isfortune which was not to last long."

The hotel of the new-married couple was organized upon a lordly footing;
the best society in Paris was there to be found, for all those whose
company was worth having deserted the _salons_ of the fashionable world
for those of Madame d'Etioles. Never until then had such a lavish display
of luxury been seen. The young bride hoped by these means to make a noise
at court, and thus pique the curiosity of the king. The days passed in
fetes and entertainments of every kind. The celebrated comedians of the
day, the popular poets, artists, foreigners of distinction, all had ready
access to the splendid mansion of Lenorman d'Etioles, of which the
mistress was the life and ornament; every one visited there, in short,
except the king.

Ever since the celebrated _reunions_ of the Hotel de Rambouillet, there
have always been in France a succession of circles of _beaux esprits_,
presided over by some queen of fashion. Louis XIV. hated these
_reunions_, saying that the court was spread abroad into all [*illegible]
hotels of Paris. In fact, for many, the [*illegible ] of the Duchesse de
Main or of the [*illegible ]ise de Lambert, of Madame de Tencin
[*illegible] Madame Geoffrin, possessed far greater [*illegible ]ons than
the already superannuated [*illegible ] of Versailles. The French
Revolution [*illegible ] its rise in these very circles, for in them they
laughed a little at the great powers of the earth, and there philosophy
and liberty were allowed elbow-room. Thus, at Madame d'Etioles' might be
seen old Fontenelle, who believed in nothing, not even in his own heart;
Voltaire, still young, and armed with the keen weapons of his ready wit,
prepared to make war upon those whose reign was of this world, above all
upon the Jesuits; Montesquieu and Maupertuis, born skeptics and mockers;
along with many others of a kindred spirit who had beheld the decline of
royalty and religion, when Louis XIV., in the latter years of his reign,
had permitted Scarron's widow to make religion fashionable, by cloaking
France with the mask of hypocritical piety--a mask soon, however, to be
torn aside by Philippe of Orleans in the wild saturnalia of the Regency.
The Abbe de Bernis was also a constant visitor at the house of Madame
d'Etioles; he was, in the parlance of the time, the _Abbe de la
Maison_--it is true he had no other benefice--but little thought then,
either the abbe of the house or the mistress of the