pitality of
people who were only too glad to give him board and lodging in exchange
for the pleasure of the conversation for which he was famous. Thus
Madame Helvetius entertained him at Sevres for some years. In 1770
another comedy, _Le Marchand de Smyrne_, brought him still further into
notice, and he seemed on the road to fortune, when he was suddenly
smitten with a horrible disease. His distress was relieved by the
generosity of a friend, who made over to him a pension of 1200 livres
charged on the _Mercure de France_. With this assistance he was able to
go to the baths of Contrexeville and to spend some time in the country,
where he wrote an _Eloge_ on La Fontaine which won the prize of the
Academy of Marseilles (1774). In 1775, while taking the waters at
Bareges, he met the duchesse de Grammont, sister of Choiseul, through
whose influence he was introduced at court. In 1776 his poor tragedy,
_Mustapha et Zeangir_, was played at Fontainebleau before Louis XVI. and
Marie Antoinette; the king gave him a further pension of 1200 livres,
and the prince de Conde made him his secretary. But he was a Bohemian
naturally and by habit, the restraints of the court irked him, and with
increasing years he was growing misanthropical. After a year he resigned
his post in the prince's household and retired into solitude at Auteuil.
There, comparing the authors of old with the men of his own time, he
uttered the famous _mot_ that proclaims the superiority of the dead over
the living as companions; and there too he presently fell in love. The
lady, attached to the household of the duchesse du Maine, was
forty-eight years old, but clever, amusing, a woman of the world; and
Chamfort married her. They left Auteuil, and went to Vaucouleurs, where
in six months Madame Chamfort died. Chamfort lived in Holland for a time
with M. de Narbonne, and returning to Paris received in 1781 the place
at the Academy left vacant by the death of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye,
the author of the _Dictionnaire des antiquites francaises_. In 1784,
through the influence of Calonne, he became secretary to the king's
sister, Madame Elizabeth, and in 1786 he received a pension of 2000
livres from the royal treasury. He was thus once more attached to the
court, and made himself friends in spite of the reach and tendency of
his unalterable irony; but he quitted it for ever after an unfortunate
and mysterious love affair, and was received into the house of M. de
Vaudre