Free Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics) by Denis Diderot

up until now I’ve made no headway. However that may be, you now know the subject of my habitual soliloquies: make of them what you will, as long as you conclude that I am indeed familiar with self-contempt, that torment of the conscience you suffer if you fail to use those talents Providence bestowed on you; it’s the cruellest of all torments. One almost feels it would have been better not to have been born.
    As I listened to him describing the scene of the procurer seducing the young girl, I found myself torn between two conflicting emotions, between a powerful desire to laugh and an overwhelming surge of indignation. I was in agony. Again and again a roar of laughter prevented my rage bursting forth; again and again therage rising in my heart became a roar of laughter. I was dumbfounded by such shrewdness and such depravity; by such soundness of ideas alternating with such falseness; by so general a perversity of feeling, so total a corruption, and so exceptional a candour. He saw how agitated I was. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
    ME : Nothing.
    HIM : I think you’re upset.
    ME : Indeed I am.
    HIM : So what do you think I should do?
    ME : Talk about something else. What a wretched fate, to have been born or to have fallen so low!
    HIM : I agree. But don’t let my state affect you too much. In opening my heart to you, it was not my intention to upset you. I’ve managed to save a little, while I was with those people. Remember I wanted for nothing, nothing whatsoever, and they also made me a small allowance for incidentals. [Here he began to strike himself on the forehead with his fist, bite his lips, and roll his eyes like a lunatic, then he said:] What’s done is done. I’ve put a bit aside. Time’s passed, so I’m that much to the good.
    ME : You mean to the bad.
    HIM : No, to the good. Live one day less, or have one écu more, it’s all the same. The important thing is to open your bowels easily, freely, enjoyably, copiously, every evening;
o stercus pretiosum! *
That’s the grand outcome of life in every condition. At the final moment, we are all equally rich—Samuel Bernard who by dint of theft, pillage, and bankruptcy leaves twenty-seven million in gold, and Rameau who’ll leave nothing, Rameau for whom charity will provide the winding-sheet to wrap him in. The corpse doesn’t hear the bells tolling. It’s in vain that a hundred priests bawl themselves hoarse for him, it’s in vain that he’s preceded and followed by a long line of mourners bearing flaming candles; his soul does not process beside the master of ceremonies. Rotting under marble or rotting under earth, you’re still rotting. Whether you’ve choirboys in red andblue surplices around your coffin or no one at all, what difference does it make? And then just look at this wrist: it was stiff as the devil. These ten fingers were like rods stuck into a wooden metacarpus; these tendons were like old catgut cords that were drier, harder and more unyielding than those driving a turner’s wheel. But I tormented them, I worked them, I broke them. You don’t want to do it; well by God I’m telling you you’ll do it; and you shall.
    While he was speaking he had grasped the fingers and wrist of his left hand with his right and forced them up, then down, so that the tips of the fingers were touching his arm; the joints began to crack and I feared he might dislocate the bones.
    ME : Careful; you’ll damage yourself.
    HIM : Don’t worry. They’re used to it; for the last ten years I’ve given them a really bad time. In spite of themselves, the stubborn devils have had to get used to it, and learn how to place themselves on the keys and to dart about on the strings. So now they work. Yes, they work.
    Saying this, he assumes the posture of a violinist; he hums an
allegro
of Locatelli’s; his right arm mimics the movement of the bow, while his left hand and fingers seem to travel up and down the neck; if he plays a wrong note he stops,