for the benefit of her children and for her
own diversion; but she yielded to the prejudices of her age against the
woman author, and her works were given to the world only through the
medium of friends to whom she had read or lent them. "Women," she said,
"should have towards the sciences a modesty almost as sensitive
as towards vices." But in spite of her studied observance of the
conventional limits which tradition still assigned to her sex, her
writings suggest much more care than is usually bestowed upon the
amusement of an idle hour. If, like many other women of her time, she
wrote only for her friends, she evidently doubted their discretion in
the matter of secrecy.

As the child who inherited the rather formidable name of Anne Theresa
de Marguenat de Coucelles was born during the last days of the Hotel
de Rambouillet, she doubtless cherished many illusions regarding this
famous salon. Its influence was more or less apparent when the time came
to open one of her own. Her father was a man of feeble intellect, who
died early; but her mother, a woman more noted for beauty than for
decorum, was afterward married to Bachaumont, a well-known bel esprit,
who appreciated the gifts of the young girl, and brought her within a
circle of wits who did far more towards forming her impressible mind
than her light and frivolous mother had done. She was still very young
when she became the wife of the Marquis de Lambert, an officer of
distinction, to whose interests she devoted her talents and her ample
fortune. The exquisitely decorated Hotel Lambert, on the Ile Saint
Louis, still retains much of its old splendor, though the finest
masterpieces of Lebrun and Lesueur which ornamented its walls have found
their way to the Louvre. "It is a home made for a sovereign who would
be a philosopher," wrote Voltaire to Frederick the Great. In these
magnificent salons, Mme. de Lambert, surrounded by every luxury that
wealth and taste could furnish, entertained a distinguished company. She
carried her lavish hospitalities also to Luxembourg, where she adorned
the position of her husband, who was governor of that province for
a short period before his death in 1686. After this event, she was
absorbed for some years in settling his affairs, which were left in
great disorder, and in protecting the fortunes of her two children.
This involved her in long and vexatious lawsuits which she seems to have
conducted with admirable ability. "There are s