d deal less. But it is clear that what really bound her to him was
the fact that they so rarely met. If he had lived in Paris, if he had
been a member of her little clique, subject to the unceasing searchlight
of her nightly scrutiny, who can doubt that, sooner or later, Walpole
too would have felt 'le fleau de son amitie'? His mask, too, would have
been torn to tatters like the rest. But, as it was, his absence saved
him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his
brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of
about two years, he appeared in Paris for six weeks--just long enough to
rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. And so it was that
she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of
which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. Once
or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only succeeded in
plunging herself into a deeper subjection. After one of his most violent
and cruel outbursts, she refused to communicate with him further, and
for three or four weeks she kept her word; then she crept back and
pleaded for forgiveness. Walpole graciously granted it. It is with some
satisfaction that one finds him, a few weeks later, laid up with a
peculiarly painful attack of the gout.

About half-way through the correspondence there is an acute crisis,
after which the tone of the letters undergoes a marked change. After
seven years of struggle, Madame du Deffand's indomitable spirit was
broken; henceforward she would hope for nothing; she would gratefully
accept the few crumbs that might be thrown her; and for the rest she
resigned herself to her fate. Gradually sinking into extreme old age,
her self-repression and her bitterness grew ever more and more complete.
She was always bored; and her later letters are a series of variations
on the perpetual theme of 'ennui.' 'C'est une maladie de l'ame,' she
says, 'dont nous afflige la nature en nous donnant l'existence; c'est le
ver solitaire qui absorbe tout.' And again, 'l'ennui est l'avant-gout du
neant, mais le neant lui est preferable.' Her existence had become a
hateful waste--a garden, she said, from which all the flowers had been
uprooted and which had been sown with salt. 'Ah! Je le repete sans
cesse, il n'y a qu'un malheur, celui d'etre ne.' The grasshopper had
become a burden; and yet death seemed as little desirable as life.
'Comment est-il possible,' she asks, 'qu'on