He finds four or five rotten staves of Diogenes' tub, and instals himself therein to bark at his friends. D'Alembert was more tolerant, but less clear-sighted. He insisted that the little flock should do its best to heal divisions instead of widening them.
D'Alembert, one of the first mathematicians of his age, was a wit, a man of gallantry and letters. With us a learned man is absorbed in himself and some particular study, and minds nothing else. There is something ascetic and impracticable in his very constitution, and he answers to the description of the Monk in Spenser From every work he challenged essoin For contemplation's sake.
This advice he would not take, because he looked upon D'Alembert as an infidel. M. de Marigny took a copy of the letter, which he lent me. A certain nobleman, at one time, affected to cast tender glances on Madame Adelaide. She was wholly unconscious of it; but, as there are Arguses at Court, the King was, of course, told of it, and, indeed, he thought he had perceived it himself.
Modesty is only a virtue when it is natural; if it is put on, or merely the result of training, it is detestable. The great d'Alembert was the most truly modest man I have ever seen. When I got to Brussels, where I spent two days, I went to the "Hotel de l'Imperatrice," and chance sent Mdlle. X. C. V. and Farsetti in my way, but I pretended not to see them.
The incubation of his grievances began immediately after his arrival at Wootton, but two months elapsed before they burst forth in full flame. The general charge against Hume was that he was a member of an accursed triumvirate; Voltaire and D'Alembert were the other partners; and their object was to blacken the character of Rousseau and render his life miserable.
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