He needed in his companion a robust patience, to match his own too robust activity.

One may suppose that if Mirabeau had married Hannah More, the union would have turned out ill, and Diderot's marriage was unluckily of such a type.

His wife's narrow pieties and homely solicitudes fretted him.

He had not learned to count the cost of deranging the fragile sympathy of the hearth.

While his wife was away on her visit to his family, he formed a connection with a woman (Madame Puisieux) who seems to have been as bad and selfish as his wife was the opposite.