and sentimental, somewhat sad and strictly moral, were rather tiresome
to the Parisian world." Marmontel well describes her in another of his
famous portraits:

"A stranger to the customs of Paris, Mme. Necker had none of the
charms and accomplishments of the young French woman. In her manner
and language she had neither the air nor the tone of a woman reared
in the school of arts, formed at the school of high society.
Without taste in her headdress, without ease in her bearing, without
fascination in her politeness, her mind--as was her countenance--was
too properly adjusted to show grace. But a charm more worthy of her
was that of propriety, of candor, of goodness. A virtuous education
and solitary studies had given to her all that culture can add to an
excellent nature. In her, sentiment was perfect, but her thought was
often confused and vague; instead of clearing her ideas, meditation
disturbed them; in exaggerating them, she believed to enlarge them;
in order to extend them, she wandered off into abstractions and
hyperboles. She seemed to see certain objects only through a fog,
which augmented their importance in her eyes; and then her expression
became so inflated that the pomposity of it would have been laughable
if one had not known her to be entirely ingenuous."

"In summing up the character of Mme. Necker, we find," says
Sainte-Beuve, "first of all, a genuine individuality and a personality
with defects which at first impression are shocking, but which only
helped to render the woman and all her aspirations the more admirable.
Entering a Parisian society with the firm decision of becoming a woman
of _esprit_ and of being in relation with the _beaux esprits_, she was
able to preserve the moral conscience of her Protestant training, to
protest against the false doctrines about her, to give herself up to
duties in the midst of society, to found institutions for the sick and
needy,--and to leave a memory without a stain."

While, among the famous salon leaders of the eighteenth century, Mme.
Necker stands out preeminently for her strict moral integrity and
fidelity to her marriage relations, Mme. d'Epinay is unique for
the constancy of her affections for the men to whom she owes her
celebrity, Rousseau and Grimm. Born in 1725, the record of her life
runs like that of most French women. At the age of twenty she was
married to her cousin, La Live, who later took the name of d'Epinay,
from an estate his father, t