f her beauty; but she was said to
be malignant; and this in a woman of her rank made me tremble. I had
scarcely seen her before I was subjugated. I thought her charming, with
that charm proof against time and which had the most powerful action upon
my heart. I expected to find her conversation satirical and full of
pleasantries and points. It was not so; it was much better. The
conversation of Madam de Luxembourg is not remarkably full of wit; it has
no sallies, nor even finesse; it is exquisitely delicate, never striking,
but always pleasing. Her flattery is the more intoxicating as it is
natural; it seems to escape her involuntarily, and her heart to overflow
because it is too full. I thought I perceived, on my first visit, that
notwithstanding my awkward manner and embarrassed expression, I was not
displeasing to her. All the women of the court know how to persuade us
of this when they please, whether it be true or not, but they do not all,
like Madam de Luxembourg, possess the art of rendering that persuasion so
agreeable that we are no longer disposed ever to have a doubt remaining.
From the first day my confidence in her would have been as full as it
soon afterwards became, had not the Duchess of Montmorency, her
daughter-in-law, young, giddy, and malicious also, taken it into her
head to attack me, and in the midst of the eulogiums of her mamma, and
feigned allurements on her own account, made me suspect I was only
considered by them as a subject of ridicule.

It would perhaps have been difficult to relieve me from this fear with
these two ladies had not the extreme goodness of the marechal confirmed
me in the belief that theirs was not real. Nothing is more surprising,
considering my timidity, than the promptitude with which I took him at
his word on the footing of equality to which he would absolutely reduce
himself with me, except it be that with which he took me at mine with
respect to the absolute independence in which I was determined to live.
Both persuaded I had reason to be content with my situation, and that I
was unwilling to change it, neither he nor Madam de Luxembourg seemed to
think a moment of my purse or fortune; although I can have no doubt of
the tender concern they had for me, they never proposed to me a place nor
offered me their interest, except it were once, when Madam de Luxembourg
seemed to wish me to become a member of the French Academy. I alleged my
religion; this she told me