Academy became for a time philosophical
rather than critical, and dealt with theories rather than with pure
literature, we trace the finger of the more radical thinkers who made
themselves so strongly felt in the salons. Sainte=Beuve tells us that
Fontenelle, with other friends of Mme. de Lambert, first gave it
this tendency; but his mission was apparently an unconscious one, and
strikingly illustrates the accidental character of the sources of the
intellectual currents which sometimes change the face of the world. "If
I had a handful of truths, I should take good care not to open it,"
said this sybarite, who would do nothing that was likely to cause him
trouble. But the truths escaped in spite of him, and these first words
of the new philosophy were perhaps the more dangerous because veiled
and insidious. "You have written the 'Histoire des Oracles,'" said a
philosopher to him, after he had been appointed the royal censor, "and
you refuse me your approbation." "Monsieur," replied Fontenelle, "if I
had been censor when I wrote the 'Histoire des Oracles,' I should have
carefully avoided giving it my approbation." But if the philosophers
finally determined the drift of this learned body, it was undoubtedly
the tact and diplomacy of women which constituted the most potent factor
in the elections which placed them there. The mantle of authority,
so gracefully worn by Mme. de Lambert, fell upon her successors, Mme.
Geoffrin and Mlle. de Lespinasse, losing none of its prestige. As a
rule, the best men in France were sooner or later enrolled among the
Academicians. If a few missed the honor through failure to enlist the
favor of women, as has been said, and a few better courtiers of less
merit attained it, the modern press has not proved a more judicious
tribunal.

CHAPTER X. THE DUCHESSE DU MAINE

_Her Capricious Character--Her Esprit--Mlle. de Launay--Clever Portrait
of Her Mistress--Perpetual Fetes at Sceaux--Voltaire and the "Divine
Emilie"--Dilettante Character of this Salon._

The life of the eighteenth century, with its restlessness, its love
of amusements, its ferment of activities, and its essential frivolity,
finds a more fitting representative in the Duchesse du Maine,
granddaughter of the Grand Conde, and wife of the favorite son of
Louis XIV, and Mme. de Montespan. The transition from the serene
and thoughtful atmosphere which surrounded Mme. de Lambert, to the
tumultuous whirl of existence at Sceaux, wa