Key takeaways
- Diderot keeps one old rug made of cloth scraps in his new study, as a daily reminder of where he started.
- He insists he is not corrupted, then describes exactly what corruption would look like, a forgotten family, debts and no savings.
- His prayer asks God to take everything away if wealth spoils him, with one exception, the Vernet.
After the inventory comes the defense. One cheap thing has survived the makeover, and Diderot shows it to us, swears he will keep it, and then insists, a little too hard, that he has not changed. The chapter ends with the start of a prayer, and with a bargain that anyone who has ever tried to clear out a closet will recognize.
Where we divide the text. Diderot’s prayer runs on as one paragraph of more than six hundred words in the French. We split it between this chapter and the next, at the point where he stops pleading and starts describing the painting, and we break it into shorter paragraphs in English. Nothing is left out. One more word: médiocrité, in the first line, meant modest means in Diderot’s day, the comfortable middle the old poets praised, not mediocrity.
The text, with notes
Of my first modest means, nothing remains but a rug made of cloth selvages. This shabby rug hardly suits my luxury, I know. But I have sworn, and I swear again, for the feet of Denis the philosopher will never tread on a masterpiece from the Savonnerie, that I will keep this rug, as the peasant who was moved from his cottage to his sovereign’s palace kept his clogs. In the morning, when I walk into my study wrapped in the sumptuous scarlet, if I lower my eyes, I see my old rag rug. It reminds me of where I began, and pride stops at the threshold of my heart.
Note. A rug of lisières was woven from selvages, the narrow edge strips cut from bolts of cloth, about the cheapest floor covering there was. The Savonnerie was its opposite, the royal carpet works in Paris, which took its name from the old soap factory (savon is soap) where it started in the early seventeenth century. The peasant who keeps his clogs in the palace belongs to an old story with many tellings. In La Fontaine’s fable The Shepherd and the King, a shepherd raised to high office keeps his old smock and crook in a locked chest, and when jealous courtiers force it open looking for treasure, that is all they find.
No, my friend, no, I am not corrupted. My door still opens to need when need comes knocking, and need finds me as friendly as ever. I listen to it, I advise it, I help it, I pity it. My soul has not hardened; my head is held no higher. My back is as good and round as it always was. The same frankness, the same tenderness. My luxury is recent, and the poison has not yet taken effect. But in time, who knows what may happen? What can you expect of a man who has forgotten his wife and his daughter, who has run into debt, who has stopped being a husband and a father, and who, instead of putting a useful sum away at the bottom of a faithful strongbox…
Note. The wife and daughter are real. Diderot had married Anne-Antoinette Champion in 1743, and their only surviving child, Marie-Angélique, was born in 1753. The “useful sum” he breaks off before naming reads very like her dowry: four years before this essay, he had offered to sell his library to raise one. Notice how the confession works. He says he is not corrupted, then describes, as if speaking of someone else, exactly what corruption would look like: a forgotten family, debts, no savings. The sentence stops before he has to finish it.
Ah, holy prophet, raise your hands to heaven and pray for a friend in danger. Say to God: If you see in your eternal decrees that wealth is corrupting the heart of Denis, do not spare the masterpieces he worships. Destroy them, and bring him back to his first poverty.
And I, for my part, will say to heaven: God, I submit to the holy prophet’s prayer and to your will. I give everything up to you. Take it all back. Yes, all of it, except the Vernet. Oh, leave me the Vernet. It was not the artist who made it; it was you. Respect the work of friendship, and your own.
Note. Diderot had long since turned from the church to atheism, which makes this prayer a joke from its first line, and the joke has a point. He offers God everything, then holds one thing back, and finds a reason why it does not really count: it is not a possession at all, but the work of friendship and of God. Anyone who has decluttered knows the move.
What to notice
The rag rug is the essay’s one practical lesson, and a good one. Diderot does not throw out the last trace of his old life; he keeps it where he will see it every morning, as a check on pride. It is close to a rule we suggest for anyone in a chain: keep the old thing in the room for a while, and see whether it still bothers you once the new thing stops being new. Our seven rules for stopping a chain explain why. In the next chapter, the prayer turns into a guided tour of the painting he refuses to give up.
Read this chapter in the original French
De ma médiocrité première, il n’est resté qu’un tapis de lisières. Ce tapis mesquin ne cadre guère avec mon luxe, je le sens. Mais j’ai juré et je jure, car les pieds de Denis le philosophe ne fouleront jamais un chef-d’œuvre de la Savonnerie, que je réserverai ce tapis, comme le paysan transféré de sa chaumière dans le palais de son souverain réserva ses sabots. Lorsque le matin, couvert de la somptueuse écarlate, j’entre dans mon cabinet ; si je baisse la vue, j’aperçois mon ancien tapis de lisières ; il me rappelle mon premier état, et l’orgueil s’arrête à l’entrée de mon cœur.
Non, mon ami, non ; je ne suis point corrompu. Ma porte s’ouvre toujours au besoin qui s’adresse à moi ; il me trouve la même affabilité. Je l’écoute, je le conseille, je le secours, je le plains. Mon âme ne s’est point endurcie ; ma tête ne s’est point relevée. Mon dos est bon et rond, comme ci-devant. C’est le même ton de franchise ; c’est la même sensibilité. Mon luxe est de fraîche date et le poison n’a point encore agi. Mais avec le temps, qui sait ce qui peut arriver ? Qu’attendre de celui qui a oublié sa femme et sa fille, qui s’est endetté, qui a cessé d’être époux et père, et qui, au lieu de déposer au fond d’un coffre fidèle, une somme utile…
Ah, saint prophète ! levez vos mains au ciel, priez pour un ami en péril, dites à Dieu : Si tu vois dans tes décrets éternels que la richesse corrompe le cœur de Denis, n’épargne pas les chefs-d’œuvre qu’il idolâtre ; détruis-les, et ramène-le à sa première pauvreté ; et moi, je dirai au ciel de mon côté : Dieu ! je me résigne à la prière du saint prophète et à ta volonté ! Je t’abandonne tout ; reprends tout ; oui, tout, excepté le Vernet. Ah ! laisse-moi le Vernet ! Ce n’est pas l’artiste, c’est toi qui l’as fait. Respecte l’ouvrage de l’amitié et le tien.
Sources
- Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre (Denis Diderot, Œuvres complètes, edited by J. Assézat and M. Tourneux, Garnier, 1875, volume IV, pages 5 to 12) The French text we translate from, in the public domain.
- Savonnerie manufactory (Wikipedia) The royal carpet works that grew up in a former soap factory in Paris.
- Le Berger et le Roi (Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, 1679, Wikisource) The fable of the shepherd who kept his old clothes in a locked chest.
- Denis Diderot (Wikipédia, in French) His marriage, his daughter Marie-Angélique, and the library he offered for sale in 1765 to provide her dowry.
- Denis Diderot (Encyclopaedia Britannica) His turn from the church to atheism.
Page history: first published .