Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics) by Denis Diderot Read Free Book Online

translation of
Rameau’s Nephew
.

Jean-Philippe Rameau walking in the gardens of the Palais-Royal.
C. L. Carmontelle, etching

(Jean-Philippe sometimes signed as Jean-Baptiste;
the year of birth given is incorrect.)

RAMEAU’S NEPHEW

Second Satire
    Vertumnis quotquot sunt natus iniquis *

       (H ORACE ,
Satires
, II. vii)

RAMEAU’S NEPHEW
    R AIN or shine, it’s my habit, about five of an evening, to go for a stroll in the Palais-Royal. * It’s me you see there, invariably alone, sitting on the d’Argenson bench, musing. I converse with myself about politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I give my mind licence to wander wherever it fancies. I leave it completely free to pursue the first wise or foolish idea that it encounters, just as, on the Allée de Foy, you see our young rakes pursuing a flighty, smiling, sharp-eyed, snub-nosed little tart, abandoning this one to follow that one, trying them all but not settling on any. In my case, my thoughts are my little flirts. If the weather’s too cold, or too wet, I take refuge in the Café de la Régence, * where I pass the time watching the games of chess. Of all the cities in the world, it’s Paris, and of all the places in Paris, it’s the Café de la Régence, where chess is played best. Rey’s café is the arena where the astute Legal, the subtle Philidor, the dependable Mayot mount their attacks; it’s there that you witness the most astonishing moves and that you hear the most stupid conversation; for if one may be both a wit and a fine chess player like Legal, one may also be a fine chess player and an idiot like Foubert and Mayot. While I was there one evening, watching everything, not saying much and listening as little as possible, I was accosted by one of the most bizarre characters in this country, to which God has granted its fair share. He is a composite of nobility and baseness, good sense and irrationality. The concepts of honour and dishonour must surely be strangely jumbled in his head, for he makes no parade of the good qualities which nature has given him, and, for the bad, evinces no shame. He is, what’s more, endowed with a strong constitution, an exceptionally vivid imagination, and an uncommonly powerful pair of lungs. If ever you meet him, and aren’t stopped in your tracks by his singularity, then either you’ll stick your fingers in your ears or you’ll take to your heels. God, what terrible lungs. Nothing could be more unlike him than hehimself is. Sometimes he’s thin and gaunt, like a consumptive on his deathbed; you could count his teeth through the skin of his cheeks. You’d think that he’d gone several days without food, or just come out of a Trappist monastery. The following month he’s fat and paunchy, as if he’d never left the table of a tax farmer, or had been confined in a Bernardine monastery. One day, in grubby linen, torn breeches, and rags, virtually barefoot, he goes about with his head down, avoiding people, and you’d be tempted to call him over and slip him a coin or two. The next, powdered, shod, curled, well dressed, he goes about with head high, he wants to be noticed, and you’d be likely to take him for a gentleman, or near enough. He lives from day to day. Downcast or cheerful, depending on the circumstances. His first concern, on rising in the morning, is to determine where he’ll have lunch; after lunch, he considers where he’ll go to dine. Night brings its own anxieties. Either he’ll return, on foot, to his tiny garret, unless his landlady, weary of asking for his rent, has demanded his key back; or he’ll take refuge in an outlying tavern to await the dawn over a crust of bread and a jug of beer. When he hasn’t a penny in his pocket, which happens from time to time, he resorts to a friend who drives a cab or to a great lord’s coachman, who lets him sleep on the straw, beside the horses. The next morning part of his mattress is still in his hair. If the weather’s mild he spends