But there was a group of men, less famous but not less great, who also heralded1 the coming of the new heaven and the new earth; who were in a strict sense friends and fellow-workers of Voltaire, although one or two of them were personally little known to him; whose aim was his aim, to destroy from among the people ‘ignorance, the curse of God,’ and who were, as he was, the prophets and the makers2 of a new dispensation.
That many of these light bringers were themselves full of darkness, is true enough; but they brought the light not the less, and in their own{2} breasts burnt one cleansing4 flame, the passion for humanity.
For the rest, they were the typical men of the most enthralling5 age in history—each with his human story as well as his public purpose, and his part to play on the glittering stage of the social life of old France, as well as in the great events which moulded her destiny and affected6 the fate of Europe.
. . . . . .
Foremost among them was d’Alembert.
Often talked about but little known, or vaguely7 remembered only as the patient lover of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, Jean Lerond d’Alembert, the successor of Newton, the author of the Preface of the Encyclop?dia, deserves an enduring fame.
On a November evening in the year 1717, one hundred and eighty-nine years ago, a gendarme8, going his round in Paris, discovered on the steps of the church of Saint-Jean Lerond, once the baptistery of Notre-Dame, a child of a few hours old. The story runs that the baby was richly clad, and had on his small person marks which would lead to his identification. But the fact remains9 that he was abandoned in mid-winter, left without food or shelter to take his feeble chance of life and of the cold charity of some such institution as the Enfants Trouvés. It was no thanks to the mother{3} who bore him that the gendarme who found him had compassion10 on his helpless infancy11. The man had the baby hurriedly christened after his first cradle, Jean Baptiste Lerond, took him to a working woman whom he could trust, and who nursed him—for six weeks say some authorities, for a few days say others—in the little village of Crémery near Montdidier.
At the end of the time there returned to Paris a certain gallant12 General Destouches, who had been abroad in the execution of his military duties. He went to visit Madame de Tencin, and from her learnt of the birth and the abandonment of their son.
No study of the eighteenth century can be complete without mention of the extraordinary women who were born with that marvellous age, and fortunately died with it. Cold, calculating, and corrupt15, with the devilish cleverness of a Machiavelli, with the natural instinct of love used for gain and for trickery, and with the natural instinct of maternity16 wholly absent, d’Alembert’s mother was the most perfect type of this monstrous17 class. Small, keen, alert, with a little sharp face like a bird’s, brilliantly eloquent18, bold, subtle, tireless, a great minister of intrigue19, and insatiably ambitious—such was Madame de Tencin. It was she who assisted at the meetings of statesmen, and{4} gave Marshal Richelieu a plan and a line of conduct. It was she who managed the affairs of her brother Cardinal20 de Tencin, and, through him, tried to effect peace between France and Frederick in the midst of the Seven Years’ War. It was she who fought the hideous21 incompetence22 of Maurepas, the Naval23 Minister; and it was she who summed herself up to Fontenelle when she laid her hand on her heart, saying, ‘Here is nothing but brain.’
From the moment of his birth she had only one wish with regard to her child—to be rid of him. A long procession of lovers had left her wholly incapable24 of shame. But the child would be a worry—and she did not mean to be worried! If the father had better instincts—well, let him follow them. He did. He employed Molin, Madame de Tencin’s doctor, to find out the baby’s nurse, Anne Lemaire, and claim the little creature from her.
The great d’Alembert told Madame Suard many years after how Destouches drove all round Paris with the baby (‘with a head no bigger than an apple’) in his arms, trying to find for him a suitable foster-mother. But little Jean Baptiste Lerond seemed to be dying, and no one would take him. At last, however, Destouches discovered, living in the Rue3 Michel-Lecomte, a poor glazier’s wife, whose motherly soul was touched by{5} the infant’s piteous plight25, and who took him to her love and care, and kept him there for fifty years.
History has concerned itself much less with Madame Rousseau than with Madame de Tencin. Yet it was the glazier’s wife who was d’Alembert’s real mother after all. If she was low-born and ignorant, she had yet the happiest of all acquirements—she knew how to win love and to keep it. The great d’Alembert, universally acclaimed26 as one of the first intellects of Europe, had ever for this simple person, who defined a philosopher as ‘a fool who torments27 himself during his life that people may talk of him when he is dead,’ the tender reverence28 which true greatness, and only true greatness perhaps, can bear towards homely29 goodness. From her he learnt the blessing30 of peace and obscurity. From his association with her he learnt his noble idea—difficult in any age, but in that age of degrading luxury and self-indulgence well nigh impossible—that it is sinful to enjoy superfluities while other men want necessaries. His hidden life in the dark attic31 above her husband’s shop made it possible for him to do that life’s work. For nearly half a century he knew no other home. When he left her roof at last, in obedience32 to the voice of the most masterful of all human passions, he still retained for her the tenderest affection, and bestowed33 upon her and{6} her grandchildren the kindness of one of the kindest hearts that ever beautified a great intelligence.
Little Jean Baptiste was put to a school in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he passed as Madame Rousseau’s son. General Destouches paid the expenses of this schooling34, took a keen pleasure in the child’s brightness and precocity35, and came often to see him. One day he persuaded Madame de Tencin to accompany him. The seven-year-old Jean Baptiste remembered that scene all his life. ‘Confess, Madame,’ says Destouches, when they had listened to the boy’s clever answers to his master’s questions, ‘that it was a pity to abandon such a child.’ Madame rose at once. ‘Let us go. I see it is going to be very uncomfortable for me here.’ She never came again.
Destouches died in 1726, when his son was nine years old. He left the boy twelve hundred livres, and commended him to the care of his relatives. Through them, at the age of twelve, Jean Baptiste received the great favour of being admitted to the College of the Four Nations, founded by Mazarin, and in 1729 the most exclusive school in France. Fortunately for its new scholar it was something besides fashionable, and did its best to satisfy his extraordinary thirst for knowledge. His teachers were all priests and Jansenists, and nourished their apt scholar on{7} Jansenist literature, imbuing36 him with the fashionable theories of Descartes. How soon was it that they began to hope and dream that in the gentle student called Lerond, living on a narrow pittance37 above a tradesman’s shop, they had found a new Pascal, a mighty38 enemy of the Archfiend Jesuitism?
But beneath his timid and modest exterior39 there lay already an intellect of marvellous strength and clearness, a relentless40 logic41 that tested and weighed every principle instilled42 in him, every theory masquerading as a fact. He quickly became equally hostile to both Jesuit and Jansenist. It was at school that he learnt to hate with an undying hatred43, religion—the religion that in forty years launched, on account of the Bull Unigenitus, forty thousand lettres de cachet, that made men forget not only their Christianity but their humanity, and give themselves over body and soul to the devouring44 fever called fanaticism45. At school also he conceived his passion for mathematics, that love of exact truth which no Jansenist priest, however subtle, could make him regard as a dangerous error.
When he was eighteen, in 1735, he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts and changed his name. D’Alembert is thought to be an anagram on Baptiste Lerond. Anagrams were fashionable, and one{8} Arouet, who had elected to be called Voltaire, had made such an alteration46 of good omen13. D’Alembert went on studying at the College, but throughout his studies mathematics were wooing him from all other pursuits. The taste, however, was so unlucrative, and the income from twelve hundred livres so small, that a profession became a necessity. The young man conscientiously47 qualified48 for a barrister. But ‘he loved only good causes’ and was naturally shy. He never appeared at the Bar.
Then he bethought him of medicine. He would be a doctor! But again and again the siren voice of his dominant49 taste called him back to her. His friends—those omniscient50 friends always ready to put a spoke51 in the wheel of genius—entreated him to be practical, to remember his poverty, and to make haste to grow rich. He yielded to them so far that one day he carried all his geometrical books to one of their houses, and went back to the garret at Madame Rousseau’s to study medicine and nothing else in the world. But the geometrical problems disturbed his sleep.
—— One master-passion in the breast,
Like Aaron’s serpent, swallowed all the rest.
Fate wanted d’Alembert, the great mathematician52, not some prosperous, unproductive mediocrity of a Paris apothecary53. The crowning blessing of{9} life, to be born with a bias54 to some pursuit, was this man’s to the full.
He yielded to Nature and to God. He brought back the books he had abandoned, flung aside those for which he had neither taste nor aptitude55, and at twenty gave himself to the work for which he had been created.
Some artist should put on canvas the picture of this student, sitting in his ill-aired garret with its narrow prospect56 of ‘three ells of sky,’ poor, delicate, obscure—or rich, rather, in the purest of earthly enjoyments57, the pursuit of truth for its own sake. He could not afford to buy many of the books he needed, so he borrowed them from public libraries. He left the work of the day anticipating with joy the work of the morrow. For the world he cared nothing, and of him it knew nothing. Fame?—he did not want it. Wealth?—he could do without it. Poor as he was, there was no time when he even thought of taking pupils, or using the leisure he needed for study in making money by a professorship.
To give knowledge was his work and his aim; to make knowledge easier for others he left to some lesser58 man. His style had seldom the grace and clearness which can make, and which in many of his fellow-workers did make, the abstrusest reasoning charm like romance. D’Alembert left{10} Diderot to put his thought into irresistible59 words, and Voltaire and Turgot to translate it into immortal60 deeds.
When he was two-and-twenty, in 1739, d’Alembert began his connection with the Academy of Sciences. In 1743 he published his ‘Treatise on Dynamics61.’ Now little read and long superseded62, it placed him at one bound, and at six-and-twenty years old, among the first geometricians of Europe. Modest, frugal64, retiring as he was and remained, he was no more only the loving and patient disciple65 of science. He was its master and teacher. In 1746 his ‘Treatise on the Theory of Winds’ gained him a prize in the Academy of Berlin, and first brought him into relationship with Frederick the Great.
Two years later, when her son was of daily growing renown66, Madame de Tencin died. The story that, when he had become famous and she would fain have acknowledged him, he had repudiated67 her, saying he had no mother but the glazier’s wife, d’Alembert, declares Madame Suard, always denied. ‘I should never have refused her endearments68—it would have been too sweet to me to recover her.’ That answer is more in keeping with a temperament69 but too gentle and forgiving, than the spirited repulse70. It was in keeping also with the life of Madame de Tencin that even death should leave her indifferent to her{11} child. She thought no more of him, he said, in the one than in the other. Her money she left to her doctor.
If the studious poverty of the life in the glazier’s attic spared d’Alembert acquaintances, it did not deprive him of friends.
Then living in Paris, some six-and-thirty years old, the author of the ‘Philosophical Thoughts,’ and the most fascinating scoundrel in France, was Denis Diderot. With the quiet d’Alembert, of morals almost austere72 and of hidden, frugal life, what could a Diderot have in common? Something more than the attraction of opposites drew them together. The vehement73 and all-embracing imagination of the one fired the calm reason of the other. The hot head and the cool one were laid together, and the result was the great Encyclop?dia.
The first idea of the pair was modest enough—to translate into French the English Encyclop?dia of Chambers74. But had not brother Voltaire said that no man who could make an adequate translation ever wasted his time in translating? They soon out-ran so timid an ambition. The thing must not only be spontaneous work; it must wholly surpass all its patterns and prototypes. It must be not an Encyclop?dia, but the Encyclop?dia. Every man of talent in France must bring{12} a stone towards the building of the great Temple. From Switzerland, old Voltaire shall pour forth75 inspiration, encouragement, incentive76. Rousseau shall lend it the glow of his passion, and Grimm his journalistic versatility77. Helvétius shall contribute—d’Holbach, Turgot, Morellet, Marmontel, Raynal, La Harpe, de Jaucourt, Duclos.
And the Preliminary Discourse78 shall be the work of d’Alembert.
An envious79 enemy once dismissed him scornfully as
—— Chancelier de Parnasse,
Qui se croit un grand homme et fit une préface.
Yet if he had written nothing but that Preface he would still have had noble titles to fame. It contained, as he himself said, the quintessence of twenty years’ study. If his style was usually cold and formal, it was not so now. With warmest eloquence80 and boldest brush he painted the picture of the progress of the human mind since the invention of printing. From the lofty heights man’s intellect had scaled there stood out yet mightier81 heights for him to dare! Advance! advance! If ever preface said anything, the Preface to the great Encyclop?dia says this. Clothed with light and fire, that dearest son of d’Alembert’s genius went forth to illuminate82 and to astound83 the world.
At first the Encyclop?dia was not only heard{13} gladly by the common people, but was splendidly set forth with the approbation84 and Privilège du Roi. Even the wise and thoughtful melancholy85 of d’Alembert’s temperament may have been cheered by such good fortune, while the sanguine86 Diderot naturally felt convinced it would last for ever.
Both worked unremittingly. His authorship of the Preface immediately flung open to d’Alembert all the salons88 in Paris, and for the first time in his life he began to go into society. Then Frederick the Great made him a rich and splendid offer, the Presidency89 of the Berlin Academy. Consider that though the man was famous he was still very poor. The little pension which was his all ‘is hardly enough to keep me if I have the happiness or the misfortune to live to be old.’ From the Government of his country he feared everything and hoped nothing. He was only thirty-five years of age. A new world was opened to him. The glazier’s attic he could exchange for a palace, and the homely kindness of an illiterate90 foster-mother for the magnificent endearments of a philosophic71 king. Was it only the painful example of friend Voltaire’s angry wretchedness as Frederick’s guest that made him refuse an offer so lavish91 and so dazzling? It was rather that he had the rare wisdom to recognise happiness when he had it and did not mistake it for some phantom92 will-o’-the-wisp{14} whom distance clothed with light. ‘The peace I enjoy is so perfect,’ he wrote, ‘I dare run no risk of disturbing it.... I do not doubt the King’s goodness ... only that the conditions essential to happiness are not in his power.’
Any man who is offered in place of quiet content that most fleeting93 and unsubstantial of all chimeras—fame and glory—should read d’Alembert’s answer to Frederick the Great.
Frederick’s royal response to it was the offer of a pension of twelve hundred livres.
In September 1754 the fourth volume of the Encyclop?dia was hailed by the world with a burst of enthusiasm and applause, and in the December of that year d’Alembert received as a reward for his indefatigable94 labours a chair in the French Academy. He had only accepted it on condition that he spoke his mind freely on all points and made court to no man. The speech with which he took his seat, though constantly interrupted with clapping and cries of delight, was not good, said Grimm. All d’Alembert’s addresses and éloges spoken at the Academy leave posterity95, indeed, as cold as they left the astute96 German journalist. The man was a mathematician, a creature of reason. The passion that was to rule that reason and dominate his life was not the gaudy97 and shallow passion of the orator98.{15}
In 1756 he went to stay with the great head of his party, Voltaire, at the Délices, near Geneva. The Patriarch was sixty-two years old, but with the activity and the enthusiasm of youth. At his house and at his table d’Alembert met constantly and observed deeply the Calvinistic pastors99 of Geneva. He returned to Paris with his head full of the most famous article the Encyclop?dia was to know. At the back of his mind was a certain request of his host’s, that he should also make a few remarks on the benefits that play-acting would confer on the Calvinistic temperament.
No article in that ‘huge folio dictionary’ brewed100 so fierce a storm or had consequences so memorable101 and far-reaching as d’Alembert’s article ‘Geneva.’ In his reserved and formal style he punctiliously102 complimented the descendants of Calvin as preferring reason to faith, sound sense to dogma, and as having a religion which, weighed and tested, was nothing but a perfect Socinianism. Voltaire laughed long in his sleeve, and in private executed moral capers103 of delight. The few words on the advantages of play-acting, which he had begged might be added, had not been forgotten.
The Genevan pastors took solemn and heartburning counsel together, and on the head of the quiet worker in the attic in Paris there burst a hurricane which might have beaten down coarser natures{16} and frightened stouter104 hearts. Calvinism fell upon him, whose sole crime had been to show her the logical outcome of her doctrines105, with the fierce fury of a desperate cause. Retract106! retract! or at least give the names of those of our pastors who made you believe in the rationalism of our creed107! As for the remarks on plays, why, Jean Jacques Rousseau, our citizen and your brother philosopher, shall answer those, and in the dazzling rhetoric108 of the immortal ‘Letter on Plays’ give, with all the magic and enchantment109 of his sophist’s genius, the case against the theatre.
Then, on March 8, 1759, the paternal110 government of France, joining hands with Geneva, suppressed by royal edict that Encyclop?dia of which a very few years earlier it had solemnly approved. The accursed thing was burnt by the hangman. The printers and publishers were sent to the galleys111 or to death. The permit to continue publishing the work was rescinded112. The full flowing fountain of knowledge was dammed, and the self-denial of d’Alembert’s patient life wasted. The gentle heart, which had never harmed living creature, fell stricken beneath the torrent113 of filthy114 fury which the gutter115 press poured upon him. His Majesty116—his besotted Majesty, King Louis the Fifteenth—finds in the Encyclop?dia, forsooth, ‘maxims tending to de{17}stroy Royal authority and to establish independence ... corruption118 of morals, irreligion, and unbelief.’ Sycophant119 and toadying120 Paris went with him. Furious and blaspheming, passionate121 Diderot came out to meet the foe122. Dancing with rage, old Voltaire at Délices could only calm himself enough to hold a pen in his shaking fingers and pour out incentives123 to his brothers in Paris to fight till the death. To him injustice124 was ever the bugle-call to battle. But not to d’Alembert. He shrank back into his shell, dumb and wounded. ‘I do not know if the Encyclop?dia will be continued,’ he wrote, ‘but I am sure it will not be continued by me.’ Even the stirring incitements of his chief could not alter his purpose. He had offered sight to the blind, and they had chosen darkness; he would bring them the light no more. That Diderot considered him traitor125 and apostate126 did not move him. He would not quarrel with that affectionate, hot-headed brother worker, but for himself that chapter of his life was finished, and he turned the page.
In the very same year he gave to a thankless world his ‘Elements of Philosophy;’ and he again refused Frederick the Great’s invitation to exchange persecuting127 Paris for the Presidency of the Berlin Academy. But there was no reason why{18} he should not escape from his troubles for a time and become Frederick’s visitor.
In 1762 he went to Berlin for two months, and found the great King a clever, generous, and devoted128 friend. But though he continued to beg d’Alembert to stay with him permanently129, and was lavish of gifts and promises, the wise and judicious130 visitor was wholly proof against the royal blandishments. In the same year he refused a yet more dazzling offer—to be tutor to Catherine the Great’s son. He had already in Paris, not only ties, which might be broken, but a tie, which he found indissoluble.
In 1765, three years after Catherine’s offer had been made and declined, d’Alembert, when he was forty-eight years old, was attacked by a severe illness, which, said his accommodating doctor, required larger and airier rooms than those in his good old nurse’s home. He was moved from the familiar Rue Michel-Lecomte to the Boulevard du Temple. There Mademoiselle de Lespinasse joined him and nursed him back to health.
In all the story of d’Alembert’s life, in that age of unbridled licence, no woman’s name is connected with his save this one’s. Fifteen years earlier he had made the acquaintance of Madame du Deffand. To the blind old worldling, who{19} loved Horace Walpole and wrote immortal letters, he stood in the nature of a dear and promising131 son. For many years he was always about her house. His wit and his charm, seasoned by a gentle spice of irony132 and a delightful133 talent for telling stories and enjoying them himself, naturally endeared him to the old woman whose one hell was boredom134. On his side, he came because he liked her, and stayed because he loved Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. The history of that ménage of the brilliant, impulsive135, undisciplined girl, with her plain face and her matchless charm, and of the blind old woman she tended, deceived, and outwitted, has been told in fiction as well as in history. How when Madame du Deffand was asleep, her poor companion held for herself reunions of the bright, particular stars of her mistress’s firmament136, and how the old woman, rising a little too early one day, came into the room and with her sightless eyes saw all, is one of the familiar anecdotes137 of literature.
Long before this dramatic dénouement, d’Alembert and Julie de Lespinasse had been something more than friends. But now Mademoiselle saw herself cast adrift on the world. She flung to it her reputation, and yielded, not so much to the entreaties138 of d’Alembert’s love, as to the more pitiful pleading his solitude139 and sickness made to the{20} warm maternity in her woman’s heart. She nursed him back to convalescence140, and then lived beneath the same roof with him in the Rue Belle141 Chasse.
Picture the man with his wide, wise intelligence and his diffident and gentle nature, and the woman with her brilliant intuition and her quick, glowing impulse. To his exact logic she could add feeling, passion, sympathy; his frigid142 and awkward style she could endow with life and fire. Many of his manuscripts are covered with her handwriting. Some, she certainly inspired. She had read widely and felt keenly, and her lover had weighed, pondered, considered. For him, who had for himself no ambition, she could dare and hope all. The perpetual Secretaryship of the Academy shall be turned from a dream to a fact! In that age of women’s influence no woman had in her frail143 hands more to give and to withhold144 than this poor companion, whose marvellous power over men and destinies lay not in her head, but in her heart. The true complement145 of a d’Alembert, daring where he was timid, fervent146 where he was cold, a woman’s feeling to quicken his man’s reason—here should have been indeed the marriage of true minds.
Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart.
You must be just before, in fine,
See and make me see, for your part,
New depths of the divine!
{21}
Yet d’Alembert’s is the most piteous love-story in history. If Mademoiselle had yielded to his sadness and his loneliness, she had never loved him. Only a year after she had joined him, d’Alembert, alluding147 to some rumours148 which had been afloat concerning their marriage, wrote bitterly, ‘What should I do with a wife and children?’ But there was only one real obstacle to their union. Across Mademoiselle’s undisciplined heart there lay already the shadows of another passion.
From the first the household in the Rue Belle Chasse had been absolutely dominated by the woman. ‘In love, who loves least, rules.’ D’Alembert was in bondage149 while she was free. To keep her, he submitted to humours full of bitterness and sharpness—the caprices of that indifferent affection which gives nothing and exacts all. In her hands, he was as a child; his philosophies went to the winds; his very reason was prostrate150. How soon was it he began to guess he had a rival in her heart?
It was not till after her death that he found out for certain that less than two years after she came to him she had given herself, body and soul, to the young Marquis de Mora. But what he did not know, he must have greatly suspected. It was he who wrote her letters and ran her errands. Grimm recorded in the ‘Literary{22} Correspondence’ the prodigious151 ascendency she had acquired over all his thoughts and actions. ‘No luckless Savoyard of Paris ... does so many wearisome commissions as the first geometrician of Europe, the chief of the Encyclop?dic sect152, the dictator of our Academies, does for Mademoiselle.’ He would post her fervent outpourings to the man who had supplanted153 him, and call for the replies at the post-office that she might receive them an hour or two earlier. What wonder that over such a character, a nature like Mademoiselle’s rode roughshod, that she hurt and bruised154 him a hundred times a day, and wounded while she despised him? No woman ever truly loves a man who does not exact from her not only complete fidelity155 to himself, but fidelity to all that is best and highest in her own nature.
D’Alembert had indeed in full measure the virtue156 of his defects. If it was a crime to be tender to her sins, it was nobility to be gentle to her sufferings. He bore and forbore with her endlessly. Always patient and good-humoured, thinking greatly of her and little of himself, abundant in compassion for her ruined nerves and the querulous feverishness158 of her ill health—here surely were some of the noble traits of a good love. He read to her, watched by her, tended her, and in the matchless society they gathered round{23} them was abundantly content to be nothing, that she might be all.
Their life together in the Rue Belle Chasse had not in the least shocked their easy-going world. Many persons comfortably maintained that their association was the merest friendship—heedless of that amply proven fact that where people avoid evil, they avoid also the appearance of evil. The eighteenth century, indeed, even if it saw any difference between vice159 and virtue, which is doubtful, did not in the least mind if its favourites were vicious or virtuous160, provided they were not dull. D’Alembert and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse did not fall under that ban. The hermit161 life the man had led was over for ever. In her modest room in that dingy162 street, Mademoiselle held every night the most famous salon87 in Paris.
Most of the salons may be exhaustively described as having been nourished on a little eau sucré and a great deal of wit. But to this one wit alone was light, food, and air. Mademoiselle did not require to give dinners like Madame Necker, or suppers like Madame du Deffand; neither for the beauty which, later, was to make men forgive the mental limitations of Madame Récamier, had she need or use. Tall, pale, and slender, with her infinite, unconscious tact163, her mental grace, and her divine sympathy, her passage{24} through the social life of her age has left the subtle perfume of some delicate flower. To be her friend was to feel complete, understood, satisfied. To her, as to a sister of consolation164, came Condorcet, marquis, mathematician, philosopher; Saint-Pierre, the pupil of Rousseau and the creator of ‘Paul and Virginia;’ La Harpe, whom she was to help to the Academy; Hénault, whom she had charmed from Madame du Deffand; Turgot, Chastellux, Marmontel. And quietly effacing165 himself, with that true greatness which is never afraid to be made of little account, was Mademoiselle’s lover and the noblest intellect of them all, d’Alembert.
There is no more delightful trait in his character than this exquisite166 talent for modesty167. With his spare form always dressed from head to foot in clothes of one colour, the aim of d’Alembert was both physically168 and mentally, as it were, to escape notice. True, when he talked, the listener must needs marvel14 at the breadth, the variety, the exhaustless interests of the mind, and its perfect simplicity169 and straightforwardness170. But he did not want to talk much. He liked better to listen. He preferred in society, as he preferred in life, to think while other men said and did.
No social pleasures could either supersede63 the work of his life, or make compensation for the{25} sorrows of his soul. He had already thrown in his lot with Mademoiselle when he published the most daring of all his books, ‘The History of the Destruction of the Jesuits.’ Her treachery had shattered his life for five years, when he asked Frederick the Great for a sum of money which would enable him to travel and heal his broken health and heart. In 1770, with young Condorcet for his companion, he left Paris for Italy, stopped at Ferney, and spent his whole leave of absence with Voltaire.
It was an oasis171 in the desert of the feverish157 existence to which he had condemned172 himself. In mighty speculation173, in splendid visions of the future of the race, in passionate argument on the immortality174 of the soul and the being and nature of God, he forgot his personal sorrows. The mind dominated and the heart was still. What nights the three must have spent together—Voltaire with his octogenarian’s intellect as keen and bright as a boy’s, the young Marquis, sharp-set to learn, and d’Alembert with his ‘just mind and inexhaustible imagination’—when they could get rid of that babbling175 inconsequence, Voltaire’s niece, Madame Denis, and sit hour after hour discussing, planning, dreaming! The quiet d’Alembert went, as quiet people often do, far beyond his impulsive and outspoken176 companions in speculative177 daring. Though{26} there is not an anti-Christian line in any of his published writings except his correspondence, yet the scepticism of this gentle mathematician far exceeded that of him who is accounted the Prince of Unbelievers, and where his host was a hotly convinced Deist, d’Alembert only thought the probabilities in favour of Theism, and was far more Voltairian than Voltaire. It was the old Pontiff of the Church of Anti-Christ who stopped a conversation at his table wherein d’Alembert had spoken of the very existence of God as a moot178 point, by sending the servants out of the room, and then turning to his guests with—‘And now, gentlemen, continue your attack upon God. But as I do not want to be murdered or robbed to-night by my servants, they had better not hear you.’
The visit lasted in all two months. D’Alembert abandoned the Italian journey, offered King Frederick his change, and returned to Paris.
In 1772 he was made Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy. He, whose needs, said Grimm, were always the measure of his ambitions, had scaled heights, not beyond his deserts, but beyond his wishes. He was also a member of the scientific Academies of Prussia, Russia, Portugal, Naples, Turin, Norway, Padua, and of the literary academies of Sweden and Bologna. But if ‘the end of all ambition is to be happy at home,’ d’Alembert{27} had failed. When the Perpetual Secretaryship was still a new and dazzling possession, the Perpetual Secretary found at home the woman to whom he was captive soul and body, in the throes of another passion. False to de Mora, as she had been false to him, she was then writing to de Guibert those love-letters which have given her a place beside Sappho and Elo?sa and have added a classic to literature. It was d’Alembert’s part to listen to self-reproaches whose justice he might well guess, to look into the depths of a tenderness in which he had no share. Once he gave her his portrait with these lines beneath it:
Et dites quelquefois en voyant cette image
De tous ceux que j’aimai, qui m’aima comme lui?
She herself said that of all the feelings she had inspired, his alone had not brought her wretchedness.
In 1775 de Guibert was married. The marriage was Mademoiselle’s death-blow. The fever of the soul became a disease of the body. Sometimes bitterly repentant179 and sometimes only captious180 and difficult; now, her true self full of tenderness and charm: and now, reckless, selfish, despairing—d’Alembert’s patience and goodness were inexhaustible. True to his character, he stood aside that to the last her friends might visit{28} her, that to the last she might help and feel for them.
But though the spirit still triumphed at moments over the body, the end was near. When her misery181 was dulled by opium182, d’Alembert was always watching, unheeded, at her bedside. It was the attitude of his life. When she became conscious, he was there still. Before she died, she asked his pardon; but de Guibert’s was the last name upon her lips. She died on May 23, 1776, not yet forty-five years old.
D’Alembert’s grief seems to have taken by surprise many short-sighted friends who had supposed that quiet exterior to hide a cold, or an unawakened, heart. He was utterly183 crushed and broken. His life had lost at once its inspiration and its meaning. For the sake of Mademoiselle he had grown old without family and without hope. His friends, in that age of noble friendships, did their best to comfort him. But his wounds were deeper than they knew. With a super-refinement of selfishness or cruelty, Mademoiselle had left him her Correspondence. She had not preserved in it one single line of the many letters he had himself written to her, while it contained full and certain proofs of her double infidelity.
He who has lost only those of whose faith and{29} truth he is sure, has not yet reached the depth of human desolation.
After a while, d’Alembert tried to return to his first affection—that cold but faithful mistress, his mathematical studies. At the Academy he pronounced the éloge of Louis de Sacy, who had been the lover of the Marquise de Lambert. For the first time he looked into his heart and wrote, and thus for the first time he touched the hearts of others; the cold style took fire, and beneath the clumsy periods welled tears.
But the writer was consumed to the soul with grief and weariness. This was not the man who could use sorrow as a spur to new endeavour and to nobler work. Before the persecutions which had assailed184 the Encyclop?dia he had bowed his head and taken covert185, and the death of his mistress broke not only his heart, but his spirit and his life. From Madame Marmontel and from Thomas, he derived186, it is said, some sort of comfort: Condorcet was as a son; but with Mademoiselle’s death the light of her society had gone out. The friends who remained were but pale stars in a dark sky. D’Alembert was growing old. He suffered from a cruel disease and could not face the horrors of the operation which might have relieved it. ‘Those are fortunate who have courage,’ said he; ‘for myself, I have none.{30}’ It was life, not death, he dreaded187. What use then to suffer only to prolong suffering?
The mental enlightenment he had given the world, the wider knowledge which he had lived to impart, consoled this dying thinker scarcely at all. He was to his last hour what he had been when Mademoiselle took ill-fated compassion on his dependence117 and loneliness—a child, affectionate, solitary188, tractable189, with the great mind always weighed down by the supersensitiveness of a child’s heart and with a child’s clinging need of care and tenderness. He died on October 29, 1783.
The man whose only reason for dreading190 poverty had been lest he should be forced to reduce his charities, left, as might have been expected, a very small fortune. Condorcet was his residuary legatee, and made his éloge in both the Academies.
Diderot himself was dying when he heard of his old friend’s death. ‘A great light has gone out,’ said he. Euler, d’Alembert’s brother, and sometimes his rival, geometrician, survived him only a few months. And Voltaire, the quick and life-giving spirit of the vast movement of which d’Alembert was the Logic, the Reason, the Thought, had already died to earth, though he lived to everlasting191 fame.
D’Alembert owes his greatest reputation to{31} geometry. But, as Grimm said, in that department only geometricians can exactly render him his due: ‘He added to the discoveries of the Eulers ... and the Newtons.’ To the general public his great title to glory lies in the mighty help he gave to that great monument of Voltairian philosophy, the Encyclop?dia. The Preface was ‘a work for which he had no model.’ By it, he introduced to the world that book which Diderot produced, and which, except the Bible and the Koran, may be justly said to have been the most influential192 book in history; which gave France, and, through France, Europe, that new light and knowledge which brought with them a nobler civilisation193 and a recognition of the universal rights of man.
In himself, d’Alembert was always rather a great intelligence than a great character. To the magnificence of the one he owed all that has made him immortal, and to the weakness of the other the sorrows and the failures of his life. For it is by character and not by intellect the world is won.
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1
heralded
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| v.预示( herald的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布（好或重要） | |
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makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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cleansing
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| n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词 | |
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enthralling
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| 迷人的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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gendarme
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| n.宪兵 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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omen
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| n.征兆，预兆；vt.预示 | |
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14
marvel
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| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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maternity
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| n.母性，母道，妇产科病房；adj.孕妇的，母性的 | |
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17
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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18
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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20
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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21
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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22
incompetence
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| n.不胜任，不称职 | |
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23
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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24
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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25
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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26
acclaimed
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| adj.受人欢迎的 | |
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torments
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| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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28
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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29
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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30
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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31
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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32
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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33
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
schooling
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| n.教育；正规学校教育 | |
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35
precocity
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| n.早熟，早成 | |
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36
imbuing
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| v.使（某人/某事）充满或激起（感情等）( imbue的现在分词 )；使充满；灌输；激发（强烈感情或品质等） | |
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37
pittance
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| n.微薄的薪水，少量 | |
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38
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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39
exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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40
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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41
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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42
instilled
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| v.逐渐使某人获得（某种可取的品质），逐步灌输( instill的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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44
devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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45
fanaticism
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| n.狂热，盲信 | |
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46
alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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47
conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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48
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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49
dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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50
omniscient
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| adj.无所不知的；博识的 | |
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51
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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52
mathematician
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| n.数学家 | |
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53
apothecary
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| n.药剂师 | |
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54
bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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55
aptitude
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| n.(学习方面的)才能，资质，天资 | |
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56
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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57
enjoyments
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| 愉快( enjoyment的名词复数 )； 令人愉快的事物； 享有； 享受 | |
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58
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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59
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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60
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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61
dynamics
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| n.力学，动力学，动力，原动力；动态 | |
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62
superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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supersede
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| v.替代；充任 | |
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64
frugal
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| adj.节俭的，节约的，少量的，微量的 | |
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65
disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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66
renown
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| n.声誉，名望 | |
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67
repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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68
endearments
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| n.表示爱慕的话语，亲热的表示( endearment的名词复数 ) | |
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69
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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70
repulse
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| n.击退，拒绝；vt.逐退，击退，拒绝 | |
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71
philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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72
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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73
vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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74
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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75
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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76
incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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77
versatility
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| n.多才多艺，多样性，多功能 | |
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78
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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79
envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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80
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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81
mightier
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| adj. 强有力的，强大的，巨大的 adv. 很，极其 | |
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82
illuminate
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| vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释 | |
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83
astound
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| v.使震惊，使大吃一惊 | |
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84
approbation
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| n.称赞；认可 | |
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85
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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86
sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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87
salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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88
salons
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| n.（营业性质的）店( salon的名词复数 )；厅；沙龙（旧时在上流社会女主人家的例行聚会或聚会场所）；（大宅中的）客厅 | |
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89
presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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90
illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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91
lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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92
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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93
fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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94
indefatigable
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| adj.不知疲倦的，不屈不挠的 | |
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95
posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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96
astute
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| adj.机敏的，精明的 | |
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97
gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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98
orator
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| n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家 | |
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99
pastors
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| n.（基督教的）牧师( pastor的名词复数 ) | |
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100
brewed
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| 调制( brew的过去式和过去分词 )； 酝酿； 沏（茶）； 煮（咖啡） | |
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101
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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102
punctiliously
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103
capers
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| n.开玩笑( caper的名词复数 )；刺山柑v.跳跃，雀跃( caper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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104
stouter
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| 粗壮的( stout的比较级 )； 结实的； 坚固的； 坚定的 | |
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105
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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106
retract
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| vt.缩回，撤回收回，取消 | |
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107
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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108
rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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109
enchantment
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| n.迷惑，妖术，魅力 | |
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110
paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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111
galleys
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| n.平底大船，战舰( galley的名词复数 )；（船上或航空器上的）厨房 | |
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112
rescinded
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| v.废除，取消( rescind的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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113
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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114
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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115
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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116
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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117
dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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118
corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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119
sycophant
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| n.马屁精 | |
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120
toadying
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| v.拍马，谄媚( toady的现在分词 ) | |
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121
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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122
foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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123
incentives
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| 激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机 | |
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124
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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125
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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126
apostate
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| n.背叛者，变节者 | |
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127
persecuting
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的现在分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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128
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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129
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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130
judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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131
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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132
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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133
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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134
boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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135
impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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136
firmament
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| n.苍穹；最高层 | |
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137
anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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138
entreaties
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| n.恳求，乞求( entreaty的名词复数 ) | |
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139
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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140
convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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141
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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142
frigid
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| adj.寒冷的，凛冽的；冷淡的；拘禁的 | |
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143
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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144
withhold
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| v.拒绝，不给；使停止，阻挡 | |
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145
complement
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| n.补足物，船上的定员；补语；vt.补充，补足 | |
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146
fervent
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| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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147
alluding
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| 提及，暗指( allude的现在分词 ) | |
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148
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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149
bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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150
prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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152
sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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153
supplanted
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| 把…排挤掉，取代( supplant的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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154
bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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155
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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156
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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157
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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158
feverishness
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159
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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160
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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161
hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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162
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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163
tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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164
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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165
effacing
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| 谦逊的 | |
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166
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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167
modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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168
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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169
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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170
straightforwardness
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| n.坦白，率直 | |
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171
oasis
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| n.（沙漠中的）绿洲，宜人的地方 | |
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172
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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173
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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174
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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175
babbling
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| n.胡说，婴儿发出的咿哑声adj.胡说的v.喋喋不休( babble的现在分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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176
outspoken
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| adj.直言无讳的，坦率的，坦白无隐的 | |
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177
speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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178
moot
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| v.提出；adj.未决议的；n.大会；辩论会 | |
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179
repentant
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| adj.对…感到悔恨的 | |
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180
captious
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| adj.难讨好的，吹毛求疵的 | |
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181
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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182
opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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183
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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184
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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185
covert
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| adj.隐藏的；暗地里的 | |
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186
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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187
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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188
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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189
tractable
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| adj.易驾驭的；温顺的 | |
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190
dreading
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| v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的现在分词 ) | |
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191
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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192
influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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193
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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