The Women of the French Salons by Amelia Gere Mason (page 3)

modest, pure, and loyal.

But the eighteenth century brings new types to the surface. The precieuses, with their sentimental theories and naive reserves, have had their day. It is no longer the world of Mme. de Rambouillet that confronts us with its chivalrous models, its refined platonism, and its flavor of literature, but rather that of the epicurean Ninon, brilliant, versatile, free, lax, skeptical, full of intrigue and wit, but without moral sense of spiritual aspiration. Literary portraits and ethical maxims have given place to a spicy mixture of scandal and philosophy, humanitarian speculations and equivocal bons mots. It is piquant and amusing, this light play of intellect, seasoned with clever and sparkling wit, but the note of delicacy and sensibility is quite gone. Society has divested itself of many crudities and affectations perhaps, but it has grown as artificial and self- conscious as its rouged and befeathered leaders.

The woman who presided over these centers of fashion and intelligence represent to us the genius of social sovereignty. We fall under the glamour of the luminous but factitious atmosphere that surrounded them. We are dazzled by the subtlety and clearness of their intellect, the brilliancy of their wit. Their faults are veiled by the smoke of the incense we burn before them, or lost in the dim perspective. It is fortunate, perhaps, for many of our illusions, that the golden age, which is always receding, is seen at such long range that only the softly colored outlines are visible. Men and women are transfigured in the rosy light that rests on historic heights as on far-off mountain tops. But if we bring them into closer view, and turn on the pitiless light of truth, the aureole vanishes, a thousand hidden defects are exposed, and our idol stands out hard and bare, too often divested of its divinity and its charm.

To do justice to these women, we must take the point of view of an age that was corrupt to the core. It is needless to discuss here the merits of the stormy, disenchanting eighteenth century, which was the mother of our own, and upon which the world is likely to remain hopelessly divided. But whatever we may think of its final outcome, it can hardly be denied that this period, which in France was so powerful in ideas, so active in thought, so teeming with intelligence, so rich in philosophy, was poor in faith, bankrupt in morals, without religion, without poetry, and without imagination. The divine ideals of virtue and renunciation were drowned in a sea of selfishness and materialism. The austere devotion of Pascal was out of fashion. The spiritual teachings of Bossuet and Fenelon represented the out-worn creeds of an age that was dead. It was Voltaire who gave the tone, and even Voltaire was not radical enough for many of these iconoclasts. “He is a bigot and a deist,” exclaimed a feminine disciple of d’Holbach’s atheism. The gay, witty, pleasure-loving abbe, who derided piety, defied morality, was the pet of the salon, and figured in the worst scandals, was a fair representative of the fashionable clergy who had no attribute of priesthood but the name, and clearly justified the sneers of the philosophers. Tradition had given place to private judgment and in its first reaction private judgment knew no law but its own caprices. The watchword of intellectual freedom was made to cover universal license, and clever sophists constructed theories to justify the mad carnival of vice and frivolity. “As soon as one does a bad action, one never fails to make a bad maxim,” said the clever Marquise de Crequi. “As soon as a school boy has his love affairs, he wishes no more to say his prayers; and when a woman wrongs her husband, she tries to believe no more in God.”

The fact that this brilliant but heartless and epicurean world was tempered with intellect and taste changed its color but not its moral quality. Talent turned to intrigue, and character was the toy of the scheming and flexible brain. The maxims of La Rochefoucauld were the rule of life. Wit counted for everything, the heart for nothing. The only sins that could not be pardoned were stupidity and awkwardness. “Bah! He has only revealed every one’s secret,” said Mme. du Defand to an acquaintance who censured Helvetius for making selfishness the basis of all human actions. To some one who met this typical woman of her time, in the gay salon of Mme. de Marchais, and condoled with her upon the death of her lifelong friend and lover, Pont de Veyle, she quietly replied, “Alas! He died this evening at six o”clock; otherwise you would not see me here.” “My friend fell ill, I attended him; he died, and I dissected him” was the remark of a wit on reading her satirical pen portrait of the Marquise du Chatelet. This cold skepticism, keen analysis, and undisguised heartlessness strike the keynote of the century which was socially so brilliant, intellectually so fruitful, and morally so weak.

The liberty and complaisance of the domestic relations were complete. It is true there were examples of conjugal devotion, for the gentle human affections never quite disappear in any atmosphere; but the fact that they were considered worthy of note sufficiently indicates the drift of the age. In the world of fashion and of form there was not even a pretense of preserving the sanctity of marriage, if the chronicles of the time are to be credited. It was simply a commercial affair which united names and fortunes, continued the glory of the families, replenished exhausted purses, and gave freedom to women. If love entered into it at all, it was by accident. This superfluous sentiment was ridiculed, or relegated to the bourgeoisie, to whom it was left to preserve the tradition of household virtues. Every one seems to have accepted the philosophy of the irrepressible Ninon, who “returned thanks to God every evening for her esprit, and prayed him every morning to be preserved from follies of the heart.” If a young wife was modest or shy, she was the object of unflattering persiflage. If she betrayed her innocent love for her husband, she was not of the charmed circle of wit and good tone which frowned upon so vulgar a weakness, and laughed at inconvenient scruples.

“Indeed,” says a typical husband of the period, “I cannot conceive how, in the barbarous ages, one had the courage to wed. The ties of marriage were a chain. Today you see kindness, liberty, peace reign in the bosom of families. If husband and wife love each other, very well; they live together; they are happy. If they cease to love, they say so honestly, and return to each other the promise of fidelity. They cease to be lovers; they are friends. That is what I call social manners, gentle manners.” This reign of the senses is aptly illustrated by the epitaph which the gay, voluptuous, and spirtuelle Marquise de Boufflers wrote for herself:

Ci-git dans une paix profonde
Cette Dame de Volupte
Qui, pour plus grande surete,
Fit son paradis de ce monde.

“Courte et bonne,” said the favorite daughter of the Regent, in the same spirit.

It is against such a background that the women who figure so prominently in the salons are outlined. Such was the air they breathed, the spirit they imbibed. That it was fatal to the finer graces of character goes without saying. Doubtless, in quiet and secluded nooks, there were many human wild flowers that had not lost their primitive freshness and delicacy, but they did not flourish in the withering atmosphere of the great world. The type in vogue savored of the hothouse. With its striking beauty of form and tropical richness of color, it had no sweetness, no fragrance. Many of these women we can only consider on the worldly and intellectual side. Sydney Smith has aptly characterized them as “women who violated the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers.” But standing on the level of a time in which their faults were mildly censured, if at all, their characteristic gifts shine out with marvelous splendor. It is from this standpoint alone that we can present them, drawing the friendly mantle of silence over grave weaknesses and fatal errors.

In this century, in which women have so much wider scope, when they may paint, carve, act, sing, write, enter professional life, or do whatever talent and inclination dictate, without loss of dignity or prestige, unless they do it ill,–and perhaps even this exception is a trifle superfluous,–it is difficult to understand fully, or estimate correctly, a society in which the best feminine intellect was centered upon the art of entertaining and of wielding an indirect power through the minds of men. These Frenchwomen had all the vanity that lies at the bottom of the Gallic character, but when the triumphs of youth were over, the only legitimate path to individual distinction was that of social influence. This was attained through personal charm, supplemented by more or less cleverness, or through the gift of creating a society that cast about them an illusion of talent of which they were often only the reflection. To these two classes belong the queens of the salons. But the most famous of them only carried to the point of genius a talent that was universal.

In its best estate a brilliant social life is essentially an external one. Its charm lies largely in the superficial graces, in the facile and winning manners, the ready tact, the quick intelligence, the rare and perishable gifts of conversation–in the nameless trifles which are elusive as shadows and potent as light. It is the way of putting things that tells, rather than the value of the things themselves. This world of draperies and amenities, of dinners and conversaziones, of epigrams, coquetries, and sparkling trivialities in the Frenchwoman’s milieu. It has little in common with the inner world that surges forever behind and beneath it; little sympathy with inconvenient ideals and exalted sentiments. The serious and earnest soul to which divine messages have been whispered in hours of solitude finds its treasures unheeded, its language unspoken here. The cares, the burdens, the griefs that weigh so heavily on the great heart of humanity are banished from this social Eden. The Frenchman has as little love for the somber side of life as the Athenian, who veiled every expression of suffering. “Joy marks the force of the intellect,” said the pleasure-loving Ninon. It is this peculiar gift of projecting themselves into a joyous atmosphere, of treating even serious subjects in a piquant and lively fashion, of dwelling upon the pleasant surface of things, that has made the French the artists, above all others, of social life. The Parisienne selects her company, as a skillful leader forms his orchestra, with a fine instinct of harmony; no single instrument dominates, but every member is an artist in his way, adding his touch of melody or color in the fitting place. She aims, perhaps unconsciously, at a poetic ideal which shall express the best in life and thought, divested of the rude and commonplace, untouched by sorrow or passion, and free from personality.

But the representative salons, which have left a permanent mark upon their time, and a memory that does not seem likely to die, were no longer simply centers of refined and intellectual amusement. The moral and literary reaction of the seventeenth century was one of the great social and political forces of the eighteenth. The salon had become a vast engine of power, an organ of public opinion, like the modern press. Clever and ambitious women had found their instrument and their opportunity. They had long since learned that the homage paid to weakness is illusory; that the power of beauty is short-lived. With none of the devotion which had made the convent the time-honored refuge of tender and exalted souls, finding little solace in the domestic affections which played so small a role in their lives, they turned the whole force of their clear and flexible minds to this new species of sovereignty. Their keenness of vision, their consummate skill in the adaptation of means to ends, their knowledge of the world, their practical intelligence, their instinct of pleasing, all fitted them for the part they assumed. They distinctly illustrated the truth that “our ideal is not out of ourselves, but in ourselves wisely modified.” The intellect of these women was rarely the dupe of the emotions. Their clearness was not befogged by sentiment, nor, it may be added, were their characters enriched by it. “The women of the eighteenth century loved with their minds and not with their hearts,” said the Abbe Galiani. The very absence of the qualities so essential to the highest womanly character, according to the old poetic types, added to their success. To be simple and true is to forget often to consider effects. Spontaneity is not apt to be discriminating, and the emotions are not safe guides to worldly distinction. It is not the artist who feels the most keenly, who sways men the most powerfully; it is the one who has most perfectly mastered the art of swaying men. Self-sacrifice and a lofty sense of duty find their rewards in the intangible realm of the spirit, but they do not find them in a brilliant society whose foundations are laid in vanity and sensualism. “The virtues, though superior to the sentiments, are not so agreeable,” said Mme. du Deffand; and she echoed the spirit of an age of which she was one of the most striking representatives. To be agreeable was the cardinal aim in the lives of these women. To this end they knew how to use their talents, and they studied, to the minutest shade, their own limitations. They had the gift of the general who marshals his forces with a swift eye for combination and availability. To this quality was added more or less mental brilliancy, or, what is equally essential, the faculty of calling out the brilliancy of others; but their education was rarely profound or even accurate. To an abbe who wished to dedicate a grammar to Mme. Geoffrin she replied: “To me? Dedicate a grammar to me? Why, I do not even know how to spell.” Even Mme. du Deffand, whom Sainte Beuve ranks next to Voltaire as the purest classic of the epoch in prose, says of herself, “I do not know a word of grammar; my manner of expressing myself is always the result of chance, independent of all rule and all art.”

But it is not to be supposed that women who were the daily and lifelong companions and confidantes of men like Fontenelle, d’Alembert, Montesquieu, Helvetius, and Marmontel were deficient in a knowledge of books, though this was always subservient to a knowledge of life. It was a means, not an end. When the salon was at the height of its power, it was not yet time for Mme. de Stael; and, with rare exceptions, those who wrote were not marked, or their literary talent was so overshadowed by their social gifts as to be unnoted. Their writings were no measure of their abilities. Those who wrote for amusement were careful to disclaim the title of bel esprit, and their works usually reached the public through accidental channels. Mme. de Lambert herself had too keen an eye for consideration to pose as an author, but it is with an accent of regret at the popular prejudice that she says of Mme. Dacier, “She knows how to associate learning with the amenities; for at present modesty is out of fashion; there is no more shame for vices, and women blush only for knowledge.”

But if they did not write, they presided over the mint in which books were coined. They were familiar with theories and ideas at their fountain source. Indeed the whole literature of the period pays its tribute to their intelligence and critical taste. “He who will write with precision, energy, and vigor only,” said Marmontel, “may live with men alone; but he who wishes for suppleness in his style, for amenity, and for that something which charms and enchants, will, I believe, do well to live with women. When I read that Pericles sacrificed every morning to the Graces, I understand by it that every day Pericles breakfasted with Aspasia.” This same author was in the habit of reading his tales in the salon, and noting their effect. He found a happy inspiration in “the most beautiful eyes in the world, swimming in tears;” but he adds, “I well perceived the cold and feeble passages, which they passed over in silence, as well as those where I had mistaken the word, the tone of nature, or the just shade of truth.” He refers to the beautiful, witty, but erring and unfortunate Mme. de la Popeliniere, to whom he read his tragedy, as the best of all his critics. “Her corrections,” he said, “struck me as so many rays of light.” “A point of morals will be no better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman of Paris,” said Rousseau. This constant habit of reducing thoughts to a clear and salient form was the best school for aptness and ready expression. To talk wittily and well, or to lead others to talk wittily and well, was the crowning gift of these women. This evanescent art was the life and soul of the salons, the magnet which attracted the most brilliant of the French men of letters, who were glad to discuss safely and at their ease many subjects which the public censorship made it impossible to write about. They found companions and advisers in women, consulted their tastes, sought their criticism, courted their patronage, and established a sort of intellectual comradeship that exists to the same extent in no country outside of France. Its model may be found in the limited circle that gathered about Aspasia in the old Athenian days.

It is perhaps this habit of intellectual companionship that, more than any other single thing, accounts for the practical cleverness of the Frenchwomen and the conspicuous part they have played in the political as well as social life of France. Nowhere else are women linked to the same degree with the success of men. There are few distinguished Frenchmen with whose fame some more or less gifted woman is not closely allied. Montaigne and Mlle. de Gournay, La Rochefoucauld and Mme. de La Fayette, d’Alembert and Mlle. de Lespinasse, Chateaubriand and Mme. Recamier, Joubert and Mme. de Beaumont–these are only a few of the well-known and unsullied friendships that suggest themselves out of a list that might be extended indefinitely. The social instincts of the French, and the fact that men and women met on a common plane of intellectual life, made these friendships natural; that they excited little comment and less criticism made them possible.

The result was that from the quiet and thoughtful Marquise de Lambert, who was admitted to have made half of the Academicians, to the clever but less scrupulous Mme. de Pompadour, who had to be reckoned with in every political change in Europe, women were everywhere the power behind the throne. No movement was carried through without them. “They form a kind of republic,” said Montesquieu, “whose members, always active, aid and serve one another. It is a new state within a state; and whoever observes the action of those in power, if he does not know the women who govern them, is like a man who sees the action of a machine but does not know its secret springs.” Mme. de Tenein advised Marmontel, before all things, to cultivate the society of women, if he wished to succeed. It is said that both Diderot and Thomas, two of the most brilliant thinkers of their time, failed of the fame they merited, through their neglect to court the favor of women. Bolingbroke, then an exile in Paris, with a few others, formed a club of men for the discussion of literary and political questions. While it lasted it was never mentioned by women. It was quietly ignored. Cardinal Fleury considered it dangerous to the State, and suppressed it. At the same time, in the salon of Mme. de Tenein, the leaders of French thought were safely maturing the theories which Montesquieu set forth in his “Esprit des Lois,” the first open attack on absolute monarchy, the forerunner of Rousseau, and the germ of the Revolution.

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But the salons were far from being centers of “plain living and high thinking.” “Supper is one of the four ends of man,” said Mme. du Deffand; and it must be admitted that the great doctrine of human equality was rather luxuriously cradled. The supreme science of the Frenchwomen was a knowledge of men. Understanding their tastes, their ambitions, their interests, their vanities, and their weaknesses, they played upon this complicated human instrument with the skill of an artist who knows how to touch the lightest note, to give the finest shade of expression, to bring out the fullest harmony. In their efforts to raise social life to the most perfect and symmetrical proportions, the pleasures of sense and the delicate illusions of color were not forgotten. They were as noted for their good cheer, for their attention to the elegances that strike the eye, the accessories that charm the taste, as for their intelligence, their tact, and their conversation.

But one must look for the power and the fascination of the French salons in their essential spirit and the characteristics of the Gallic race, rather than in any definite and tangible form. The word simply suggests habitual and informal gatherings of men and women of intelligence and good breeding in the drawing-room, for conversation and amusement. The hostess who opened her house for these assemblies selected her guests with discrimination, and those who had once gained an entree were always welcome. In studying the character of the noted salons, one is struck with a certain unity that could result only from natural growth about a nucleus of people bound together by many ties of congeniality and friendship. Society, in its best sense, does not signify a multitude, nor can a salon be created on commercial principles. This spirit of commercialism, so fatal to modern social life, was here conspicuously absent. It was not at all a question of debit and credit, of formal invitations to be given and returned. Personal values were regarded. The distinctions of wealth were ignored and talent, combined with the requisite tact, was, to a certain point, the equivalent of rank. If rivalries existed, they were based upon the quality of the guests rather than upon material display. But the modes of entertainment were as varied as the tastes and abilities of the women who presided. Many of the well-known salons were open daily. Sometimes there were suppers, which came very much into vogue after the petits soupers of the regent. The Duchesse de Choiseul, during the ministry of her husband, gave a supper every evening excepting on Friday and Sunday. At a quarter before ten the steward glanced through the crowded rooms, and prepared the table for all who were present. The Monday suppers at the Temple were thronged. On other days a more intimate circle gathered round the tables, and the ladies served tea after the English fashion. A few women of rank and fortune imitated these princely hospitalities, but it was the smaller coteries which presented the most charming and distinctive side of French society. It was not the luxurious salon of the Duchesse du Maine, with its whirl of festivities and passion for esprit, nor that of the Temple, with its brilliant and courtly, but more or less intellectual, atmosphere; nor that of the clever and critical Marechale de Luxembourg, so elegant, so witty, so noted in its day–which left the most permanent traces and the widest fame. It was those presided over by women of lesser rank and more catholic sympathies, of whom Voltaire aptly said that “the decline of their beauty revealed the dawn of their intellect;” women who had the talent, tact, and address to gather about them a circle of distinguished men who have crowned them with a luminous ray from their own immortality. The names of Mme. de Lambert, Mme. de Tencin, Mme. Geoffrin, Mme. du Deffand, Mme. Necker, Mme. de Stael, and others of lesser note, call up visions of a society which the world is not likely to see repeated.

Not the least among the attractions of this society was its charming informality. A favorite custom in the literary and philosophical salons was to give dinners, at an early hour, two or three times a week. In the evening a larger company assembled without ceremony. A popular man of letters, so inclined, might dine Monday and Wednesday with Mme. Geoffrin, Tuesday with Mme. Helvetius, Friday with Mme. Necker, Sunday and Thursday with Mme. d’Holbach, and have ample time to drop into other salons afterward, passing an hour or so, perhaps, before going to the theater, in the brilliant company that surrounded Mlle. de Lespinasse, and, very likely, supping elsewhere later. At many of these gatherings he would be certain to find readings, recitations, comedies, music, games, or some other form of extemporized amusement. The popular mania for esprit, for literary lions, for intellectual diversions ran through the social world, as the craze for clubs and culture, poets and parlor readings, musicales and amateur theatricals, runs through the society of today. It had numberless shades and gradations, with the usual train of pretentious follies which in every age furnish ample material for the pen of the satirist, but it was a spontaneous expression of the marvelously quickened taste for things of the intellect. The woman who improvised a witty verse, invented a proverb, narrated a story, sang a popular air, or acted a part in a comedy entered with the same easy grace into the discussion of the last political problem, or listened with the subtlest flattery to the new poem, essay, or tale of the aspiring young author, whose fame and fortune perhaps hung upon her smile. In the musical and artistic salon of Mme. de la Popeliniere the succession of fetes, concerts, and receptions seems to have been continuous. On Sunday there was a mass in the morning, afterward a grand dinner, at five o’clock a light repast, at nine a supper, and later a musicale. One is inclined to wonder if there was ever any retirement, any domesticity in this life so full of movement and variety.

But it was really the freedom, wit, and brilliancy of the conversation that constituted the chief attraction of the salons. Men were in the habit of making the daily round of certain drawing rooms, just as they drop into clubs in our time, sure of more or less pleasant discussion on whatever subject was uppermost at the moment, whether it was literature, philosophy, art, politics, music, the last play, or the latest word of their friends. The talk was simple, natural, without heat, without aggressive egotism, animated with wit and repartee, glancing upon the surface of many things, and treating all topics, grave or gay, with the lightness of touch, the quick responsiveness that make the charm of social intercourse.

The unwritten laws that governed this brilliant world were drawn from the old ideas of chivalry, upon which the etiquette of the early salons was founded. The fine morality and gentle virtues which were the bases of these laws had lost their force in the eighteenth century, but the manners which grew out of them had passed into a tradition. If morals were in reality not pure, nor principles severe, there was at least the vanity of posing as models of good breeding. Honor was a religion; politeness and courtesy were the current, though by no means always genuine, coin of unselfishness and amiability; the amenities stood in the place of an ethical code. Egotism, ill temper, disloyalty, ingratitude, and scandal were sins against taste, and spoiled the general harmony. Evil passions might exist, but it was agreeable to hide them, and enmities slept under a gracious smile. noblesse OBLIGE was the motto of these censors of manners; and as it is perhaps a Gallic trait to attach greater importance to reputation than to character, this sentiment was far more potent than conscience. Vice in many veiled forms might be tolerated, but that which called itself good society barred its doors against those who violated the canons of good taste, which recognize at least the outward semblance of many amiable virtues. Sincerity certainly was not one of these virtues; but no one was deceived, as it was perfectly well understood that courteous forms meant little more than the dress which may or may not conceal a physical defect, but is fit and becoming. It was not best to inquire too closely into character and motives, so long as appearances were fair and decorous. How far the individual may be affected by putting on the garb of qualities and feelings that do not exist may be a question for the moralist; but this conventional untruth has its advantages, not only in reducing to a minimum the friction of social machinery, and subjecting the impulses to the control of the will, but in the subtle influence of an ideal that is good and true, however far one may in reality fall short of it.

Imagine a society composed of a leisure class with more or less intellectual tastes; men eminent in science and letters; men less eminent, whose success depended largely upon their social gifts, and clever women supremely versed in the art of pleasing, who were the intelligent complements of these men; add a universal talent for conversation, a genius for the amenities of social life, habits of daily intercourse, and manners formed upon an ideal of generosity, amiability, loyalty, and urbanity; consider, also, the fact that the journals and the magazines, which are so conspicuous a feature of modern life, were practically unknown; that the salons were centers in which the affairs of the world were discussed, its passing events noted–and the power of these salons may be to some extent comprehended.

The reason, too, why it is idle to dream of reproducing them today on American soil will be readily seen. The forms may be repeated, but the vitalizing spirit is not there. We have no leisure class that finds its occupation in this pleasant daily converse. Our feverish civilization has not time for it. We sit in our libraries and scan the news of the world, instead of gathering it in the drawing rooms of our friends. Perhaps we read and think more, but we talk less, and conversation is a relaxation rather than an art. The ability to think aloud, easily and gracefully, is not eminently an Anglo-Saxon gift, though there are many individual exceptions to this limitation. Our social life is largely a form, a whirl, a commercial relation, a display, a duty, the result of external accretion, not of internal growth. It is not in any sense a unity, nor an expression of our best intellectual life; this seeks other channels. Men are immersed in business and politics, and prefer the easy, less exacting atmosphere of the club. The woman who aspires to hold a salon is confronted at the outset by this formidable rival. She is a queen without a kingdom, presiding over a fluctuating circle without homogeneity, and composed largely of women–a fact in itself fatal to the true esprit de societe. It is true we have our literary coteries, but they are apt to savor too much of the library; we take them too seriously, and bring into them too strong a flavor of personality. We find in them, as a rule, little trace of the spontaneity, the variety, the wit, the originality, the urbanity, the polish, that distinguished the French literary salons of the last century. Even in their own native atmosphere, the salons exist no longer as recognized institutions. This perfected flower of a past civilization has faded and fallen, as have all others. The salon in its widest sense, and in some modified form, may always constitute a feature of French life, but the type has changed, and its old glory has forever departed. In a foreign air, even in its best days, it could only have been an exotic, flourishing feebly, and lacking both color and fragrance. As a copy of past models it is still less likely to be a living force. Society, like government, takes its spirit and its vitality from its own soil.

CHAPTER IX. AN ANTECHAMBER OF THE ACADEMIE FRANCAISE The Marquise de Lambert–Her “Bureau d’Esprit”–Fontenelle– Advice to her Son–Wise Thoughts on the Education of Women–Her love of Consideration–Her Generosoty–Influence of Women upon the Academy.

While the gay suppers of the regent were giving a new but by no means desirable tone to the great world of Paris, and chasing away the last vestiges of the stately decorum that marked the closing days of Louis XIV, and Mme. de Maintenon, there was one quiet drawing room which still preserved the old traditions. The Marquise de Lambert forms a connecting link between the salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, leaning to the side of the latter, intellectually, but retaining much of the finer morality that distinguished the best life of the former. Her attitude towards the disorders of the regency was similar to that which Mme. de Rambouillet had held towards the profligate court of Henry IV, though her salon never attained the vogue of its model. It lacked a certain charm of youth and freshness perhaps, but it was one of the few in which gambling was not permitted, and in which conversation had not lost its serious and critical flavor.

If Mme. de Lambert were living today she would doubtless figure openly as an author. Her early tastes pointed clearly in that direction. She was inclined to withdraw from the amusements of her age, and to pass her time in reading, or in noting down the thoughts that pleased her. The natural bent of her mind was towards moral reflections. In this quality she resembled Mme. de Sable, but she was a woman of greater breadth and originality, though less fine and exclusive. She wrote much in later life on educational themes, for the benefit of her children and for her own diversion; but she yielded to the prejudices of her age against the woman author, and her works were given to the world only through the medium of friends to whom she had read or lent them. “Women,” she said, “should have towards the sciences a modesty almost as sensitive as towards vices.” But in spite of her studied observance of the conventional limits which tradition still assigned to her sex, her writings suggest much more care than is usually bestowed upon the amusement of an idle hour. If, like many other women of her time, she wrote only for her friends, she evidently doubted their discretion in the matter of secrecy.

As the child who inherited the rather formidable name of Anne Theresa de Marguenat de Coucelles was born during the last days of the Hotel de Rambouillet, she doubtless cherished many illusions regarding this famous salon. Its influence was more or less apparent when the time came to open one of her own. Her father was a man of feeble intellect, who died early; but her mother, a woman more noted for beauty than for decorum, was afterward married to Bachaumont, a well-known bel esprit, who appreciated the gifts of the young girl, and brought her within a circle of wits who did far more towards forming her impressible mind than her light and frivolous mother had done. She was still very young when she became the wife of the Marquis de Lambert, an officer of distinction, to whose interests she devoted her talents and her ample fortune. The exquisitely decorated Hotel Lambert, on the Ile Saint Louis, still retains much of its old splendor, though the finest masterpieces of Lebrun and Lesueur which ornamented its walls have found their way to the Louvre. “It is a home made for a sovereign who would be a philosopher,” wrote Voltaire to Frederick the Great. In these magnificent salons, Mme. de Lambert, surrounded by every luxury that wealth and taste could furnish, entertained a distinguished company. She carried her lavish hospitalities also to Luxembourg, where she adorned the position of her husband, who was governor of that province for a short period before his death in 1686. After this event, she was absorbed for some years in settling his affairs, which were left in great disorder, and in protecting the fortunes of her two children. This involved her in long and vexatious lawsuits which she seems to have conducted with admirable ability. “There are so few great fortunes that are innocent,” she writes to her son, “that I pardon your ancestors for not leaving you one. I have done what I could to put in order our affairs, in which there is left to women only the glory of economy.” It was not until the closing years of her life, from 1710 to 1733, that her social influence was at its height. She was past sixty, at an age when the powers of most women are on the wane, when her real career began. She fitted up luxurious apartments in the Palais Mazarin, employing artists like Watteau upon the decorations, and expending money as lavishly as if she had been in the full springtide of life, instead of the golden autumn. Then she gathered about her a choice and lettered society, which seemed to be a world apart, a last revival of the genius of the seventeenth century, and quite out of the main drift of the period. “She was born with much talent,” writes one of her friends; “she cultivated it by assiduous reading; but the most beautiful flower in her crown was a noble and luminous simplicity, of which, at sixty years, she took it into her head to divest herself. She lent herself to the public, associated with the Academicians, and established at her house a bureau d’esprit.” Twice a week she gave dinners, which were as noted for the cuisine as for the company, and included, among others, the best of the forty Immortals. Here new works were read or discussed, authors talked of their plans, and candidates were proposed for vacant chairs in the Academy. “The learned and the lettered formed the dominant element,” says a critic of the time. “They dined at noon, and the rest of the day was passed in conversations, in readings, in literary and scientific discussions. No card tables; it was in ready wit that each one paid his contribution.” Ennui never came to shed its torpors over these reunions, of which the Academy furnished the most distinguished guests, in company with grands seigneurs eager to show themselves as worthy by intelligence as by rank to play a role in these gatherings of the intellectual elite. Fontenelle was the presiding genius of this salon, and added to its critical and literary spirit a tinge of philosophy. This gallant savant, who was adored in society as “a man of rare and exquisite conversation,” has left many traces of himself here. No one was so sparkling in epigram; no one talked so beautifully of love, of which he knew nothing; and no one talked to delightfully of science, of which he knew a great deal. But he thought that knowledge needed a seasoning of sentiment to make it palatable to women. In his “Pluralite des Mondes,” a singular melange of science and sentiment, which he had written some years before and dedicated to a daughter of the gay and learned Mme. de La Sabliere, he talks about the stars, to la belle marquise, like a lover; but his delicate flatteries are the seasoning of serious truths. It was the first attempt to offer science sugar-coated, and suggests the character of this coterie, which prided itself upon a discreet mingling of elevated thought with decorous gaiety. The world moves. Imagine a female undergraduate of Harvard or Columbia taking her astronomy diluted with sentiment!

President Henault, the life-long friend of Mme. du Deffand, whose light criticism of a pure-minded woman might be regarded as rather flattering than otherwise, says: “It was apparent that Mme. de Lambert touched upon the time of the Hotel de Rambouillet; she was a little affected, and had not the force to overstep the limits of the prude and the precieuse. Her salon was the rendevous of celebrated men . . . . In the evening the scenery changed as well as the actors. A more elegant world assembled at the suppers. The Marquise took pleasure in receiving people who were agreeable to each other. Her tone, however, did not vary, and she preached la belle galanterie to some who went a little beyond it. I was of the two parties; I dogmatized in the morning and sang in the evening.” The two eminent Greek Scholars, La Motte and Mme. Dacier, held spirited discussions on the merits of Homer, which came near ending in permanent ill-feeling, but the amiable hostess gave a dinner for them, “they drank to the health of the poet, and all was forgotten.” The war between the partizans of the old and the new was as lively then as it is today. “La Motte and Fontenelle prefer the moderns,” said the caustic Mme. du Deffand; “but the ancients are dead, and the moderns are themselves.” The names of Sainte-Aulaire, de Sacy, Mairan, President Henault, and others equally scholarly and witty, suffice to indicate the quality of the conversation, which treated lightly and gracefully of the most serious things. The Duchesse du Maine and her clever companion, Mlle. de Launay were often among the guests; also the beautiful and brilliant Mme. de Caylus, a niece of Mme. de Maintenon, whom some poetical critic has styled “the last flower of the seventeenth century.” Sainte-Aulaire, tired of the perpetual excitement at Sceaux, characterized this salon by a witty quatrain:

Je suis las de l’esprit, il me met en courroux, Il me renverse la cervelle;
Lambert, je viens chercher un asile chez vous, Entre La Motte et Fontenelle.

The wits of the day launched many a shaft of satire against it, as they had against the Hotel de Rambouillet a century earlier; but it was an intellectual center of great influence, and was regarded as the sanctuary of old manners as well as the asylum of new liberties. Its decorous character gave it the epithet of “very respectable;” but this eminently respectable company, which represented the purest taste of the time, often included Adrienne Lecouvreur, who was much more remarkable for talent than for respectability. We have a direct glimpse of it through the pen of d’Artenson:

“I have just met with a very grievous loss in the death of the Marquise de Lambert” (he writes in 1733). “For fifteen years I have been one of her special friends, and she has done me the favor of inviting me to her house, where it is an honor to be received. I dined there regularly on Wednesday, which was one of her days . . . . . She was rich, and made a good and amiable use of her wealth, for the benefit of her friends, and above all for the unfortunate. A pupil of Bachaumont, having frequented only the society of people of the world, and of the highest intelligence, she knew no other passion than a constant and platonic tenderness.”

The quality of character and intellect which gave Mme. de Lambert so marked an influence, we find in her own thoughts on a great variety of subjects. She gives us the impression of a woman altogether sensible and judicious, but not without a certain artificial tone. Her well-considered philosophy of life had an evident groundwork of ambition and worldly wisdom, which appears always in her advice to her children. She counsels her son to aim high and believe himself capable of great things. “Too much modesty,” she says, “is a languor of the soul, which prevents it from taking flight and carrying itself rapidly towards glory”–a suggestion that would be rather superfluous in this generation. Again, she advises him to seek the society of his superiors, in order to accustom himself to respect and politeness. “With equals one grows negligent; the mind falls asleep.” But she does not regard superiority as an external thing, and says very wisely, “It is merit which should separate you from people, not dignity or pride.” By “people” she indicates all those who think meanly and commonly. “The court is full of them,” she adds. Her standards of honor are high, and her sentiments of humanity quite in the vein of the coming age. She urges her daughter to treat her servants with kindness. “One of the ancients says they should be regarded as unfortunate friends. Think that humanity and Christianity equalize all.”

Her criticisms on the education of women are of especial interest. Behind her conventional tastes and her love of consideration she has a clear perception of facts and an appreciation of unfashionable truths. She recognizes the superiority of her sex in matters of taste and in the enjoyment of “serious pleasures which make only the MIND LAUGH and do not trouble the heart” She reproaches men with “spoiling the dispositions nature has given to women, neglecting their education, filling their minds with nothing solid, and destining them solely to please, and to please only by their graces or their vices.” But she had not always the courage of her convictions, and it was doubtless quite as much her dislike of giving voice to unpopular opinions as her aversion to the publicity of authorship, that led her to buy the entire edition of her “Reflexions sur les Femmes,” which was published without her consent.

One of her marked traits was moderation. “The taste is spoiled by amusements,” she writes. “One becomes so accustomed to ardent pleasures that one cannot fall back upon simple ones. We should fear great commotions of the soul, which prepare ennui and disgust.” This wise thought suggests the influence of Fontenelle, who impressed himself strongly upon the salons of the first half of the century. His calm philosophy is distinctly reflected in the character of Mme. de Lambert, also in that of Mme. Geoffrin, with whom he was on very intimate terms. It is said that this poet, critic, bel esprit, and courtly favorite, whom Rousseau calls “the daintiest pedant in the world,” was never swayed by any emotion whatever. He never laughed, only smiled; never wept; never praised warmly, though he did say pretty things to women; never hurried; was never angry; never suffered, and was never moved by suffering. “He had the gout,” says one of his critics, “but no pain; only a foot wrapped in cotton. He put it on a footstool; that was all.” It is perhaps fair to present, as the other side of the medallion, the portrait drawn by the friendly hand of Adrienne LeCouvreur. “The charms of his intellect often veiled its essential qualities. Unique of his kind, he combines all that wins regard and respect. Integrity, rectitude, equity compose his character; an imagination lively and brilliant, turns fine and delicate, expressions new and always happy ornament it. A heart pure, actions clear, conduct uniform, and everywhere principles . . . . Exact in friendship, scrupulous in love; nowhere failing in the attributes of a gentleman. Suited to intercourse the most delicate, though the delight of savants; modest in his conversation, simple in his actions, his superiority is evident, but he never makes one feel it.” He lived a century, apparently because it was too much trouble to die. When the weight of years made it too much trouble to live, he simply stopped. “I do not suffer, my friends, but I feel a certain difficulty in existing,” were his last words. With this model of serene tranquillity, who analyzed the emotions as he would a problem in mathematics, and reduced life to a debit and credit account, it is easy to understand the worldly philosophy of the women who came under his influence.

But while Mme. de Lambert had a calm and equable temperament, and loved to surround herself with an atmosphere of repose, she was not without a fine quality of sentiment. “I exhort you much more to cultivate your heart,” she writes to her son, “than to perfect your mind; the true greatness of the man is in the heart.” “She was not only eager to serve her friends without waiting for their prayers or the humiliating exposure of their needs,” said Fontenelle, “but a good action to be done in favor of indifferent people always tempted her warmly . . .. The ill success of some acts of generosity did not correct the habit; she was always equally ready to do a kindness.” She has written very delicately and beautifully of friendships between men and women; and she had her own intimacies that verged upon tenderness, but were free from any shadow of reproach. Long after her death, d’Alembert, in his academic eulogy upon de Sacy, refers touchingly to the devoted friendship that linked this elegant savant with Mme. de Lambert. “It is believed,” says President Henault, “that she was married to the Marquis de Sainte-Aulaire. He was a man of esprit, who only bethought himself, after more than sixty years, of his talent for poetry; and Mme. de Lambert, whose house was filled with Academicians, gained him entrance into the Academy, not without strong opposition on the part of Boileau and some others.” Whether the report of this alliance was true or not, the families were closely united, as the daughter of Mme. de Lambert was married to a son of Sainte-Aulaire; it is certain that the enduring affection of this ancient friend lighted the closing years of her life.

Though tinged with the new philosophy, Mme. de Lambert regarded religion as a part of a respectable, well-ordered life. “Devotion is a becoming sentiment in women, and befitting in both sexes,” she writes. But she clearly looked upon it as an external form, rather than an internal flame. When about to die, at the age of eighty-six, she declined the services of a friendly confessor, and sent for an abbe who had a great reputation for esprit. Perhaps she thought he would give her a more brilliant introduction into the next world; this points to one of her weaknesses, which was a love of consideration that carried her sometimes to the verge of affectation. It savors a little of the hypercritical spirit that is very well illustrated by an anecdote of the witty Duchesse de Luxenbourg. One morning she took up a prayer book that was lying upon the table and began to criticize severely the bad taste of the prayers. A friend ventured to remark that if they were said reverently and piously, God surely would pay no attention to their good or bad form. “Indeed,” exclaimed the fastidious Marechale, whose religion was evidently a becoming phase of estheticism, “do not believe that.”

The thoughts of Mme. de Lambert, so elevated in tone, so fine in moral quality, so rich in worldly wisdom, and often so felicitous in expression, tempt one to multiply quotations, especially as they show us an intimate side of her life, of which otherwise we know very little. Her personality is veiled. Her human experiences, her loves, her antipathies, her mistakes, and her errors are a sealed book to us, excepting as they may be dimly revealed in the complexion of her mind. Of her influence we need no better evidence than the fact that her salon was called the antechamber to the Academie Francaise.

The precise effect of this influence of women over the most powerful critical body ot eh century, or of any century, perhaps, we can hardly measure. In the fact that the Academy became for a time philosophical rather than critical, and dealt with theories rather than with pure literature, we trace the finger of the more radical thinkers who made themselves so strongly felt in the salons. Sainte=Beuve tells us that Fontenelle, with other friends of Mme. de Lambert, first gave it this tendency; but his mission was apparently an unconscious one, and strikingly illustrates the accidental character of the sources of the intellectual currents which sometimes change the face of the world. “If I had a handful of truths, I should take good care not to open it,” said this sybarite, who would do nothing that was likely to cause him trouble. But the truths escaped in spite of him, and these first words of the new philosophy were perhaps the more dangerous because veiled and insidious. “You have written the ‘Histoire des Oracles,'” said a philosopher to him, after he had been appointed the royal censor, “and you refuse me your approbation.” “Monsieur,” replied Fontenelle, “if I had been censor when I wrote the ‘Histoire des Oracles,’ I should have carefully avoided giving it my approbation.” But if the philosophers finally determined the drift of this learned body, it was undoubtedly the tact and diplomacy of women which constituted the most potent factor in the elections which placed them there. The mantle of authority, so gracefully worn by Mme. de Lambert, fell upon her successors, Mme. Geoffrin and Mlle. de Lespinasse, losing none of its prestige. As a rule, the best men in France were sooner or later enrolled among the Academicians. If a few missed the honor through failure to enlist the favor of women, as has been said, and a few better courtiers of less merit attained it, the modern press has not proved a more judicious tribunal.

CHAPTER X. THE DUCHESSE DU MAINE
Her Capricious Character–Her Esprit–Mlle. de Launay–Clever Portrait of Her Mistress–Perpetual Fetes at Sceaux–Voltaire and the “Divine Emilie”–Dilettante Character of this Salon.

The life of the eighteenth century, with its restlessness, its love of amusements, its ferment of activities, and its essential frivolity, finds a more fitting representative in the Duchesse du Maine, granddaughter of the Grand Conde, and wife of the favorite son of Louis XIV, and Mme. de Montespan. The transition from the serene and thoughtful atmosphere which surrounded Mme. de Lambert, to the tumultuous whirl of existence at Sceaux, was like passing from the soft light and tranquillity of a summer evening to the glare and confusion of perpetual fireworks. Of all the unique figures of a masquerading age this small and ambitious princess was perhaps the most striking, the most pervading. It was by no means her aim to take her place in the world as queen of a salon. Louise-Benedicte de Bourbon belonged to the royal race, and this was by far the most vivid fact in her life. She was but a few steps from the throne, and political intrigues played a conspicuous part in her singular career. But while she waited for the supreme power to which she aspired, and later, when the feverish dream of her life was ended, she must be amused, and her diversions must have an intellectual and imaginative flavor. Wits, artists, literary men, and savants were alike welcome at Sceaux, if they amused her and entertained her guests. “One lived there by esprit, and esprit is my God,” said Mme. du Deffand, who was among the brightest ornaments of this circle.

Born in 1676, the Duchesse du Maine lived through the first half of the next century, of which her little court was one of the most notable features. Scarcely above the stature of a child of ten years, slightly deformed, with a fair face lighted by fine eyes; classically though superficially educated; gifted in conversation, witty, brilliant, adoring talent, but cherishing all the prejudices of the old noblesse–she represented in a superlative degree the passion for esprit which lent such exceptional brilliancy to the social life of the time.

In character the duchess was capricious and passionate. “If she were as good as she is wicked,” said the sharp-tongued Palatine, “there would be nothing to say against her. She is tranquil during the day and passes it playing at cards, but at its close the extravagances and fits of passion begin; she torments her husband, her children, her servants, to such a point that they do not know which way to turn.” Her will brooked no opposition. When forced to leave the Tuileries after the collapse of her little bubble of political power, she deliberately broke every article of value in her apartments, consigning mirrors, vases, statues, porcelains alike to a common ruin, that no one else might enjoy them after her. This fiery scion of a powerful family, who had inherited its pride, its ambition, its uncontrollable passions, and its colossal will, had little patience with the serene temperament and dilettante tastes of her amiable husband, and it is said she did not scruple to make him feel the force of her small hands. “You will waken some morning to find yourself in the Academie Francaise, and the Duc d’Orleans regent,” she said to him one day when he showed her a song he had translated. Her device was a bee, with this motto: “I am small, but I make deep wounds.” Doubtless its fitness was fully realized by those who belonged to the Ordre de la Mouche-a-miel which she had instituted, and whose members were obliged to swear, by Mount Hymettus, fidelity and obedience to their perpetual dictator. But what pains and chagrins were not compensated by the bit of lemon-colored ribbon and its small meed of distinction!

The little princess worked valiantly for political power, but she worked in vain. The conspiracy against the regent, which seemed to threaten another Fronde, came to nothing, and this ardent instrigante, who had the disposition to “set the four corners of the kingdom on fire” to attain her ends, found her party dispersed and herself in prison. But this was only an episode, and though it gave a death blow to her dreams of power, it did not quench her irrepressible ardor. If she could not rule in one way, she would in another. As soon as she regained her freedom, her little court was again her kingdom, and no sovereign ever reigned more imperiously. “I am fond of company,” she said, “for I listen to no one, and every one listens to me.” It was an incessant thirst for power, a perpetual need of the sweet incense of flattery, that was at the bottom of this “passion for a multitude.” “She believed in herself,” writes Mlle. de Launay, afterward Baronne de Staal, “as she believed in God or Descartes, without examination and without discussion.”

This lady’s maid, who loved mathematics and anatomy, was familiar with Malebranche and Descartes, and left some literary reputation as a writer of gossipy memoirs, was a prominent figure in the lively court at Sceaux for more than forty years, and has given us some vivid pictures of her capricious mistress. A young girl of clear intellect and good education, but without rank, friends, or fortune, she was forced to accept the humiliating position of femme de chambre with the Duchesse du Maine, who had been attracted by her talents. She was brought into notice through a letter to Fontenelle, which was thought witty enough to be copied and circulated. If she had taken this cool dissector of human motives as a model, she certainly did credit to his teaching. Her curiously analytical mind is aptly illustrated by her novel method of measuring her lover’s passion. He was in the habit of accompanying her home from the house of a friend. When he began to cross the square, instead of going round it, she concluded that his love had diminished in the exact proportion of two sides of a square to the diagonal. Promoted to the position of a companion, she devoted herself to the interests of her restless mistress, read to her, talked with her, wrote plays for her, and was the animating spirit of the famous Nuits Blanches. While the duchess was in exile she shared her disgrace, refused to betray her, and was sent to the Bastille for her loyalty. She resigned herself to her imprisonment with admirable philosophy, amused herself in the study of Latin, in watching the gambols of a cat and kitten, and in carrying on a safe and sentimental flirtation with the fascinating Duc de Richelieu, who occupied an adjoining cell and passed the hours in singing with her popular airs from Iphigenie. “Sentimental” is hardly a fitting word to apply to the coquetries of this remarkably clear and calculating young woman. She returned with her patroness to Sceaux, found many admirers, but married finally with an eye to her best worldly interests, and, it appears, in the main happily–at least, not unhappily. The shade of difference implies much. She had a keen, penetrating intellect which nothing escaped, and as it had the peculiar clearness in which people and events are reflected as in a mirror, her observations are of great value. “Aside from the prose of Voltaire, I know of none more agreeable than that of Mme. de Staal de Launay,” said Grimm. Her portrait of her mistress serves to paint herself as well.

“Mme. la Duchesse du Maine, at the age of sixty years, has yet learned nothing from experience; she is a child of much talent; she has its defects and its charms. Curious and credulous, she wishes to be instructed in all the different branches of knowledge; but she is contented with their surface. The decisions of those who educated her have become for her principles and rules upon which her mind has never formed the least doubt; she submits once for all. Her provision for ideas is made; she rejects the best demonstrated truths and resists the best reasonings, if they are contrary to the first impressions she has received. All examination is impossible to her lightness, and doubt is a state which her weakness cannot support. Her catechism and the philosophy of Descartes are two systems which she understands equally well . . . . Her mirror cannot make her doubt the charms of her face; the testimony of her eyes is more questionable than the judgment of those who have decided that she is beautiful and well-formed. Her vanity is of a singular kind, but seems the less offensive because it is not reflective, though in reality it is the more ridiculous, Intercourse with her is a slavery; her tyranny is open; she does not deign to color it with the appearance of friendship. She says frankly that she has the misfortune of not being able to do without people for whom she does not care. She proves it effectually. One sees her learn with indifference the death of those who would call forth torrents of tears if they were a quarter of an hour too late for a card party or a promenade.”

But this vain and self-willed woman read Virgil and Terence in the original, was devoted to Greek tragedies, dipped into philosophy, traversed the surface of many sciences, turned a madrigal with facility, and talked brilliantly. “The language is perfect only when you speak it or when one speaks of you,” wrote Mme. de Lambert, in a tone of discreet flattery. “No one has ever spoken with more correctness, clearness, and rapidity, neither in a manner more noble or more natural,” said Mlle. de Launay.

Through this feminine La Bruyere, as Sainte-Beuve has styled her, we are introduced to the life at Sceaux. It was the habit of the guests to assemble at eight, listen to music or plays, improvise verses for popular airs, relate racy anecdotes, or amuse themselves with proverbs. “Write verses for me,” said the insatiable duchess when ill; “I feel that verses only can give me relief.” The quality does not seem to have been essential, provided they were sufficiently flattering. Sainte-Aulaire wrote madrigals for her. Malezieu, the learned and versatile preceptor of the Duc du Maine, read Sophocles and Euripides. Mme. du Maine herself acted the roles of Athalie and Iphigenie with the famous Baron. They played at science, contemplated the heavens through a telescope and the earth through a microscope. In their eager search for novelty they improvised fetes that rivaled in magnificence the Arabian Nights; they posed as gods and goddesses, or, affecting simplicity, assumed rustic and pastoral characters, even to their small economies and romantic platitudes. Mythology, the chivalry of the Middle Ages, costumes, illuminations, scenic effects, the triumphs of the artists, the wit of the bel esprit–all that ingenuity could devise or money could buy was brought into service. It was the life that Watteau painted, with its quaint and grotesque fancies, its sylvan divinities, and its sighing lovers wandering in endless masquerade, or whispering tender nothings on banks of soft verdure, amid the rustle of leaves, the sparkle of fountains, the glitter of lights, and the perfume of innumerable flowers. It was a perpetual carnival, inspired by imagination, animated by genius, and combining everything that could charm the taste, distract the mind, and intoxicate the senses. The presiding genius of this fairy scene was the irrepressible duchess, who reigned as a goddess and demanded the homage due to one. Well might the weary courtiers cry out against les galeres du bel esprit.

But this fantastic princess who carried on a sentimental correspondence with the blind La Motte, and posed as the tender shepherdess of the adoring but octogenarian Sainte-Aulaire, had no really democratic notions. There was no question in her mind of the divine right of kings or of princesses. She welcomed Voltaire because he flattered her vanity and amused her guests, but she was far enough from the theories which were slowly fanning the sparks of the Revolution. Her rather imperious patronage of literary and scientific men set a fashion which all her world tried to follow. It added doubtless to the prestige of those who were insidiously preparing the destruction of the very foundations on which this luxurious and pleasure-loving society rested. But, after all, the bond between this restless, frivolous, heartless coterie and the genuine men of letters was very slight. There was no seriousness, no earnestness, no sincerity, no solid foundation.

The literary men, however, who figured most conspicuously in the intimate circle of the Duchesse du Maine were not of the first order. Malezieu was learned, a member of two Academies, faintly eulogized by Fontenelle, warmly so by Voltaire, and not at all by Mlle. de Launay; but twenty-five years devoted to humoring the caprices and flattering the tastes of a vain and exacting patroness were not likely to develop his highest possibilities. There is a point where the stimulating atmosphere of the salon begins to enervate. His clever assistant, the Abbe Genest, poet and Academician, was a sort of Voiture, witty, versatile, and available. He tried to put Descartes into verse, which suggests the quality of his poetry. Sainte-Aulaire, who, like his friend Fontenelle, lived a century, frequented this society more or less for forty years, but his poems are sufficiently light, if one may judge from a few samples, and his genius doubtless caught more reflections in the salon than in a larger world. He owed his admission to the Academy partly to a tender quatrain which he improvised in praise of his lively patroness. It is true we have occasional glimpses of Voltaire. Once he sought an asylum here for two months, after one of his numerous indiscretions, writing tales during the day, which he read to the duchess at night. Again he came with his “divine Emilie,” the learned Marquise du Chatelet, who upset the household with her eccentric ways. “Our ghosts do not show themselves by day,” writes Mlle. de Launay; “they appeared yesterday at ten o’clock in the evening. I do not think we shall see them earlier today; one is writing high facts, the other, comments upon Newton. They wish neither to play nor to promenade; they are very useless in a society where their learned writings are of no account.” But Voltaire was a courtier, and, in spite of his frequent revolts against patronage, was not at all averse to the incense of the salons and the favors of the great. It was another round in the ladder that led him towards glory.

The cleverest women in France were found at Sceaux, but the dominant spirit was the princess herself. It was amusement she wanted, and even men of talent were valued far less for what they were intrinsically than for what they could contribute to her vanity or to her diversion. “She is a predestined soul,” wrote Voltaire. “She will love comedy to the last moment, and when she is ill I counsel you to administer some beautiful poem in the place of extreme unction. One dies as one has lived.”

Mme. du Maine represented the conservative side of French society in spite of the fact that her abounding mental vitality often broke through the stiff boundaries of old traditions. It was not because she did not still respect them, but she had the defiant attitude of a princess whose will is an unwritten law superior to all traditions. The tone of her salon was in the main dilettante, as is apt to be the case with any circle that plumes itself most upon something quite apart from intellectual distinction. It reflected the spirit of an old aristocracy, with its pride, its exclusiveness, its worship of forms, but faintly tinged with the new thought that was rapidly but unconsciously encroaching upon time-honored institutions. Beyond the clever pastimes of a brilliant coterie, it had no marked literary influence. This ferment of intellectual life was one of the signs of the times, but it led to no more definite and tangible results than the turning of a madrigal or the sparkle of an epigram.

CHAPTER XI. MADAME DE TENCIN AND MADAME DU CHATELET An Intriguing Chanoinesse–Her Singular Fascination–Her Salon –Its Philosophical Character–Mlle. Aisse–Romances of Mme. de Tencin–D’Alembert–La Belle Emilie–Voltaire–The Two Women Compared

It was not in the restless searchings of an old society for new sensations, new diversions, nor in the fleeting expressions of individual taste or caprice, which were often little more than the play of small vanities, that the most potent forces in the political as well as in the intellectual life of France were found. It was in the coteries which attracted the best representatives of modern thought, men and women who took the world on a more serious side, and mingled more or less of earnestness even in their amusements. While the Duchesse du Maine was playing her little comedy, which began and ended in herself, another woman, of far different type, and without rank or riches , was scheming for her friends, and nursing the germs of the philosophic party in one of the most notable salons of the first half of the century. Mme. de Tencin is not an interesting figure to contemplate from a moral standpoint. “She was born with the most fascinating qualities and the most abominable defects that God ever gave to one of his creatures,” said Mme. du Deffand, who was far from being able to pose, herself, as a model of virtue or decorum. But sin has its degrees, and the woman who errs within the limits of conventionality considers herself entitled to sit in judgment upon her sister who wanders outside of the fold. Measured even by the complaisant standards of her own time, there can be but one verdict upon the character of Mme. de Tencin, though it is to be hoped that the scandal-loving chroniclers have painted her more darkly than she deserved. But whatever her faults may have been, her talent and her influence were unquestioned. She posed in turn as a saint, an intrigante, and a femme d’esprit, with marked success in every one of these roles. But it was not a comedy she was playing for the amusement of the hour. Beneath the velvet softness of her manner there was a definite aim, an inflexible purpose. With the tact and facility of a Frenchwoman, she had a strong, active intellect, boundless ambition, indomitable energy, and the subtlety of an Italian.

An incident of her early life, related by Mme. du Deffand, furnishes a key to her complex character, and reveals one secret of her influence. Born of a poor and proud family in Grenoble, in 1681, Claudine Alexandrine Guerin de Tencin was destined from childhood for the cloister. Her strong aversion to the life of a nun was unavailing, and she was sent to a convent at Montfleury. This prison does not seem to have been a very austere one, and the discipline was far from rigid. The young novice was so devout that the archbishop prophesied a new light for the church, and she easily persuaded him of the necessity of occupying the minds of the religieuses by suitable diversions. Though not yet sixteen, this pretty, attractive, vivacious girl was fertile in resources, and won her way so far into the good graces of her superiors as to be permitted to organize reunions, and to have little comedies played which called together the provincial society. She transformed the convent, but her secret disaffection was unchanged. She took the final vows under the compulsion of her inflexible father, then continued her role of devote to admirable purpose. By the zeal of her piety, the severity of her penance, and the ardor of her prayers, she gained the full sympathy of her ascetic young confessor, to whom she confided her feeling of unfitness for a religious life, and her earnest desire to be freed from the vows which sat so uneasily upon her sensitive conscience. He exhorted her to steadfastness, but finally she wrote him a letter in which she confessed her hopeless struggle against a consuming passion, and urged the necessity of immediate release. The conclusion was obvious. The Abbe Fleuret was horrified by the conviction that this pretty young nun was in love with himself, and used his influence to secure her transference to a secular order at Neuville, where as chanoinesse, she had many privileges and few restrictions. Here she became at once a favorite, as before, charming by her modest devotion, and amusing by her brilliant wit. Artfully, and by degrees, she convinced those in authority of the need of a representative in Paris. This office she was chosen to fill. Playing her pious part to the last, protesting with tears her pain at leaving a life she loved, and her unfitness for so great an honor she set out upon her easy mission. There are many tales of a scandalous life behind all this sanctity and humility, but her new position gave her consideration, influence, and a good revenue. “Young, beautiful, clever, with an adorable talent,” this “nun unhooded” fascinated the regent, and was his favorite for a few days. But her ambition got the better of her prudence. She ventured upon political ground, and he saw her no more. With his minister, the infamous Dubois, she was more successful, and he served her purpose admirably well. Through her notorious relations with him she enriched her brother and secured him a cardinal’s hat. The intrigues of this unscrupulous trio form an important episode in the history of the period. When Dubois died, within a few months of the regent, she wept, as she said, “that fools might believe she regretted him.”

Her clear, incisive intellect and conversational charm would have assured the success of any woman at a time when these things counted for so much. “At thirty-six,” wrote Mme. du Deffand, “she was beautiful and fresh as a woman of twenty; her eyes sparkled, her lips had a smile at the same time sweet and perfidious; she wished to be good, and gave herself great trouble to seem so, without succeeding.” Indolent and languid with flashes of witty vivacity, insinuating and facile, unconscious of herself, interested in everyone with whom she talked, she combined the tact, the finesse, the subtle penetration of a woman with the grasp, the comprehensiveness, and the knowledge of political machinery which are traditionally accorded to a man. “If she wanted to poison you, she would use the mildest poison,” said the Abbe Trublet.

“I cannot express the illusion which her air of nonchalance and easy grace left with me,” says Marmontel. “Mme. de Tencin, the woman in the kingdom who moved the most political springs, both in the city and at court, was for me only an indolente. Ah, what finesse, what suppleness, what activity were concealed beneath this naive air, this appearance of calm and leisure!” But he confesses that she aided him greatly with her counsel, and that he owed to her much of his knowledge of the world.

“Unhappy those who depend upon the pen,” she said to him; “nothing is more chimerical. The man who makes shoes is sure of his wages; the man who makes a book or a tragedy is never sure of anything.” She advises him to make friends of women rather than of men. “By means of women, one attains all that one wishes from men, of whom some are too pleasure-loving, others too much preoccupied with their personal interests not to neglect yours; whereas women think of you, if only from idleness. Speak this evening to one of them of some affair that concerns you; tomorrow at her wheel, at her tapestry, you will find her dreaming of it, and searching in her head for some means of serving you.”

Prominent among her friends were Bolingbroke and Fontenelle. “It is not a heart which you have there,” she said to the latter, laying her hand on the spot usually occupied by that organ, “but a second brain.” She had enlisted what stood in the place of it, however, and he interested himself so far as to procure her final release from her vows, through Benedict XIV, who, as Cardinal Lambertini, had frequented her salon, and who sent her his portrait as a souvenir, after his election to the papacy.

Through her intimacy with the Duc de Richelieu, Mme. de Tencin made herself felt even in the secret councils of Louis XV. Her practical mind comprehended more clearly than many of the statesmen the forces at work and the weakness that coped with them. “Unless God visibly interferes,” she said, “it is physically impossible that the state should not fall in pieces.” It was her influence that inspired Mme. de Chateauroux with the idea of sending her royal lover to revive the spirits of the army in Flanders. “It is not, between ourselves, that he is in a state to command a company of grenadiers,” she wrote to her brother, “but his presence will avail much. The troops will do their duty better, and the generals will not dare to fail them so openly . . . A king, whatever he may be, is for the soldiers and people what the ark of the covenant was for the Hebrews; his presence alone promises success.”

Her devotion to her friends was the single redeeming trait in her character, and she hesitated at nothing to advance the interests of her brother, over whose house she gracefully presided. But she failed in her ultimate ambition to elevate him to the ministry, and her intrigues were so much feared that Cardinal Fleury sent her away from Paris for a short time. Her disappointments, which it is not the purpose to trace here, left her one of the disaffected party, and on her return her drawing room became a rallying point for the radical thinkers of France.

Such was the woman who courted, flattered, petted, and patronized the literary and scientific men of Paris, called them her menagerie, put them into a sort of uniform, gave them two suppers a week, and sent them two ells of velvet for small clothes at New Year’s. Of her salon, Marmontel gives us an interesting glimpse. He had been invited to read one of his tragedies, and it was his first introduction.

“I saw assembled there Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Mairan, Marivaux, the young Helvetius, Astruc, and others, all men of science or letters, and, in the midst of them, a woman of brilliant intellect and profound judgment, who, with her kind and simple exterior, had rather the appearance of the housekeeper than the mistress. This was Mme. de Tencin. . . . I soon perceived that the guests came there prepared to play their parts, and that their wish to shine did not leave the conversation always free to follow its easy and natural course. Every one tried to seize quickly and on the wing the moment to bring in his word, his story, his anecdote, his maxim, or to add his dash of light and sparkling wit; and, in order to do this opportunely, it was often rather far-fetched. In Marivaux, the impatience to display his finesse and sagacity was quite apparent. Montesquieu, with more calmness, waited for the ball to come to him, but he waited. Mairan watched his opportunity. Astruc did not deign to wait. Fontenelle alone let it come to him without seeking it, and he used so discreetly the attention given him, that his witty sayings and his clever stories never occupied more than a moment. Alert and reserved, Helvetius listened and gathered material for the future.”

Mme. de Tencin loved literature and philosophy for their own sake, and received men of letters at their intrinsic value. She encouraged, too, the freedom of thought and expression at that time so rare and so dangerous. It was her influence that gave its first impulse to the success of Montesquieu’s esprit DES LOIS, of which she personally bought and distributed many copies. If she talked well, she knew also how to listen, to attract by her sympathy, to aid by her generosity, to inspire by her intelligence, to charm by her versatility.

Another figure flits in and out of this salon, whose fine qualities of soul shine so brightly in this morally stifling atmosphere that one forgets her errors in a mastering impulse of love and pity. There is no more pathetic history in this arid and heartless age than that of Mlle. Aisse, the beautiful Circassian, with the lustrous, dark, Oriental eyes,” who was brought from Constantinople in infancy by the French envoy, and left as a precious heritage to Mme. de Ferriol, the intriguing sister of Mme. de Tencin, and her worthy counterpart, if not in talent, in the faults that darkened their common womanhood. This delicate young girl, surrounded by worldly and profligate friends, and drawn in spite of herself into the errors of her time, redeemed her character by her romantic heroism, her unselfish devotion, and her final revolt against what seemed to be an inexorable fate. The struggle between her self-forgetful love for the knightly Chevalier d’Aydie and her sensitive conscience, her refusal to cloud his future by a portionless marriage, and her firmness in severing an unholy tie, knowing that the sacrifice would cost her life, as it did, form an episode as rare as it is tragical. But her exquisite personality, her rich gifts of mind and soul, her fine intelligence, her passionate love, almost consecrated by her pious but fatal renunciation, call up one of the loveliest visions of the century–a vision that lingers in the memory like a medieval poem.

Mme. de Tencin amused her later years b writing sentimental tales, which were found among her papers after her death. These were classed with the romances of Mme. de La Fayette. Speaking of the latter, La Harpe said, “Only one other woman succeeded, a century later, in painting with equal power the struggles of love and virtue.” It is one of the curious inconsistencies of her character, that her creations contained an element which her life seems wholly to have lacked. Behind all her faults of conduct there was clearly an ideal of purity and goodness. Her stories are marked by a vividness and an ardor of passion rarely found in the insipid and colorless romances of the preceding age. Her pictures of love and intrigue and crime are touched with the religious enthusiasm of the cloister, the poetry of devotion, the heroism of self-sacrifice. Perhaps the dark and mysterious facts of her own history shaped themselves in her imagination. Did the tragedy of La Fresnaye, the despairing lover who blew out his brains at her feet, leaving the shadow of a crime hanging over her, with haunting memories of the Bastille, recall the innocence of her own early convent days? Did she remember some long-buried love, and the child left to perish upon the steps of St. Jean le Rond, but grown up to be her secret pride in the person of the great mathematician and philosopher d’Alembert? What was the subtle link between this worldly woman and the eternal passion, the tender self-sacrifice of Adelaide, the loyal heroine who breathes out her solitary and devoted soul on the ashes of La Trappe, unknown to her faithful and monastic lover, until the last sigh? The fate of Adelaide has become a legend. It has furnished a theme for the poet and the artist, an inspiration for the divine strains of Beethoven, another leaf in the annals of pure and heroic love. But the woman who conceived it toyed with the human heart as with a beautiful flower, to be tossed aside when its first fragrance was gone. She apparently knew neither the virtue, nor the honor, nor the purity, nor the truth of which she had so exquisite a perception in the realm of the imagination. Or were some of the episodes which darken the story of her life simply the myths of a gossiping age, born of the incidents of an idle tale, to live forever on the pages of history?

But it was not as a literary woman that Mme. de Tencin held her position and won her fame. Her gifts were eminently those of her age and race, and it may be of interest to compare her with a woman of larger talent of a purely intellectual order, who belonged more or less to the world of the salons, without aspiring to leadership, and who, though much younger, died in the same year. Mme. du Chatelet was essentially a woman of letters. She loved the exact sciences, expounded Leibnitz, translated Newton, gave valuable aid to Voltaire in introducing English thought into France, and was one of the first women among the nobility to accept the principles of philosophic deism. “I confess that she is tyrannical,” said Voltaire; “one must talk about metaphysics, when the temptation is to talk of love. Ovid was formerly my master; it is now the turn of Locke.” She has been clearly but by no means pleasantly painted for us in the familiar letters of Mme. de Graffigny, in the rather malicious sketches of the Marquise de Crequi, and in the still more strongly outlined portrait or Mme. du Deffand, as a veritable bas bleu, learned, pedantic, eccentric, and without grace or beauty. “Imagine a woman tall and hard, with florid complexion, face sharp, nose pointed–VOILA LA BELLE EMILIE,” writes the latter; “a face with which she was so contented that she spared nothing to set it off; curls, topknots, precious stones, all are in profusion . . . She was born with much esprit; the desire of appearing to have more made her prefer the study of the abstract sciences to agreeable branches of knowledge; she thought by this singularity to attain a greater reputation and a decided superiority over all other women. Madame worked with so much care to seem what she was not, that no one knew exactly what she was; even her defects were not natural.” “She talks like an angel”–“she sings divinely”–“our sex ought to erect altars to her,” wrote Mme. de Graffigny during a visit at her chateau. A few weeks later her tone changed. They had quarreled. Of such stuff is history made. But she had already given a charming picture of the life at Cirey.

Mme. du Chatelet plunged into abstractions during the day. In the evening she was no more the savante, but gave herself up to the pleasures of society with the ardor of a nature that was extreme in everything. Voltaire read his poetry and his dramas, told stories that made them weep and then laugh at their tears, improvised verses, and amused them with marionettes, or the magic lantern. La belle Emilie criticized the poems, sang, and played prominent parts in the comedies and tragedies of the philosopher poet, which were first given in her little private theater. Among the guests were the eminent scientist, Maupertuis, her life-long friend and teacher; the Italian savant, Algarotti, President Henault, Helvetius, the poet, Saint-Lambert, and many others of equal distinction. “Of what do we not talk!” writes Mme. de Graffigny. “Poetry, science, art, everything, in a tone of graceful badinage. I should like to be able to send you these charming conversations, these enchanting conversations, but it is not in me.”

Mme. du Chatelet owned for several years the celebrated Hotel Lambert, and a choice company of savants assembled there as in the days when Mme. de Lambert presided in those stately apartments. But this learned salon had only a limited vogue. The thinking was high, but the dinners were too plain. The real life of Mme. du Chatelet was an intimate one. “I confess that in love and friendship lies all my happiness,” said this astronomer, metaphysician, and mathematician, who wrote against revelation and went to mass with her free-thinking lover. Her learning and eccentricities made her the target for many shafts of ridicule, but she counted for much with Voltaire, and her chief title to fame lies in his long and devoted friendship. He found the “sublime and respectable Emilie” the incarnation of all the virtues, though a trifle ill-tempered. The contrast between his kindly portrait and those of her feminine friends is striking and rather suggestive.

“She joined to the taste for glory a simplicity which does not always accompany it, but which is often the fruit of serious studies. No woman was ever so learned, and no one deserves less to be called a femme savante. Born with a singular eloquence, this eloquence manifested itself only when she found subjects worthy of it . . . The fitting word, precision, justness, and force were the characteristics of her style. She would rather write like Pascal and Nicole than like Mme. de Sevigne; but this severe strength and this vigorous temper of her mind did not render her inaccessible to the beauties of sentiment. The charms of poetry and eloquence penetrated her, and no one was ever more sensitive to harmony . . . She gave herself to the great world as to study. Everything that occupies society was in her province except scandal. She was never known to repeat an idle story. She had neither time nor disposition to give attention to such things, and when told that some one had done her an injustice, she replied that she did not wish to hear about it.”

“She led him a life a little hard,” said Mme. de Graffigny, after her quarrel; but he seems to have found it agreeable, and broke his heart–for a short time–when she died. “I have lost half of my being,” he wrote–“a soul for which mine was made.” To Marmontel he says: “Come and share my sorrow. I have lost my illustrious friend. I am in despair. I am inconsolable.” One cannot believe that so clear-sighted a man, even though a poet, could live for twenty years under the spell of a pure illusion. What heart revelations, what pictures of contemporary life, were lost in the eight large volumes of his letters which were destroyed at her death!

While Mme. de Tencin studied men and affairs, Mme. du Chatelet studied books. One was mistress of the arts of diplomacy, gentle but intriguing, ambitious, always courting society and shunning solitude. The other was violent and imperious, hated finesse, and preferred burying herself among the rare treasures of her library at Cirey.

The influence of Mme. de Tencin was felt, not only in the social and intellectual, but in the political life of the century. The traditions of her salon lingered in those which followed, modified by the changes that time and personal taste always bring. Mme. du Chatelet was more learned, but she lacked the tact and charm which give wide personal ascendancy. Her influence was largely individual, and her books have been mostly forgotten. These women were alike defiant of morality, but taken all in all, the character of Mme. Chatelet has more redeeming points, though little respect can be accorded to either. With the wily intellect of a Talleyrand, Mme. de Tencin represents the social genius, the intelligence, the esprit, and the worst vices of the century on which she has left such conspicuous traces.

“She knew my tastes and always offered me those dishes I preferred,” said Fontenelle when she died in 1740. “It is an irreparable loss.” Perhaps his hundred years should excuse his not going to her funeral for fear of catching cold.

CHAPTER XII. MADAME GEOFFRIN AND THE PHILOSOPHERS Cradles of the New Philosophy–Noted Salons of this Period– Character of Mme. Geoffrin–Her Practical Education–Anecdotes of her Husband–Composition of her Salon–Its Insidious Influence–Her Journey to Warsaw–Her Death

During the latter half of the eighteenth century the center of social life was no longer the court, but the salons. They had multiplied indefinitely, and, representing every shade of taste and thought, had reached the climax of their power as schools of public opinion, as well as their highest perfection in the arts and amenities of a brilliant and complex society. There was a slight reaction from the reckless vices and follies of the regency. If morals were not much better, manners were a trifle more decorous. Though the great world did not take the tone of stately elegance and rigid propriety which it had assumed under the rule of Mme. de Maintenon, it was superficially polished, and a note of thoughtfulness was added. Affairs in France had taken too serious an aspect to be ignored, and the theories of the philosophers were among the staple topics of conversation; indeed, it was the great vogue of the philosophers that gave many of the most noted social centers their prestige and their fame. It is not the salons of the high nobility that suggest themselves as the typical ones of this age. It is those which were animated by the habitual presence of the radical leaders of French thought. Economic questions and the rights of man were discussed as earnestly in these brilliant coteries as matters of faith and sentiment, of etiquette and morals, had been a hundred years before. Such subjects were forced upon them by the inexorable logic of events; and fashion, which must needs adapt itself in some measure to the world over which it rules, took them up. If the drawing rooms of the seventeenth century were the cradles of refined manners and a new literature, those of the eighteenth were literally the cradles of a new philosophy.

The practical growth and spread of French philosophy was too closely interwoven with the history of the salons not to call for a word here. Its innovations were faintly prefigured in the coterie of Mme. de Lambert, where it colored almost imperceptibly the literary and critical discussions. But its foundations were more firmly laid in the drawing room of Mme. de Tencin, where the brilliant wit and radical theories of Montesquieu, as well as the pronounced materialism of Helvetius, found a congenial atmosphere. Though the mingled romance and satire of the “Persian Letters,” with their covert attack upon the state and society, raised a storm of antagonism, they called out a burst of admiration as well. The original and aggressive thought of men like Voltaire, Rousseau, d’Alembert, and Diderot, with its diversity of shading, but with the cardinal doctrine of freedom and equality pervading it all, had found a rapidly growing audience. It no longer needed careful nursing, in the second half of the century. It had invaded the salons of the haute noblesse, and was discussed even in the anterooms of the court. Mme. de Pompadour herself stole away from her tiresome lover-king to the freethinking coterie that met in her physician’s apartments in the Entresol at Versailles, and included the greatest iconoclasts of the age. If she had any misgivings as to the outcome of these discussions, they were fearlessly cast aside with “Apres Nous le Deluge.” “In the depth of her heart she was with us,” said Voltaire when she died.

There were clairvoyant spirits who traced the new theories to their logical results. Mme. du Deffand speaks with prophetic vision of the reasoners and beaux esprits “who direct the age and lead it to its ruin.” There were conservative women, too, who used their powerful influence against them. It was in the salon of the delicate but ardent young Princesse de Robecq that Palissot was inspired to write the satirical comedy of “The Philosophers,” in which Rousseau was represented as entering on all fours, browsing a lettuce, and the Encyclopedists were so mercilessly ridiculed. This spirited and heroic daughter-in-law of the Duchesse de Luxembourg, the powerful patroness of Rousseau, was hopelessly ill at the time, and, in a caustic reply to the clever satire, the abbe Morellet did not spare the beautiful invalid who desired for her final consolation only to see its first performance and be able to say, “Now, Lord, thou lettest thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen vengeance.” The cruel attack was thought to have hastened her death, and the witty abbe was sent to the Bastille; but he came out in two months, went away for a time, and returned a greater hero than ever. There is a picture, full of pathetic significance, which represents the dying princess on her pillow, crowned with a halo of sanctity, as she devotes her last hours to the defense of the faith she loves. One is reminded of the sweet and earnest souls of Port Royal; but her vigorous protest, which furnished only a momentary target for the wit of the philosophers, was lost in the oncoming wave of skepticism.

The vogue of these men received its final stamp in the admiring patronage of the greatest sovereigns in Europe. Voltaire had his well-known day of power at the court of Frederick the Great. Grimm and Diderot, too, were honored guests of that most liberal of despots, and discussed their novel theories in familiar fashion with Catherine II, at St. Petersburg. The reply of this astute and clear-sighted empress to the eloquent plea of Diderot may be commended for its wisdom to the dreamers and theorists of today.

“I have heard, with the greatest pleasure, all that your brilliant intellect has inspired you to say; but with all your grand principles, which I comprehend very well, one makes fine books and bad business. You forget in all your plans of reform the difference of our two positions. You work only on paper, which permits everything; it is quite smooth and pliant, and opposes no obstacles to your imagination nor to your pen; while I, poor empress, I work upon the human cuticle, which is quite sensitive and irritable.”

It is needless to say that the men so honored by sovereigns were petted in the salons, in spite of their disfavor with the Government. They dined, talked, posed as lions or as martyrs, and calmly bided their time. The persecution of the Encyclopedists availed little more than satire had done, in stemming the slowly rising tide of public opinion. Utopian theories took form in the ultra circles, were insidiously disseminated in the moderate ones, and were lightly discussed in the fashionable ones. Men who talked, and women who added enthusiasm, were alike unconscious of the dynamic force of the material with which they were playing.

Of the salons which at this period had a European reputation, the most noted were those of Mme. du Deffand, Mlle. de Lespinasse, and Mme. Geoffrin. The first was the resort of the more intellectual of the noblesse, as well as the more famous of the men of letters. The two worlds mingled here; the tone was spiced with wit and animated with thought, but it was essentially aristocratic. The second was the rallying point of the Encyclopedists and much frequented by political reformers, but the rare gifts of its hostess attracted many from the great world. The last was moderate in tone, though philosophical and thoroughly cosmopolitan. Sainte-Beuve pronounced it “the most complete, the best organized, and best conducted of its time; the best established since the foundation of the salons; that is, since the Hotel de Rambouillet.”

“Do you know why La Geoffrin comes here? It is to see what she can gather from my inventory,” remarked Mme. de Tencin on her death bed. She understood thoroughly her world, and knew that her friend wished to capture the celebrities who were in the habit of meeting in her salon. But she does not seem to have borne her any ill will for her rather premature schemes, as she gave her a characteristic piece of advice: “Never refuse any advance of friendship,” she said; “for, if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you. Everything is of service in a menage if one knows how to use his tools.” Mme. Geoffrin was an apt pupil in the arts of diplomacy, and the key to her remarkable social success may be found in her ready assimilation of the worldly wisdom of her sage counselor. But to this she added a far kinder heart and a more estimable character.

Of all the women who presided over famous salons, Mme. Geoffrin had perhaps the least claim to intellectual preeminence. The secret of her power must have lain in some intangible quality that has failed to be perpetuated in any of her sayings or doings. A few commonplace and ill-spelled letters, a few wise or witty words, are all the direct record she has left of herself. Without rank, beauty, youth, education, or remarkable mental gifts of a sort that leave permanent traces, she was the best representative of the women of her time who held their place in the world solely through their skill in organizing and conducting a salon. She was in no sense a luminary; and conscious that she could not shine by her own light, she was bent upon shining by that of others. But, in a social era so brilliant, even this implied talent of a high order. A letter to the Empress of Russia, in reply to a question concerning her early education, throws a ray of light upon her youth and her peculiar training.

“I lost my father and mother,” she writes, “in the cradle. I was brought up by an aged grandmother, who had much intelligence and a well-balanced head. She had very little education; but her mind was so clear, so ready, so active, that it never failed her; it served always in the place of knowledge. She spoke so agreeably of the things she did not know that no one wished her to understand them better; and when her ignorance was too visible, she got out of it by pleasantries which baffled the pedants who tried to humiliate her. She was so contented with her lot that she looked upon knowledge as a very useless thing for a woman. She said: ‘I have done without it so well that I have never felt the need of it. If my granddaughter is stupid, learning will make her conceited and insupportable; if she has talent and sensibility, she will do as I have done–supply by address and with sentiment what she does not know; when she becomes more reasonable, she will learn that for which she has the most aptitude, and she will learn it very quickly.’ She taught me in my childhood simply to read, but she made me read much; she taught me to think by making me reason; she taught me to know men by making me say what I thought of them, and telling me also the opinion she had formed. She required me to render her an account of all my movements and all my feelings, correcting them with so much sweetness and grace that I never concealed from her anything that I thought or felt; my internal life was as visible as my external. My education was continual.”

The daughter of a valet de chambre of the Duchess of Burgundy, who gave her a handsome dowry, Marie Therese Rodet became, at fourteen, the wife of a lieutenant-colonel of the National Guard and a rich manufacturer of glass. Her husband did not count for much among the distinguished guests who in later years frequented her salon, and his part in her life seems to have consisted mainly in furnishing the money so essential to her success, and in looking carefully after the interests of the menage. It is related that some one gave him a history to read, and when he called for the successive volumes the same one was always returned to him. Not observing this, he found the work interesting, but “thought the author repeated a little.” He read across the page a book printed in two columns, remarking that “it seemed to be very good, but a trifle abstract.” One day a visitor inquired for the white-haired old gentleman who was in the habit of sitting at the head of the table. “That was my husband,” replied Mme. Geoffrin; “he is dead.”

But if her marriage was not an ideal one, it does not appear that it was unhappy. Perhaps her bourgeois birth and associations saved her youth from the domestic complications which were so far the rule in the great world as to have, in a measure, its sanction. At all events her life was apparently free from the shadows that rested upon many of her contemporaries.

“Her character was a singular one,” writes Marmontel, who lived for ten years in her house, “and difficult to understand or paint, because it was all in half-tints and shades; very decided nevertheless, but without the striking traits by which one’s nature distinguishes and defines itself. She was kind, but had little sensibility; charitable, without any of the charms of benevolence; eager to aid the unhappy, but without seeing them, for fear of being moved; a sure, faithful, even officious friend, but timid and anxious in serving others, lest she should compromise her credit or her repose. She was simple in her taste, her dress, and her furniture, but choice in her simplicity, having the refinements and delicacies of luxury, but nothing of its ostentation nor its vanity; modest in her air, carriage, and manners, but with a touch of pride, and even a little vainglory. Nothing flattered her more than her intercourse with the great. At their houses she rarely saw them, –indeed she was not at her ease there,–but she knew how to attract them to her own by a coquetry subtly flattering; and in the easy, natural, half-respectful and half-familiar air with which she received them, I thought I saw remarkable address.”

In a woman of less tact and penetration, this curious vein of hidden vanity would have led to pretension. But Mme. Geoffrin was preeminently gifted with that fine social sense which is apt to be only the fruit of generations of culture. With her it was innate genius. She was mistress of the amiable art of suppressing herself, and her vanity assumed the form of a gracious modesty. “I remain humble, but with dignity,” she writes to a friend; “that is, in depreciating myself I do not suffer others to depreciate me.” She had the instinct of the artist who knows how to offset the lack of brilliant gifts by the perfection of details, the modesty that disarms criticism, and a rare facility in the art of pleasing.

There was an air of refinement and simple elegance in her personality that commanded respect. Tall and dignified, with her silvery hair concealed by her coif, she combined a noble presence with great kindliness of manner. She usually wore somber colors and fine laces, for which she had great fondness. Her youth was long past when she came before the world, and that sense of fitness which always distinguished her led her to accept her age seriously and to put on its hues. The “dead-leaf mantle” of Mme. de Maintenon was worn less severely perhaps, but it was worn without affectation. Diderot gives us a pleasant glimpse of her at Grandval, where they were dining with Baron d’Holbach. “Mme. Geoffrin was admirable,” he wrote to Mlle. Volland. “I remark always the noble and quiet taste with which this woman dresses. She wore today a simple stuff of austere color, with large sleeves, the smoothest and finest linen, and the most elegant simplicity throughout.”

In her equanimity and her love of repose she was a worthy disciple of Fontenelle. She carefully avoided all violent passions and all controversies. To her lawyer, who was conducting a suit that worried her, she said, “Wind up my case. Do they want my money? I have some, and what can I do with money better than to buy tranquillity with it?” This aversion to annoyance often reached the proportions of a very amiable selfishness. “She has the habit of detesting those who are unhappy,” said the witty Abbe Galiani, “for she does not wish to be so, even by the sight of the unhappiness of others. She has an impressionable heart; she is old; she is well; she wishes to preserve her health and her tranquillity. As soon as she learns that I am happy she will love me to folly.”

But her generosity was exceptional. “Donner et pardonner” was her device. Many anecdotes are related of her charitable temper. She had ordered two marble vases of Bouchardon. One was broken before reaching her. Learning that the man who broke it would lose his place if it were known, and that he had a family of four children, she immediately sent word to the atelier that the sculptor was not to be told of the loss, adding a gift of twelve francs to console the culprit for his fright. She often surprised her impecunious friends with the present of some bit of furniture she thought they needed, or an annuity delicately bestowed. “I have assigned to you fifteen thousand francs,” she said one day to the Abbe Morellet; “do not speak of it and do not thank me.” “Economy is the source of independence and liberty” was one of her mottoes, and she denied herself the luxuries of life that she might have more to spend in charities. But she never permitted any one to compromise her, and often withheld her approbation where she was free with her purse. To do all the good possible and to respect all the convenances were her cardinal principles. Marmontel was sent to the Bastille under circumstances that were rather creditable than otherwise; but it was a false note, and she was never quite the same to him afterwards. She wept at her own injustice, schemed for his election to the Academy, and scolded him for his lack of diplomacy; but the little cloud was there. When the Sorbonne censured his Belisarius her friendship could no longer bear the strain, and, though still received at her dinners, he ceased to live in her house.

Her dominant passion seems to have been love of consideration, if a calm and serene, but steadily persistent, purpose can be called a passion. No trained diplomatist ever understood better the world with which he had to deal, or managed more adroitly to avoid small antagonisms. It was her maxim not to create jealousy by praising people, nor irritation by defending them. If she wished to say a kind word, she dwelt upon good qualities that were not contested. She prided herself upon ruling her life by reason. Sainte-Beuve calls her the Fontenelle of women, but it was Fontenelle tempered with a heart.

This “foster-mother of philosophers” evidently wished to make sure of her own safety, however matters might turn out in the next world. She had a devotional vein, went to mass privately, had a seat at the Church of the Capucins, and an apartment for retreat in a convent. During her last illness the Marquise de la Ferte-Imbault, who did not love her mother’s freethinking friends, excluded them, and sent for a confessor. Mme. Geoffrin submitted amiably, and said, smiling, “My daughter is like Godfrey of Bouillon; she wishes to defend my tomb against the infidels.”

Into the composition of her salon she brought the talent of an artist. We have a glimpse of her in 1748 through a letter from Montesquieu. She was then about fifty, and had gathered about her a more or less distinguished company, which was enlarged after the death of Mme. de Tencin, in the following year. She gave dinners twice a week–one on Monday for artists, among whom were Vanloo, Vernet, and Boucher; and one on Wednesday for men of letters. As she believed that women were apt to distract the conversation, only one was usually invited to dine with them. Mlle. de Lespinasse, the intellectual peer and friend of these men, sat opposite her, and aided in conducting the conversation into agreeable channels. The talent of Mme. Geoffrin seems to have consisted in telling a story well, in a profound knowledge of people, ready tact, and the happy art of putting every one at ease. She did not like heated discussions nor a too pronounced expression of opinion. “She was willing that the philosophers should remodel the world,” says one of her critics, “on condition that the kingdom of Diderot should come without disorder or confusion.” But though she liked and admired this very free and eloquent Diderot, he was too bold and outspoken to have a place at her table. Helvetius, too, fell into disfavor after the censure which his atheistic DE L’esprit brought upon him; and Baron d’Holbach was too apt to overstep the limits at which the hostess interfered with her inevitable “Voila qui est bien.” Indeed, she assumed the privilege of her years to scold her guests if they interfered with the general harmony or forgot any of the amenities. But her scoldings were very graciously received as a slight penalty for her favor, and more or less a measure of her friendship. She graded her courtesies with fine discrimination, and her friends found the reflection of their success or failure in her manner of receiving them. Her keen, practical mind pierced every illusion with merciless precision. She defined a popular abbe who posed for a bel esprit, as a “fool rubbed all over with wit.” Rulhiere had read in her salon a work on Russia, which she feared might compromise him, and she offered him a large sum of money to throw it into the fire. The author was indignant at such a reflection upon his courage and honor, and grew warmly eloquent upon the subject. She listened until he had finished, then said quietly, “How much more do you want, M. Rulhiere?”

The serene poise of a character without enthusiasms and without illusions is very well illustrated by a letter to Mme. Necker. After playfully charging her with being always infatuated, never cool and reserved, she continues:

“Do you know, my pretty one, that your exaggerated praises confound me, instead of pleasing and flattering me? I am always afraid that your giddiness will evaporate. You will then judge me to be so different from your preconceived opinion that you will punish me for your own mistake, and allow me no merit at all. I have my virtues and my good qualities, but I have also many faults. Of these I am perfectly well aware, and every day I try to correct them.

“My dear friend, I beg of you to lessen your excessive admiration. I assure you that you humiliate me; and that is certainly not your intention. The angels think very little about me, and I do not trouble myself about them. Their praise or their blame is indifferent to me, for I shall not come in their way; but what I do desire is that you should love me, and that you should take me as you find me.”

Again she assumes her position of mentor and writes: “How is it possible not to answer the kind and charming letter I have received from you? But still I reply only to tell you that it made me a little angry. I see that it is impossible to change anything in your uneasy, restless, and at the same time weak character.”

Horace Walpole, who met her during his first visit to Paris, and before his intimacy with Mme. du Deffand had colored his opinions, has left a valuable pen-portrait of Mme. Geoffrin. In a letter to Gray, in 1766, he writes:

“Mme. Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with, great quickness in discovering characters, penetrating and going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a likeness, seldom a favorable one. She exacts and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility, great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little arts