the case with
any circle that plumes itself most upon something quite apart from
intellectual distinction. It reflected the spirit of an old aristocracy,
with its pride, its exclusiveness, its worship of forms, but faintly
tinged with the new thought that was rapidly but unconsciously
encroaching upon time-honored institutions. Beyond the clever pastimes
of a brilliant coterie, it had no marked literary influence. This
ferment of intellectual life was one of the signs of the times, but
it led to no more definite and tangible results than the turning of a
madrigal or the sparkle of an epigram.

CHAPTER XI. MADAME DE TENCIN AND MADAME DU CHATELET

_An Intriguing Chanoinesse--Her Singular Fascination--Her Salon--Its
Philosophical Character--Mlle. Aisse--Romances of Mme. de
Tencin--D'Alembert--La Belle Emilie--Voltaire--The Two Women Compared_

It was not in the restless searchings of an old society for new
sensations, new diversions, nor in the fleeting expressions of
individual taste or caprice, which were often little more than the play
of small vanities, that the most potent forces in the political as well
as in the intellectual life of France were found. It was in the coteries
which attracted the best representatives of modern thought, men and
women who took the world on a more serious side, and mingled more or
less of earnestness even in their amusements. While the Duchesse du
Maine was playing her little comedy, which began and ended in herself,
another woman, of far different type, and without rank or riches, was
scheming for her friends, and nursing the germs of the philosophic party
in one of the most notable salons of the first half of the century.
Mme. de Tencin is not an interesting figure to contemplate from a moral
standpoint. "She was born with the most fascinating qualities and the
most abominable defects that God ever gave to one of his creatures,"
said Mme. du Deffand, who was far from being able to pose, herself, as
a model of virtue or decorum. But sin has its degrees, and the woman who
errs within the limits of conventionality considers herself entitled
to sit in judgment upon her sister who wanders outside of the fold.
Measured even by the complaisant standards of her own time, there can be
but one verdict upon the character of Mme. de Tencin, though it is to be
hoped that the scandal-loving chroniclers have painted her more darkly
than she deserved. But whatever her faults may have been, her