Pierre Chartier : Asmodée or the intruder. Indiscreet works, which violate privacy for publication, are numerous in the 18th Century, from the Diable boiteux to Félicia, via Le Sopha Les Bijoux indiscrets and especially Ceci n'est pas un conte. In these works, the narrator plays the role of confident, friend, go-between, and puts the reader-accomplice in the position of a voyeur , but at a distance, as if «veiled ». The case of Diderot reveals particularly clearly the necessities and limits of this complicity. The libertine or moral conte is for him an intermediate theatrical solution, which rejects the solitary, fascinated position which is more and more that of the modern novel reader. Did Asmodée, the limping devil, realize he would produce such a numerous progeny ?