prize, then given for
the first time, for her _Conversations d'Emilie_. She died in the same
year, surrounded by her dearest friends--Grimm, M. and Mme. Belgunce,
and Mme. d'Houdetot.

Mme. d'Epinay, in many respects, was a remarkable woman. Amid all her
social duties, with all her physical and mental troubles, she found
time to help others and to manage her own business affairs and
those of her children, took an active interest in art, music, and
literature, raised, with the utmost care, her granddaughter, produced
one of the best works of the time for children, made tapestry, and
wrote innumerable letters. Her fortune was lost through the reforms of
Necker.

She was not a beautiful woman; but she was distinguished by a small,
thin figure, an abundance of rich dark hair, which brought out in
striking relief the peculiar whiteness of her skin, and large brown
eyes. Her five lovers she called her five bears: Rousseau, Grimm,
Desmoulin, Saint-Lambert, Gauffecourt. An epistle to Grimm begins
thus;

"Moi, de cinq ours la souveraine,
Qui leur donne et present des lois,
Faut-il que je sois a la fois
Et votre esclave et votre reine,
O des tyrans le plus tyran?"

[I, sovereign over five bears,
Who give and prescribe laws for them--
Must I be your slave and queen at the same time,
O among tyrants, the greatest?]

As far as the care of the education of her children is concerned,
with its sacrifice and real application to duty, she was sometimes
called--and not unadvisedly--the type of the ideal mother. From 1757
on her ideas and thoughts ran to education. Her friends were all
of the philosophical trend, and intellectual labor was their chief
pleasure. After having passed through a career of excitement and
love's caprices, she longed for a peaceful, quiet existence; at
that point, however, her health gave way, and she entered upon a new
territory at Geneva. There she conquered Voltaire, who was profuse
with his compliments and kindnesses. Upon her return she became the
recognized leader or champion of the philosophic and foreign group
and the Encyclopaedists, and was regarded as the central figure of the
philosophical movement in general.

The ideas of the philosophers had been gaining ground, and were
disseminated through all classes. The mere love of pleasure and luxury
at first found under Louis XV. gave way to more serious reflections
when society was confronted with those all-important questions