Why has this particular moment been chosen to publish in translation five short tales by Denis Diderot, perhaps the most encyclopedic of eighteenth-century French philosophes? Journalist, social reformer, pioneer dramatist and original art critic, experimental writer of fiction—to name but a few of the spheres that attracted his endless curiosity and his open, probing intelligence —Diderot can certainly appear as a charmer. We have only to read his fond farewell to his old dressing gown (charitably replaced along with other outworn belongings by the wealthy salon hostess Madame Geoffrin) to be seduced by his wit and amiability. Doubtless, his short stories are not as well known today as they should be. Moreover, his intricate narrative techniques and evasive strategies, together with his candid discussion of sexual conduct, may now be regarded as playfully or artfully “modern.”

In much of his fiction, Diderot liked to appear unbuttoned, at his ease, deep in discussion with his characters and his readers—or listeners, as he sometimes called them. That air of informality is the impression he wanted to convey when he was sitting for painters or sculptors. “I am portrayed bareheaded, wearing a dressing gown, … my collar is undone, my gaze is distant like that of someone meditating. I am indeed meditating on this canvas, where I am alive, breathing, full of animation …” So wrote Diderot to his beloved confidante, Sophie Volland, describing