us, too, was
often there, seeking for compliments, his appetite for applause being
voracious; so insatiable, indeed, that he even danced one night at the
opera. It was said that he was led to study mathematics by seeing a
circle of beautiful ladies surrounding the ugly geometrician Maupertuis
in the gardens of the Tuileries. Dorat, who wasted his time in
writing bad tragedies, and his property in publishing them; the gay,
good-hearted Marmontel; Bernard--called by Voltaire _le gentil_--who
wrote the libretto of "Castor et Pollux," esteemed for years a
masterpiece of lyric poetry; Rameau, the popular composer, in whose
pieces Sophie always appeared; and Francoeur, the leader of the
orchestra, were also among her guests. J. J. Rousseau was the great
lion, courted and petted by all. When Benjamin Franklin arrived in
Paris, where he was received with unbounded hospitality by the most
distinguished of French society, he confessed that nowhere did he find
such pleasure, such wit, such brilliancy, as in the _salon_ of Mile.
Arnould. M. Andre de Murville was one of the more noteworthy men of wit
who attended her _soirees_, and he became so madly in love with her that
he offered her his hand; but she cared very little about him. One day
he told her that if he were not in the Academie within thirty years, he
would blow out his brains. She looked steadily at him, and then, smiling
sarcastically, said, "I thought you had done that long ago." Poets
sang her praises; painters eagerly desired to transfer her exquisite
lineaments to canvas. All this flattery intoxicated her. She wished
to be classed with Ninon, Lais, and Aspasia, and was proud to be the
subject of the verses of Dorat, Bernard, Rulhiere, Marmontel, and
Favart. Sophie's wit never hesitated to break a lance even on those she
liked. "What are you thinking of?" she said to Bernard, in one of his
abstracted moods. "I was talking to myself," he replied. "Be careful,"
she said archly; "you gossip with a flatterer." To a physician, whom she
met with a gun under his arm, she laughed aloud, "Ah, doctor, you are
afraid of your professional resources failing." Her racy repartees were
in every mouth from Paris to Versailles, and she was in all respects a
brilliant personage among the intellectual lights of the age.

In the Rue de Bethisy, Paris, stood a house, the Hotel de Chatillon,
from the window of one of whose rooms assassins flung the gory head of
the great Admiral de Coligni