well-known day of power at the court of Frederick the Great.
Grimm and Diderot, too, were honored guests of that most liberal
of despots, and discussed their novel theories in familiar
fashion with Catherine II, at St. Petersburg. The reply of this
astute and clear-sighted empress to the eloquent plea of Diderot
may be commended for its wisdom to the dreamers and theorists of
today.

"I have heard, with the greatest pleasure, all that your
brilliant intellect has inspired you to say; but with all your
grand principles, which I comprehend very well, one makes fine
books and bad business. You forget in all your plans of reform
the difference of our two positions. You work only on paper,
which permits everything; it is quite smooth and pliant, and
opposes no obstacles to your imagination nor to your pen; while
I, poor empress, I work upon the human cuticle, which is quite
sensitive and irritable."

It is needless to say that the men so honored by sovereigns were
petted in the salons, in spite of their disfavor with the
Government. They dined, talked, posed as lions or as martyrs,
and calmly bided their time. The persecution of the
Encyclopedists availed little more than satire had done, in
stemming the slowly rising tide of public opinion. Utopian
theories took form in the ultra circles, were insidiously
disseminated in the moderate ones, and were lightly discussed in
the fashionable ones. Men who talked, and women who added
enthusiasm, were alike unconscious of the dynamic force of the
material with which they were playing.