Through the wit and the parties, in the midst of ardent secretarial duties and of continual literary studies, somehow, at some time--though how and at what time it would be difficult to say--Galiani had brought to bear on the question his Italian shrewdness and brilliancy, all the learning and observation taught him by his uncle, and the judgment and the wisdom taught him by Heaven. No man would have believed that such a merry, light, social person could have pondered so deeply; no one _had_ believed it. The book was in the form of a dialogue between a Marquis and a Chevalier, It was as gay and rollicking as the little Abbe’s own talk. In fact, it was his own talk; but it was something much more. It was much more even than a pamphlet on a passing question, on a matter of local momentary importance, ‘Read between the lines and in the margin,’ it was an able work on the science of government, what Grimm called justly ‘the production of a sound and enlightened philosopher, and of a statesman.’ In it the author exposed his theory that a man of State must know not only his business but the human heart--‘You must study men before you can rule them.’ This knowledge he denied to Turgot; and he warned France, in solemn prophecy to be fulfilled too soon, to beware in her rulers, not the rogues and the knaves--they soon show themselves in their true colours--but _l’honnête homme trompé_. ‘He wishes all men well, so all men trust him; but he is deceived as to the means of doing well.’ The work was received with the wildest enthusiasm. In far Ferney, the spirited old Patriarch of Literature jumped for joy, almost literally, at a wit and a style so inimitable. No man ever reasoned so agreeably before.... ‘No man has ever made famine so amusing.... If the work does not diminish the price of bread, it will give pleasure to the whole nation.... Plato and Molière have combined to write it....’ Excellent! excellent! And in the same year, 1770, the master himself wrote for his ‘Questions on the Encyclopædia’ the article on Grain wherein Galiani was not forgotten. Diderot, who, with Grimm and Madame d’Épinay, had helped to correct the proofs of the ‘Dialogues,’ declared impetuously to Mademoiselle Volland that he had gone down on his knees to implore Galiani to publish them. Grimm said that if he were Controller-General he should attach the Abbé to France, if it cost the King forty thousand livres per annum, ‘without any other stipulation but that he should amuse himself and come twice a week to chat with me over the affairs of my Government.’ Even Fréron, Élie Fréron, the brilliant Parisian journalist, who hated Voltaire and consequently all Voltaire’s colleagues and disciples, could not help praising the thing in his ‘Literary Year.’ Frederick the Great wrote the author a flattering letter.