ite_,
_lambertinage_.

That Mme. de Lambert had a great influence in forming the mind of the
young author no one can read his works and doubt. A "_precieuse_ in the
most flattering and most exact acceptation"[19] of the term, she promoted
a similar turn of mind in Marivaux. His dislike for Moliere may have
received its encouragement from her, as she was never quite willing to
forgive that great genius for his attack upon _les femmes savantes_.
Marivaux, too, had, as Palissot expresses it, "un faible pour les
precieuses,"[20] and for the author of those famous attacks, a contempt as
unfeigned as absurd. The high moral character of his writings and his
ideas on marriage and children may readily have found their origin with
Mme. de Lambert.

Mme. de Tencin, to whose salon of the rue Saint-Honore Marivaux was
likewise welcomed, was as different a character from the kindly, serious,
upright, and judicious Mme. de Lambert as can well be imagined, and it was
only after the death of the latter, in 1733, that her salon was
particularly brilliant. Her youth had been most disorderly. At an early
age she had assumed the veil, but, through the efforts of her brother, the
abbe de Tencin, and later cardinal, who, doubtless, saw in her a powerful
factor for his own promotion, she obtained her secularization. Coming to
Paris a short time before the death of Louis XIV, she was ready to welcome
the gross immorality of the Regency, and, for personal advancement,
entered into a series of liaisons with Prior, the friend of Lord
Bolingbroke, Rene d'Argenson, the Regent himself, Dubois, and the
Chevalier Destouches. The latter was the father of her son, whom she
abandoned on the steps of the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond, and who, reared
by a glazier's wife, became the celebrated d'Alembert. Another lover,
Lafresnaye, whom she had induced to put all of his property in her name,
shot himself, or was shot, at her house. Although imprisoned on suspicion
at the Chatelet, and later at the Bastille, she soon gained her liberty by
the intervention of powerful friends. That she could maintain her position
in society as she did is a striking proof of its terribly corrupt
condition. In her declining years she sought to veil the disorders of her
youth by more serious pursuits, and gathered about her a number of
literary spirits of whom she spoke as her _betes_ or her _menagerie_.

Marmontel gives the following description of the habitues of her salon and