The world of authorship, though extremely noisy and profoundly important, still made only a small group.

One effect of a censorship is to produce much gossip and whispering about suspected productions before they see the light, and these whispers let the police into as many secrets as they choose to know.
In Diderot's case, his unsuspecting good-nature to all comers made his affairs accessible enough.

His house was the resort of all the starving hacks in Paris, and he has left us more than one graphic picture of the literary drudge of that time.

He writes, for instance, about a poor devil to whom he had given a manuscript to copy.

"The time for which he had promised it to me expired, and as my man did not appear, I became uneasy, and started in search of him.