There was a third house where he visited much more often and got on much better; but that was not because Madame d’Épinay was its mistress, but because Grimm was its presiding genius. His friendship with the cool German had a sentimentality and a demonstrativeness which Englishmen find hard to forgive, but which were sincere enough not the less. Grimm took complete control of his impulsive, generous colleague. Because Grimm bade him, Denis began in 1759 writing his ‘Salons,’ or criticisms on pictures, and became ‘the first critic in France who made criticism eloquent;’ while, when Grimm was away, almost all the work of the ‘Literary Correspondence’ fell on Diderot’s too good-natured shoulders. When his dearest friend was not there, Diderot’s steps turned much less often towards Madame d’Épinay’s house. In 1759 he first spent an autumn at the only place at which he was perfectly at home, and where he soon became a regular visitor. Baron d’Holbach was first of all ‘an atheist, and not ashamed;’ but he was also very rich, very liberal, very hospitable, with a charming country house at Grandval, near Charenton, where he entertained the free-thinkers of all nations, and where his table was equally celebrated for its cook and its conversation. The former was so good that Denis was always over-eating himself; and the latter was, in a moral sense, so bad that he enjoyed it to the utmost. The Grandval household was fettered by none of the tiresome rules which are apt to make visiting, when one has passed the easily adaptable season of youth, a hazardous experiment. The hostess ‘fulfilled no duties and exacted none.’ The visitors were as free as in their own homes. Diderot would get up at six, take a cup of tea, fling open the windows to admit the air and sunshine, and then fall to work. At two came dinner. The house was always full of people who met now for the first time. In that free style, glowing with life and colour, Diderot recorded to Mademoiselle Volland the Rabelaisian conversation which made these dinners so long, and, to him, so delightful. He reported to her verbatim the amazing liberty of speech which distinguished them, just as he reported to her in minutest detail the indigestions for which the too excellent cook was responsible.