Galiani was more than a match for the laughers. ‘Sire,’ he said to the King, ‘you now see only a sample of the secretary; the secretary will arrive later.’ The King was delighted; but the secretary retired with that cruel laughter ringing in his heart. For a whole year he pleaded passionately for his recall. He wrote bitterly of the French as ‘a mobile and superficial race full at once of passion and lightness.... My clothes, my character, my way of thinking, and all my natural defects will always make me insupportable to this people and to myself.’ From being the most popular and successful man in Naples, he was in Paris the insignificant secretary at whom, as he passed by, men mocked with the tongue in the cheek. They did not indeed mock for ever. His own sharp tongue was bound to win him respect and reputation. First it was a jest uttered here; and then a story, with his own inimitable gesticulation, told there. This little secretary is going to be amusing! Further, he was always accompanied by his _âme damnée_, the most intelligent of monkeys, who was only something less entertaining than his master. The master, moreover, could play on the clavecin, and sing to it, wonderfully. Even for the Parisians of that day his conversation was free, naïf, unhampered. The man has ideas, as we all have, on the liberty of the Press and the Masses, on the Deluge that is coming after us; only he can put those ideas so that the expression reads like a romance or sounds like a jest! Then he was introduced to Baron Gleichen, and to Grimm, the first journalist in Europe. Grimm made him known to Madame d’Épinay; and his acquaintance with her, with Madame Necker, with Madame Geoffrin, and with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, implied an introduction to the society of all witty Paris, and of all travelling England. He became the friend of d’Alembert, who had just published his ‘Elements of Philosophy,’ of Diderot, of d’Holbach, of Helvétius, of Morellet, and of Marmontel. He met that magnificent icicle, Saint Lambert, still writing his ‘Seasons’ and stealing Madame d’Houdetot from Rousseau. He knew Suard, Thomas, Raynal, and that picturesque and ill-fated young Spaniard, the Marquis de Mora.