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

grey coat.
    ME : Yes, yes.
    HIM : Worn threadbare on one side, the cuffs torn, and your stockings of black wool with the seams darned in white.
    ME : Yes, yes, whatever you say.
    HIM : So, back then, what were you doing in the Allée des Soupirs? *
    ME: Cutting a rather pathetic figure.
    HIM : And once outside the Gardens, you’d be pounding the pavement.
    ME : I agree.
    HIM : You used to give mathematics lessons.
    ME : Without knowing a thing about the subject, isn’t that what you’re getting at?
    HIM : Exactly.
    ME : I learnt by teaching others, and I turned out some good students.
    HIM : That may be, but music isn’t the same as algebra or geometry. Now you’re a big fish.
    ME : Not so very big.
    HIM : And doing very nicely, thank you.
    ME : Not all that nicely.
    HIM : You’re hiring masters to teach your daughter.
    ME : Not yet. It’s her mother who sees to her education: you have to have peace at home.
    HIM : Peace at home? My goodness, you only have peace if you’re either servant or master, and the one to be is master. I had a wife, God rest her soul, but if she occasionally got uppish with me I’d get on my high horse and thunder at her, I’d say, like God: ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light. And in all four years we didn’t raise our voices at each other so many as ten times. How old is your child?
    ME : That’s got nothing to do with it.
    HIM : How old’s your child?
    ME : Devil take it, let’s leave my child and her age out of it, and get back to the tutors she’ll be having.
    HIM : God, I’ve never met anything as pigheaded as a philosopher. In all humility, I wish to enquire of My Lord Philosopher if one might possibly ascertain the age of Mademoiselle his daughter.
    ME : Let’s say she’s eight. *
    HIM : Eight! Then she ought to have had her fingers on the keyboard for the last four years.
    ME : But perhaps I didn’t particularly wish to include in her education a subject that takes up so much time and is of so little use.
    HIM : So what are you planning to teach her, may I ask?
    ME : If I can, to think straight—a very rare thing among men, and even more so among women.
    HIM : Let her think as illogically as she wants, as long as she’s pretty, amusing, and knows how to please.
    ME : Since nature has been so unkind to her as to give her a delicate constitution along with a sensitive soul, and to expose her to the same pain in life as if her constitution were strong and her heart made of bronze, I’ll teach her, if I can, to bear her pain courageously.
    HIM : Let her weep, suffer, simper, and complain of her nerves like all the others, as long as she’s pretty, amusing, and knows how to please. What, no dance lessons?
    ME : No more than what’s required to master curtseying, deportment, how to handle herself correctly, and how to walk well.
    HIM : No voice lessons?
    ME : No more than what’s required to learn proper pronunciation.
    HIM : No music lessons?
    ME : If I could find a good tutor for harmony, I’d be happy to have him teach her a couple of hours a day, for a year or two, but no more than that.
    HIM : And in the place of those essentials you’re eliminating?
    ME : I’ll put grammar, mythology, history, geography, a little drawing, and a great deal of ethics.
    HIM : How easily I could prove to you the uselessness of all those subjects in a world like ours; indeed, not simply the uselessness, but perhaps even the danger. But for the moment I’ll content myself with this question: won’t she need a tutor or two?
    ME : Undoubtedly.
    HIM : Now we’re back on our subject. And these tutors, you expect them to know grammar, mythology, history, geography, ethics, which they’ll teach her? Nonsense, my dear sir, nonsense. If they knew those subjects well enough to teach them, they wouldn’t be doing so.
    ME : Why not?
    HIM : Because they’d have spent their entire life learning them. You have to have completely immersed yourself in art or in science to understand its