r everybody. As affectionate as Mme. de Sevigne, she
has none of her prejudices, but a more universal taste; and with the
most delicate frame, her spirits hurry her through a life of fatigue
that would kill me were I to remain here."

The simple furnishings of her apartments, which were very spacious
and had been occupied by the famous Mme. de Montespan, stood out in
striking contrast to the elegance of her visitors. Here she gathered
about her her two lovers, _le President_ Henault and Pont de Veyle,
besides D'Alembert, Turgot, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Necker, Walpole,
the Abbes Barthelemy and Pernetty, the Chevalier de Lisle, de Formant,
_le Docteur_ Gatti, Hume, Gibbon, Baron de Gleichen, and many other
celebrities, including the Princesses de Beauvau, de Poix, de Talmont,
the Duchesses de Choiseul, d'Aiguillon, de Gramont, the Marechale de
Luxembourg, the Marquises de Boufflers and du Chatelet, the Comtesses
de Rochefort, de Broglie, de Forcalquier, Mme. Necker, Lady Pembroke,
De Lauzun, and many others, all of whom were society leaders. Whenever
Mme. du Deffand had a special supper, it was said that Paris was at
Mme. du Deffand's.

Her salon, above all others, was the centre of cosmopolitanism,
where all great men, foreigners and natives, found means of social
intercourse, and where, more than in any other salon, were assembled
the great beauties of the day, represented especially by the
Countesses de Forcalquier and Choiseul-Beaupre, Duchesse de La
Valliere. Gallantry and beauty were found in the Marechale de
Luxembourg and the Comtesse de Boufflers. The philosophical movement
of the Encyclopaedists and Economists was not encouraged at all.
Thus, in Mme. du Deffand's salon, we find neither pure philosophy nor
religion, nor the air of pedants and _declamateurs_; it was a royalist
salon without illusion, hence indifferent to all questions. It
represented the perfect type of the French model of _esprit de
finesse_,--that is, precision,--and its leader possessed a keen
insight into human character.

This wonderful woman, who, during a period of over forty years, had
held at her feet the elite of the French world, at the age of
about threescore and ten, fell desperately in love with a man of
fifty--Horace Walpole. She who had never loved with her heart, but
only with her mind, then declared it better to be dead than not to
love someone. Although her actions and letters were pitiful in
the extreme, her epistles are in