with a certain elegance, and that her new establishment permitted her to open a salon, which soon took rank in the society of Paris: who dine have acquired a tranquillity very agreeable to those with whom they live.' Rousseau (quoted with full assent by Some years later, in 1753, the death of the jeuners,' by the remark, C'est le temps de Rogers) justifies his 'goût vif pour les déDuchess du Maine restored her completely to la journée où nous sommes les plus tranherself and her friends. Her Monday suppers were soon much in fashion. The good quilles, où nous causons le plus à notre cheer and the conversation attracted people, aise.' Sydney Smith gave the preference and this salon became one of the centres of to breakfasts on the ground (open to grave the best company. The convent of St. Joseph, doubt) that no one is conceited before one. now the Ministry of War, should have its It will be remembered that the Parisian dinplace in a history which remains to be written, that of the Salons of Paris. Madame du Def-hour, absence of formality, and brevity. ner rather resembled our luncheon in its fand inhabited it during twenty-seven years, and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse during ten.' During the ten years that Mademoiselle du Deffand commanded the best society of de Lespinasse remained with her, Madame Paris, including all the literary and scientific men of note, with the exception of Marmontel and Thomas,-the constant habitués of Madame Geoffrin, and Diderot and Grimm, who remained faithful to Baron If she inhabited this apartment during twenty-seven years, she must have removed to it in 1753, instead of some years before. After quoting a letter to her from Madame de Staal, July 1747, expressing doubt at her being reconciled to her apartment of St. Joseph, M. de Lescure contin-d'Holbach. These ten years began in 1754, ues: 'This is the first time that there is any question of this installation. It is then in 1747 that, faithful to the usages of the time, which opened to widows of quality (sometimes widows in the lifetime of the husbands) the asylum of the profane part of certain convents, where a woman of tact and position could enjoy at small expense the pleasures of retreat or those of society, Madame du Deffand established herself at the convent of Saint-Joseph.' This seems tolerably clear, yet, unless she put off the furnishing for two years, it would appear, from another source equally well authenticated, that the installation did not take place till two years later. In a letter dated Constantinople, April 17th, 1749, the Comte des Alleurs, French Ambassador to the Porte, writes: I am charmed that you are content with Saint-Joseph lodging: I see you hence in this apartment, admiring the yellow-watered silk, and the flame-coloured bows. I forgive your love of ownership; it is the only mode of liking anything.' your Her income after her husband's death, as she subsequently told Walpole, was 33,000 livres, little more than 12007. a year of our money; but quite sufficient, in her time at Paris, for the establishment she set up that is, with good management; and by all accounts she was an excellent manager. An important change in her habits is indicated by a letter from Baron Scheffer, dated November 2nd, 1753 : 'It is very true that the plan you have adopted of dining may prove as advantageous for society as for health. One meets at an earlier hour, and naturally enough the people and, considering the relative position and personal qualities of the two ladies, the wonder is that the connection lasted beyond the first. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was the illegitimate daughter of the Comtesse d'Albon. Although she was entered in the parish registers as the legitimate child of a tradesman of Lyons, whose name was given her, the secret and all the circumstances of her birth were well known in the province; and, as she was born after the marriage of her mother, she might have put in a claim to inherit with the legitimate children according to the doctrine pater est quem nuptiæ demonstrant.' The fear of her taking this step, which she never so much as meditated at any time, seems to have been the primary motive with the Comte and Comtesse de Vichy for taking her under their protection and giving her a home; the Comte, Madame du Deffand's brother, having married a legitimate daughter of the Comtesse d'Albon. It would seem that they were content to keep her domesticated with their family, so as to be able to watch over her, and never thought of conciliating her by kindness. She had been four years. under their roof, charged with the education of their children, when she attracted the notice of Madame du Deffand, to whom she eagerly unbosomed herself: 'She told me that it was impossible for her to remain with M. and Madame de Vichy; that for a long time she had received from them the hardest and most humiliating treatment; that her patience was exhausted; that it was more than a year since she had declared to Madame de Vichy that she wished to leave them; that she could no longer endure the scenes they daily imposed upon her.' Writing to her friend, M. de Guibert, at a subsequent period, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse says: "There is no misery I have not endured. Some day, my friend, I will narrate to you things that are not found in the romances of Prévost or Richardson.' To Madame du Deff and, with failing eyes and total blindness impending, the notion naturally occurred that her young friend was the person of all others best fitted for a companion. But on sounding her brother and sister-in-law, she found them strongly opposed to her scheme, and resolute not to part with their protégée at the risk of her being encouraged to form hopes or plans inimical to their interests. The Duchesse de Luynes, on being consulted, gave it as her opinion that their opposition was unreasonable; and whilst the negociation was proceeding, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse settled the matter, so far as living any longer with her so-called protectors was concerned, by taking up her abode in a convent at Lyons. This she quitted in the spring of 1754 for Madame du Deffand's apartment of St. Joseph, after a correspondence in which she received ample warning touching particular points of conduct; although she could hardly have foreseen the hardships and trials that were in store for her. In April, 1754, Madame du Deffand writes : 'There is one article on which I must come to an understanding with you: it is, that the least artifice, and even the smallest art that you might put into your conduct with me, would be to me insupportable. I am naturally distrustful, and all those in whom I suspect finesse, become suspected by me to the point of my no longer placing any confidence in them. I have two intimate friends, Formont and D'Alembert I am passionately attached to them, less by their agreeability and their friendship than by their extreme truthful a word, never lose one of the greatest attractions of youth, which is naïveté. You have a great deal of esprit; you have gaiety; you are capable of sentiments; with all these qualities you will be charming so long as you give your naturel fair play, so long as you are without pretension and without equivocation.' When all had been arranged at Lyons, Madame du Deffand started for Paris, after announcing her speedy return and future mode of life to D'Alembert: 'The life I shall lead will suit you, I hope. We shall often dine together tête-à-tête, and we shall confirm each other in the resolution not to make our happiness depend on anybody but ourselves. I shall possibly teach you to endure men, and you will teach me to do with out them.' Her mode of doing without them was to collect round her as many of the most distinguished as she could; and the way of life she actually pursued for a period is correctly described by the author of the 'Notice,' who says that, instead of giving dinners on fixed days, like Madame Geoffrin, she gave soirées, beginning at six, occasionally followed by a supper. One of the aphoristic sayings attributed to her was, that Suppers were one of the four ends (fins) of man.' What are the other three? de Her blindness made day or night indifferent to her. She had formerly been in the habit of sitting up late, but the dawn at least warned her of the necessity of sleep. During the concluding twenty-six years of her life, when night was never ending for her, it was only caprice, whim, or exhaustion that induced her to take to her bed, not to leave it till six in the evening, when she received her visitors. Mademoiselle Lespinasse was compelled to keep nearly the same hours, it being a part of her regular duty to remain by the bedside of her patroness, reading aloud or conversing, not unfrequently till morning broke. She rose at five in the afternoon, an hour before Madame du Deffand, to prepare for the receptions; and it was her employment of this hour, rather than any impatience at the painful sacrifice of health and comfort imposed upon her, that caused the final and definitive rupture in 1764. She had powers of conversation little, if at all, inferior to those of the Marquise. She was young, interesting, with a distinguished air and presence, and claims to what many called beauty, till it was impaired by the small-pox. She occupied a little room looking on the court where (suggests M. de Sainte-Aulaire) some clerk of the War Office may be now at work, little thinking that during many years the highest notabilities of the last century were in the | your very expressions, and the result of the habit of meeting by appointment every impressions that you have long been receiving day, between five and six, in his bureau.' from those whom you call your true friends. We doubt the many years, but it had for They may be so in effect; and I wish with all some time become the habit of Madame du my heart that they may procure you all the advantages you expect from them-pleasure, Deffand's most distinguished friends to pass fortune, consideration, &c.' the hour prior to the opening of her salon with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. These,' continues Marmontel, the chief authority for the incident, " were moments stolen from Madame du Deffand. This special rendezvous was consequently a mystery to her, for it was well foreseen that she would be jealous of it. To listen to her, it was nothing less than a treason. She cried out against it in the loudest terms, accusing this poor girl of seducing away her friends, and vowing that she would no longer nourish this serpent in her bosom.' But had she not good reason to complain? Was it not something very like a treason? at all events a flagrant breach of the original compact she had insisted upon, an undeniable departure from the line of conduct she had pronounced essential to young confidence? Was not this hour a serious encroachment on her rights? Were the friends who came to her after this preliminary interchange of mind, the same as if they had come fresh, with the gloss of novelty on their gossip, their anecdotes, or their wit? Were they equally able to begin and carry on the conversation without any sense of restraint? Madame du Deffand had clearly right upon her side so long as she merely protested against the deceit practised on her; but when she would listen to no excuse, contrition, or promise of amendment, and as good as turned her friend, now become her rival, into the streets, she placed herself completely in the wrong. More than one violent scene of crimination and recrimination took place between the ladies; and at the end of one of them, if we may believe La Harpe, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, driven to despair, took sixty grains of opium, which, failing to produce death, threw her into terrible convulsions, which had a lasting effect on her nerves. Under the belief that she was dying, she said to Madame du Deffand, who was weeping at the foot of her bed, It is too late, Madame.' Madame remained inexorable, and declined even a parting inter view. In a final letter she says:- This was meant satirically, but the wish was amply fulfilled. The apartment in the Rue de Belle-Chase, to which Mademoiselle de Lespinasse removed, was furnished for her by the Duchesse de Luxembourg, and could boast a circle of habitués only second to that which met at the Convent; in fact, with rare exception, the same persons fluctuated between both. If there was one to whom Madame du Deffand thought she could dictate, it was D'Alembert; but when she imperiously gave him the alternative of breaking with her or Mademoiselle de Lespanisse, he decided without a moment's hesitation for the younger, to whom This embittered the rupture; and on hearhe afterwards became passionately attached. ing of her death, in 1776, Madame du Deffand's first expression was, 'She should have died fifteen years sooner; I should not then have lost D'Alembert. The salon of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was the only one that came into momentous competition with that of Madame du Deffand, who, when what she thought undue importance was attached to Madame Geoffrin's in her According to Rochefoucauld, the reason why the majority of women are little moved by friendship is, that it is insipid when the y have felt love. It may be because Madam e du Deffand was comparatively insensible to the tender passion, and only gave in to it as the fashion or habit of her youth, that she took so ardently to friendship. But eloquently as she expatiates on its charms, she failed to acquire credit for the excess of sensibility to which she lays claims. La Harpe lays down broadly that it was difficult to have less sensibility and more ego tism.' Under the title of Idée des Liaisons de Paris,' Grimm reports a pretended dialogue between her and the Count Pont-de-Veyle. She begins :— ""Pont-de-Veyle !" "Madame !" "Where are you?" "At your chimney corner. 'I cannot consent to see you again so soon; "With your feet on the hearth, as one is and I cannot believe that it is a sentiment of among friends?" "Yes, Madame." "It friendship that makes you wish it. It is im- must be owned that there are few liaisons of possible to love those by whom one knows longer standing than ours." "That is true!" oneself to be "detested," "abhorred," &c."Yes, fifty years good; and in this long &c.; by whom "one's self-love is unceasingly interval not a cloud, not even the semblance of humiliated, crushed," &c. &c. These are a difference.' "That is what I have always admired." 66 But, Pont-de-Veyle, may not that be because at bottom we have been always perfectly indifferent to one another?" "That may well be, Madame."' เ When Pont-de-Veyle died, says La Harpe, she came to a large supper party at Madame de Marchais', where I was, and she was condoled with on her loss. "Hélas! he died this evening at six, otherwise you would not see me here." These were her very words, and she supped as usual, that is to say, very well; for she was very gourmande.' M. de Sainte-Aulaire objects that Grimm was not personally acquainted with her, and appeals to the warm exacting tone of her letters. Yet even these are not wanting in indications that she was deficient in tenderness, and commonly made the head do duty for the heart. Thus in the correspondence with the President Henault, when she labours hardest to persuade both him and herself that they are wrapt up in each other, she unconsciously betrays her incapacity for genuine affection; and, although their contemporaries were less charitable on this point, we see no reason to doubt the entire innocence of their liaison. He was forty-five when it commenced. 'The poor President!' exclaims Grimm, he may have been an agreeable adorer, never a passionate one; no one would do him this injustice.' He said, pleasantly, of his own want of ardour in middle age, that he began to be very glad when he mistook the hour, and arrived too late at a rendezvous. Yet he was too sentimental for Madame du Deffand, who finds fault with him for the one flight of gallantry in his letters with which a woman of fancy and feeling would have been charmed. She is at Forges taking the waters, and he at Paris, when, July 12, 1742, he writes: I went yesterday to Brutus: it was well attended. I was confirmed in what I have always thought, that it is the finest piece of Voltaire. Lanoue acted with that intelligence which you do not like, because it does not suppose fire; it is as if when one says that a girl on her preferment plays well on the harpsichord-this is as good as saying that she is not pretty. However, I found no want of fire. I returned to receive my company, which was not numerous, for we were only seven; the Maréchale, her daughter, Madame de Maurepas, Ceresti, Pont-de-Veyle, and myself. Our supper was excellent, and (what will surprise you) we amused ourselves. I own to you, that if, when it was over, I had known where to find you, I should have gone to look for you. The weather was the finest imaginable, the moon was beautiful, and my garden seemed to long for you. But, as Polyeucte observes, what is the use of talking of these things to hearts that God has not touched?' She replies to this pretty burst in a letter, or rather postscript, in which, after some medical details of the effect of the waters, she says: 'I find I am growing thinner, and I see everybody else getting fatter. I should like to hear the answer to the consultations which I beg you to hold with Silva (the Paris doctor). I do not know whether it is one ounce or two of peeled cassia that I am to take, and as I do not sup, at what time I should take it. It is make you long for me. I am regretted and the moonlight, it is certain circumstances, that wished for according to the dispositions to which the beauty of the weather brings your soul; as for me, I long for you everywhere, and I know of no circumstance which could render your presence less agreeable. The fact is, I have neither temperament nor romance." She had only to go one step farther, and say that she had neither body nor soul. According to her doctrine, it is lack of affection to wish to share a pleasure with a beloved object; and the poet of love was untrue to his vocation when he sang: 'Oh! best of delights, as it everywhere is, To be near the loved one! What a rapture is his, Who in moonlight and music thus sweetly may glide O'er the lake of Cashmere, with that One by his side! If woman can make the worst wilderness dear. Think, think what a heaven she must make of Cashmere!' The President was not slow to see his ad Vantage, and replied: You have neither temperament nor romance! I pity you from my soul; and you know as well as another the value of this loss, for I believe I have heard you speak of it. What you call romance in your letter-the memories, the moonlight, the idea of the places where we have seen any one we love, a phase of soul which makes us think more tenderly of them, a fête, a fine day, &c., in a word, all that the poets have said upon this subject-it seemed to me that this was by no means ridiculous. But haply it is for my good that you do not like me to have all these follies in my head. Well, be it so. I beg pardon for all the rivulets, past, present, and to come; for their brothers, the birds; for their cousins, the elms; and for their great grandfathers, the sentiments. There! I stand corrected, and my letters will henceforth be only agreeable to you by all the news I can pick up in the town, and imagine, to amuse you. I resume, then, the historic style, and I will speak no more of myself except in connection with facts.' He might have added, anticipating the fine remark of Johnson :- Whatever with In wild Vaucluse with love and Laura dwell, And watch and weep in Eloïsa's cell.' It was for want of this faculty of association that she suffered so much from ennui, especially after the supply of external impressions was curtailed by blindness. From what an infinity of weariness and querulousness might she not have been saved by a spark of that inward light which irradiated and cheered the solitary and dark but wakeful hours of Milton ! Ah! who can tell the triumphs of the mind When age has quenched the eye, and closed the ear, Still nerved for action in her native sphere.' She seems to have become aware of her mistake in trying to pass off the defect of her character as a merit, for directly afterwards she writes: 'You know, moreover, what I think, what I am, and what are my subjects of quarrel. For example, is it in good faith that you tell me I wish to emancipate myself from gratitude when I appear to doubt of your sentiments? Once for all, do you believe me actuated by such a motive? Oh, no; you see clear as day that when I remark in you a grain of true sentiment, it performs the miracle of the grain of mustard in Scripture: it removes mountains. Rarely do you let me enjoy this illusion, or this truth: but let us drop this, and not trouble my waters. They will really do me good.' Referring to the pleasure she received from his letters, she tells him that he has 'l'absence délicieuse`;' and he replies : 'You have never said a better thing than that I have "l'absence délicieuse." But all truths are not good to be told. I believe in effect that, if you had to arrange your life, you would divide it into two parts, and that I should have one. Absence is like the Elysian fields, in which all men are equal; or, more correctly speaking, I believe that I should have some advantage, and that it is the true position for recalling one's love in sonnets.' Having no imagination of the richer kind to vary the expression of such feeling as she possessed, she exercises her ingenuity in inventing subjects of complaint. She resemples Faulkland in the Rivals,' who fancies that his mistress's melancholy is assumed to excite his sympathy, and that her gaiety when he is out of spirits is a proof of her indifference. In letter after letter she goes on refining on sentiment till it is well-nigh lost in logical distinctions or metaphysical analysis. In a postscript to one of them she adds: thing. I like you to talk elms, rivulets, spar'Do not set about correcting yourself in any rows, &c.: it affords me a most agreeable occasion for contradicting you, confounding you, tormenting you it is, I believe, what anost contributes to the salutary operation of the waters.' by La Harpe, when he relates that, having How lightly she regarded the tie is shown. made up her mind, by way of change and she began by setting down the different for the sake of excitement, to try devotion, things she was prepared to renounce, and concluded the list with: As for rouge and the President, I will not do them the hontimacy became a mere matter of habit, and our of giving them up.' Latterly the inceased to be a source of gratification to either. On the 22nd of February, 1769, Voltaire, who detested him, writes to her : 'So the President's watch is out of order? It is the fate of all who live long. I am told that the President declines apace. I am sorry for it, but one must submit to one's destiny. Pray, tell the shattered President how much I am interested in his amiable soul.' She writes to Walpole, on the 13th of June, 1790 :— 'Yesterday I dragged the President to a He did not hear her any more than the inconcert. Mademoiselle le Maure was singing. struments that accompanied her. He kept ask ing me every minute if I heard anything. He supposes me deaf as well as blind, and as old as himself on this last point he is not far wrong.' Why did she drag him to a concert, except, as he always complained, to' tyrannise' him. He was then eighty-six and she seventy-three. On Sunday, the 25th of November, 1770, she writes : 'What I announced in my last letter has come to pass. The President died yesterday at seven in the morning. I felt sure he was dying since Wednesday: he had not on that day, nor since, either suffering or conscious ness never was end more gentle he became extinct. Madame de Jonsac's grief has appeared extreme: mine is more moderate. I had so many proofs of his lack of friendship, that I believe I have only lost an acquaintance: however, as this acquaintance was of very intimate (except a few who know some of my long standing, and all the world believed us subjects of complaint), I receive compliments of condolence on every side. It only rests |