They are in our present case only the setting of a curiously frank and open picture of a man's life.
It is held by some that one of the best means of giving the sense of a little fixity to lives that are but as the evanescent fabric of a dream and the shadow of smoke, is to secure stability of topographical centre by abiding in the same house.

Diderot is one of the few who complied with this condition.

For thirty years he occupied the fourth and fifth floors of a house which was still standing not long ago, at the corner of the Rue Saint Benoit by the Rue Taranne, in that Paris which our tourists leave unexplored, but which is nevertheless the true Paris of the eighteenth century.

Of the equipment of his room we have a charming picture by the hand of its occupant.

It occurs in his playful Regrets on My Old Dressing-gown, so rich in happy and delightful touches.
"What induced me to part with it?
It was made for me; I was made for it.
It moulded itself to all the turns and outlines of my body without fretting me.