In any case, the project made no advance in his hands.

The embarrassed bookseller next applied to Diderot, who was then much in need of work that should bring him bread.

His fertile and energetic intelligence transformed the scheme.

By an admirable intuition, he divined the opportunity which would be given by the encyclopaedic form, of gathering up into a whole all that new thought and modern knowledge, which existed as yet in unsystematic and uninterpreted fragments.

His enthusiasm fired Le Breton.