work Diderot turned with boundless energy. D'Alembert, however, was
discouraged, and retired from the undertaking. For six years Diderot
labored on, never safe from interference on the part of the government,
and managing a great enterprise, with its staff of contributors and its
scores of workmen, while constantly liable to arrest and imprisonment.
Diderot worked indefatigably also with his pen; writing articles on all
sorts of subjects,--philosophy, arts, trades, and manufactures. To learn
how things were made he visited workshops and handled tools, baffled at
times by the jealousy and distrust of the workmen, who were afraid of
his disclosing their secret processes, or of his giving information to
the tax-gatherer.

The sharpest blow was yet to fall. The "Encyclopaedia" was issued by an
association of publishers which paid Diderot a moderate salary for his
services. Of these publishers one, named Le Breton, was the chief. He is
said to have been a dull man, incapable of understanding any work of
literature. It was his maxim that literary men labor for glory, and
publishers for pay, and consequently he divided the income of the
"Encyclopaedia" into two parts, giving to Diderot the glory, the danger,
and the persecution, and reserving the money for himself and his
partners. From his position in Paris he felt sure of being able to
foresee any new order launched against the "Encyclopaedia" while the
printing was in progress, and of providing against it. But the time of
publication was likely to be marked by a new storm. Under these
circumstances Le Breton resorted to a trick. After Diderot had read the
last proof of every sheet, the publisher and his foreman secretly took
it in hand, erased and cut out all that seemed rash or calculated to
excite the anger of religious or conservative people, and thus reduced
many of the principal articles to fragments. Then, to make the wrong
irremediable, they burned the manuscripts, and quietly proceeded with