her friends were made
to understand that her means were not such as to warrant suppers or
dinners, four o'clock being the dinner hour in those days.

Her salon immediately became known as the official encyclopaedia
resort, Mme. du Deffand dubbing it _La Muse de l'Encyclopedie_.
D'Alembert was the high priest, and it was not long before he
was comfortably lodged in the third story of her house, Mlle. de
Lespinasse having nursed him through a malignant fever which the poor
man had contracted in the wretched place where he lodged. A strange
gathering, those salons! Mlle. de Lespinasse, one of the leaders
in the social world, with a prominent salon, was the illegitimate
daughter of a Comtesse d'Albon, and her presiding genius was the
illegitimate son of Mme. de Tencin; here we find the wealthiest and
most elegant of the aristocracy coming from their palaces to meet, in
friendly social and intellectual intercourse, men who lived on a mere
pittance, dressed on almost nothing, lodged in the most wretched of
dens, boarding wherever a salon or palace was opened to them. Surely,
intellect was highly valued in those days, and moral etiquette was at
a low ebb!

Mlle. de Lespinasse possessed two characteristics which were prominent
in a remarkable degree--love and friendship. She appeared to interest
herself in everybody in such a way as to make him believe that he
was the preferred of her heart; loving everybody sincerely and
affectionately, she "lacked altogether the sentimental equilibrium."
Especially pathetic was her love for two men--the Count de Mora, a
Spanish nobleman, and a Colonel Guibert, who was celebrated for his
relations with Frederick the Great; although this wore terribly on
her, consuming her physical force, she always received her friends
with the same good grace, but often, after their departure, she would
fall into a frightful nervous fit from which she could find relief
only by the use of opium.

Her love for Guibert was known to her friends, but was a secret from
her platonic lover, D'Alembert. When, after a number of years of
untold sufferings which even opium could not relieve, she died in
1776, having been cared for to the last by D'Alembert, the Duke de La
Rochefoucauld, and her cousin, the Marquis d'Enlezy, it was with these
words on her dying lips, addressed to Guibert: "Adieu, my friend!
If ever I return to life, I should like to use it in loving you;
but there is no longer any time." When D'Alembe