As a rule Talleyrand’s witticisms were marked by politeness. But he could say severe things; and once when a lady, who suffered from defective vision, seemed by her mode of inquiry after his health to be hinting at his lameness, he replied to her “_Comment allez vous?_” “_Comme vous voyez, Madame_.” His “_Surtout pas de zèle_” is well known; also his amusing if cynical caution on the subject of spontaneity: “Beware of first impulses: they are nearly always generous.” CHAPTER XXXIII. THE RUE TARANNE AND DIDEROT. Diderot’s Early Life in Paris--His Love Affairs--Imprisonment in the Château de Vincennes--Diderot and Catherine II. of Russia--His Death. An interesting book has been published, under the title of “Paris Démoli,” on the churches, houses, and buildings of various kinds which were pulled down during the work of reconstruction pursued so vigorously during recent years, and especially under the Second Empire. To build the Rue de Rennés, which joins the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the terminus of the Left-Bank Western Railway on the Boulevard Montparnasse, it was necessary to pull down the two first houses in the Rue Taranne, numbered 1 and 2. No. 2, whose side windows look out upon the Rue Saint-Benoit, afforded for many years an abode, on the fifth floor, just beneath the roof, to Diderot, who, however, died, not here, but in the Rue Richelieu immediately after his return from a visit to the Empress Catherine. Fitted neither by birth nor breeding for the atmosphere of courts, Diderot received, nevertheless, from the Russian empress the greatest marks of favour. In Russia Catherine could scarcely govern otherwise than despotically, though she once summoned a parliament whose members were entrusted with legislative functions; and it was perhaps not altogether her fault that nothing came of their labours. Personally, however, she had not the despotic manners by which the intercourse of Frederick the Great with his inferiors was so often marked. Of a more accommodating disposition than Diderot, Voltaire was able for a considerable time to live peacefully with the Prussian king, though when at last the inevitable quarrel came, he did not scruple to criticise and satirise the sovereign whom, through a long course of years, he had persistently flattered.