16/116 In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in his hair. If the weather is mild, he measures the Champs Elysees all night long. With the day he reappears in the town, dressed over night for the morrow, and from the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of the week." Diderot is accosted by this curious being one afternoon on a bench in front of the Cafe de la Regence in the Palais Royal. They proceed in the thoroughly natural and easy manner of interlocutors in a Platonic dialogue. It is not too much to say that _Rameau's Nephew_ is the most effective and masterly use of that form of discussion since Plato. |