eft behind her the traditions of a
society that blended, more perfectly, perhaps, than any other of her
time, the best intellectual life with courtly manners and a strict
observance of les convenances.

CHAPTER XV. MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE

_A Romantic Career--Companion of Mme. du Deffand--Rival Salons--
Association with the Encyclopedists--D'Alembert--A Heart
Tragedy--Impassioned Letters--A Type Unique in her Age_

Inseparably connected with the name of Mme. du Deffand is that of her
companion and rival, Mlle. de Lespinasse, the gifted, charming,
tender and loving woman who presided over one of the most noted of the
philosophical salons; who was the chosen friend and confidante of the
Encyclopedists; and who died in her prime of a broken heart, leaving the
world a legacy of letters that rival those of Heloise or the poems of
Sappho, as "immortal pictures of passion." The memory of her social
triumphs, remarkable as they were, pales before the singular romances of
her life. In the midst of a cold, critical, and heartless society,
that adored talent and ridiculed sentiment, she became the victim of a
passion so profound, so ardent, so hopeless, that her powerful intellect
bent before it like a reed before a storm. She died of that unsuspected
passion, and years afterwards these letters found the light and told the
tale.

The contrast between the two women so closely linked together is
complete. Mme. du Deffand belonged to the age of Voltaire by every fiber
of her hard and cynical nature. What she called love was a fire of the
intellect which consumed without warming. It was a violent and fierce
prejudice in favor of those who reflected something of herself. The
tenderness of self-sacrifice was not there. Mlle. de Lespinasse was of
the later era of Rousseau; the era of exaggerated feeling, of emotional
delirium, of romantic dreams; the era whose heroine was the loving and
sentimental "Julie," for whose portrait she might have sat, with a shade
or so less of intellect and brilliancy. But it was more than a romantic
dream that shadowed and shortened the life of Mlle. de Lespinasse. She
had a veritable heart of flame, that consumed not only itself but its
frail tenement as well.

Julie-Jeanne-Eleonore de Lespinasse, who was born at Lyons in 1732,
had a birthright of sorrow. Her mother, the Comtesse d'Albon, could not
acknowledge this fugitive and nameless daughter, but after the death of
her husband she receive