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, the wealthy M. de Bellegarde, had bought--a
man who was really in love with her for a whole month after their
marriage, but who, tiring of the pure affections of a loving wife,
soon began to lavish his time and fortune upon a _danseuse_. The
poor young wife was between two fires, the extravagance and wild
dissipations of her husband and the rigid discipline and orthodoxy of
her mother. Never was a woman treated so outrageously and insultingly
as was this woman by a man who contrived in every manner to corrupt
her morals by throwing her among his dissolute companions, Mme.
d'Artz, the mistress of the Prince de Conti, and Mlle. d'Ette, an
intriguing woman of the time; to the latter, Mme. d'Epinay confided
her troubles, and, as the result of her counsels, fell into the hands
of a M. de Francueil, handsome, clever, accomplished, but as morally
depraved as was her husband.

When Mme. d'Epinay was finally convinced that her husband was untrue
to her, she felt nothing but disdain and contempt for him, and
decided to live a virtuous life; after holding for a short time to
her resolution "that a woman may have the most profound and tender
sentiment for a man and yet remain faithful to her duties," she