Translated from Project Gutenberg´s French edition, which can be found here: www.gutenberg.org/etext/28602 This Is Not a Story (written around 1772-published in 1798) Original French title: Ceci n'est pas un conte By Denis Diderot Translation into English by Peter Phalen Copyright (2010) by Peter Phalen This work is licensed for non-commecial use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. This story is found in Grimm´s Correspondence, dated April 1773, but that version is incomplete. The history of Tanié and la Reymer is missing, as is the end of the history of Mademoiselle de La Chaux. M. A.-A. Barbier (Dictionary of the Anonymous) suggested that Diderot´s memory must have failed him when he attributed translations of "Hume´s First Essays on Metaphysics" [p. 321] and the Essays on Human Understanding [p. 328] to Mademoiselle de La Chaux. But this was certainly not the case. Diderot was only giving the works of Hume as translated by Mademoiselle de La Chaux a more general title. The Political Discourses make up the second part of the Essays. Mademoiselle de La Chaux wrote the first translation of this part (Of Commerce; Of Luxury; Of Money, Amsterdam, 1752, 1753, in-12; Paris and Lyon, in-12). It includes only seven of Hume´s seventeen discourses along with some commentary by the translator. Abbot Le Blanc and later Mauvillon did not publish their versions of the same piece until 1754. Mademoiselle de La Chaux´s translation of Hume´s Writings on Economics was included in the XVth tome of the Collections from the Leading Economists. She died in 1755. This Is Not A Story When one tells a story it is for a listener; and however short the story is, it is highly unlikely that the teller is not occasionally interrupted by his audience. So I have introduced into the narration that will be read, and which is not a story, or which is a bad one if you have doubts about that, a character that might approximate the role of the reader; and I begin. * * * * * And you conclude right there? --That a subject this interesting must make us dizzy, be the talk of the town for a month, be phrased and rephrased until flavorless, produce a thousand arguments, at least twenty leaflets, and around a hundred bits of verse in favor or against. In spite of all the finesse, learning, and pure grit of the author, given that his work has not lead to any violence it is mediocre. Very mediocre. --But it seems to me that we owe him a rather agreeable evening, and that this reading has brought... --What? A litany of worn-out vignettes fired from left and right, saying just one single thing known for all eternity, that man and woman are extraordinarily unfortunate beasts. --Nevertheless the epidemic has won you over, and you have contributed just like any other.