The wits of the day launched many a shaft of satire against it, as they had against the Hotel de Rambouillet a century earlier; but it was an intellectual center of great influence, and was regarded as the sanctuary of old manners as well as the asylum of new liberties. Its decorous character gave it the epithet of "very respectable;" but this eminently respectable company, which represented the purest taste of the time, often included Adrienne Lecouvreur, who was much more remarkable for talent than for respectability. We have a direct glimpse of it through the pen of d'Artenson:
"I have just met with a very grievous loss in the death of the Marquise de Lambert" (he writes in 1733). "For fifteen years I have been one of her special friends, and she has done me the favor of inviting me to her house, where it is an honor to be received. I dined there regularly on Wednesday, which was one of her days.... She was rich, and made a good and amiable use of her wealth, for the benefit of her friends, and above all for the unfortunate. A pupil of Bachaumont, having frequented only the society of people of the world, and of the highest intelligence, she knew no other passion than a constant and platonic tenderness."
The quality of character and intellect which gave Mme. de Lambert so marked an influence, we find in her own thoughts on a great variety of subjects. She gives us the impression of a woman altogether sensible and judicious, but not without a certain artificial tone. Her well-considered philosophy of life had an evident groundwork of ambition and worldly wisdom, which appears always in her advice to her children. She counsels her son to aim high and believe himself capable of great things. "Too much modesty," she says, "is a languor of the soul, which prevents it from taking flight and carrying itself rapidly towards glory"—a suggestion that would be rather superfluous in this generation. Again, she advises him to seek the society of his superiors, in order to accustom himself to respect and politeness. "With equals one grows negligent; the mind falls asleep." But she does not regard superiority as an external thing, and says very wisely, "It is merit which should separate you from people, not dignity or pride." By "people" she indicates all those who think meanly and commonly. "The court is full of them," she adds. Her standards of honor are high, and her sentiments of humanity quite in the vein of the coming age. She urges her daughter to treat her servants with kindness. "One of the ancients says they should be regarded as unfortunate friends. Think that humanity and Christianity equalize all."
Her criticisms on the education of women are of especial interest. Behind her conventional tastes and her love of consideration she has a clear perception of facts and an appreciation of unfashionable truths. She recognizes the superiority of her sex in matters of taste and in the enjoyment of "serious pleasures which make only the MIND LAUGH and do not trouble the heart" She reproaches men with "spoiling the dispositions nature has given to women, neglecting their education, filling their minds with nothing solid, and destining them solely to please, and to please only by their graces or their vices." But she had not always the courage of her convictions, and it was doubtless quite as much her dislike of giving voice to unpopular opinions as her aversion to the publicity of authorship, that led her to buy the entire edition of her "Reflexions sur les Femmes," which was published without her consent.
One of her marked traits was moderation. "The taste is spoiled by amusements," she writes. "One becomes so accustomed to ardent pleasures that one cannot fall back upon simple ones. We should fear great commotions of the soul, which prepare ennui and disgust." This wise thought suggests the influence of Fontenelle, who impressed himself strongly upon the salons of the first half of the century. His calm philosophy is distinctly reflected in the character of Mme. de Lambert, also in that of Mme. Geoffrin, with whom he was on very intimate terms. It is said that this poet, critic, bel esprit, and courtly favorite, whom Rousseau calls "the daintiest pedant in the world," was never swayed by any emotion whatever. He never laughed, only smiled; never wept; never praised warmly, though he did say pretty things to women; never hurried; was never angry; never suffered, and was never moved by suffering. "He had the gout," says one of his critics, "but no pain; only a foot wrapped in cotton. He put it on a footstool; that was all." It is perhaps fair to present, as the other side of the medallion, the portrait drawn by the friendly hand of Adrienne LeCouvreur. "The charms of his intellect often veiled its essential qualities. Unique of his kind, he combines all that wins regard and respect. Integrity, rectitude, equity compose his character; an imagination lively and brilliant, turns fine and delicate, expressions new and always happy ornament it. A heart pure, actions clear, conduct uniform, and everywhere principles.... Exact in friendship, scrupulous in love; nowhere failing in the attributes of a gentleman. Suited to intercourse the most delicate, though the delight of savants; modest in his conversation, simple in his actions, his superiority is evident, but he never makes one feel it." He lived a century, apparently because it was too much trouble to die. When the weight of years made it too much trouble to live, he simply stopped. "I do not suffer, my friends, but I feel a certain difficulty in existing," were his last words. With this model of serene tranquillity, who analyzed the emotions as he would a problem in mathematics, and reduced life to a debit and credit account, it is easy to understand the worldly philosophy of the women who came under his influence.
But while Mme. de Lambert had a calm and equable temperament, and loved to surround herself with an atmosphere of repose, she was not without a fine quality of sentiment. "I exhort you much more to cultivate your heart," she writes to her son, "than to perfect your mind; the true greatness of the man is in the heart." "She was not only eager to serve her friends without waiting for their prayers or the humiliating exposure of their needs," said Fontenelle, "but a good action to be done in favor of indifferent people always tempted her warmly.... The ill success of some acts of generosity did not correct the habit; she was always equally ready to do a kindness." She has written very delicately and beautifully of friendships between men and women; and she had her own intimacies that verged upon tenderness, but were free from any shadow of reproach. Long after her death, d'Alembert, in his academic eulogy upon de Sacy, refers touchingly to the devoted friendship that linked this elegant savant with Mme. de Lambert. "It is believed," says President Henault, "that she was married to the Marquis de Sainte-Aulaire. He was a man of esprit, who only bethought himself, after more than sixty years, of his talent for poetry; and Mme. de Lambert, whose house was filled with Academicians, gained him entrance into the Academy, not without strong opposition on the part of Boileau and some others." Whether the report of this alliance was true or not, the families were closely united, as the daughter of Mme. de Lambert was married to a son of Sainte-Aulaire; it is certain that the enduring affection of this ancient friend lighted the closing years of her life.
Though tinged with the new philosophy, Mme. de Lambert regarded religion as a part of a respectable, well-ordered life. "Devotion is a becoming sentiment in women, and befitting in both sexes," she writes. But she clearly looked upon it as an external form, rather than an internal flame. When about to die, at the age of eighty-six, she declined the services of a friendly confessor, and sent for an abbe who had a great reputation for esprit. Perhaps she thought he would give her a more brilliant introduction into the next world; this points to one of her weaknesses, which was a love of consideration that carried her sometimes to the verge of affectation. It savors a little of the hypercritical spirit that is very well illustrated by an anecdote of the witty Duchesse de Luxenbourg. One morning she took up a prayer book that was lying upon the table and began to criticize severely the bad taste of the prayers. A friend ventured to remark that if they were said reverently and piously, God surely would pay no attention to their good or bad form. "Indeed," exclaimed the fastidious Marechale, whose religion was evidently a becoming phase of estheticism, "do not believe that."
The thoughts of Mme. de Lambert, so elevated in tone, so fine in moral quality, so rich in worldly wisdom, and often so felicitous in expression, tempt one to multiply quotations, especially as they show us an intimate side of her life, of which otherwise we know very little. Her personality is veiled. Her human experiences, her loves, her antipathies, her mistakes, and her errors are a sealed book to us, excepting as they may be dimly revealed in the complexion of her mind. Of her influence we need no better evidence than the fact that her salon was called the antechamber to the Academie Francaise.
The precise effect of this influence of women over the most powerful critical body of the century, or of any century, perhaps, we can hardly measure. In the fact that the 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.
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, was like passing from the soft light and tranquillity of a summer evening to the glare and confusion of perpetual fireworks. Of all the unique figures of a masquerading age this small and ambitious princess was perhaps the most striking, the most pervading. It was by no means her aim to take her place in the world as queen of a salon. Louise-Benedicte de Bourbon belonged to the royal race, and this was by far the most vivid fact in her life. She was but a few steps from the throne, and political intrigues played a conspicuous part in her singular career. But while she waited for the supreme power to which she aspired, and later, when the feverish dream of her life was ended, she must be amused, and her diversions must have an intellectual and imaginative flavor. Wits, artists, literary men, and savants were alike welcome at Sceaux, if they amused her and entertained her guests. "One lived there by esprit, and esprit is my God," said Mme. du Deffand, who was among the brightest ornaments of this circle.
Born in 1676, the Duchesse du Maine lived through the first half of the next century, of which her little court was one of the most notable features. Scarcely above the stature of a child of ten years, slightly deformed, with a fair face lighted by fine eyes; classically though superficially educated; gifted in conversation, witty, brilliant, adoring talent, but cherishing all the prejudices of the old noblesse—she represented in a superlative degree the passion for esprit which lent such exceptional brilliancy to the social life of the time.
In character the duchess was capricious and passionate. "If she were as good as she is wicked," said the sharp-tongued Palatine, "there would be nothing to say against her. She is tranquil during the day and passes it playing at cards, but at its close the extravagances and fits of passion begin; she torments her husband, her children, her servants, to such a point that they do not know which way to turn." Her will brooked no opposition. When forced to leave the Tuileries after the collapse of her little bubble of political power, she deliberately broke every article of value in her apartments, consigning mirrors, vases, statues, porcelains alike to a common ruin, that no one else might enjoy them after her. This fiery scion of a powerful family, who had inherited its pride, its ambition, its uncontrollable passions, and its colossal will, had little patience with the serene temperament and dilettante tastes of her amiable husband, and it is said she did not scruple to make him feel the force of her small hands. "You will waken some morning to find yourself in the Academie Francaise, and the Duc d'Orleans regent," she said to him one day when he showed her a song he had translated. Her device was a bee, with this motto: "I am small, but I make deep wounds." Doubtless its fitness was fully realized by those who belonged to the Ordre de la Mouche-a-miel which she had instituted, and whose members were obliged to swear, by Mount Hymettus, fidelity and obedience to their perpetual dictator. But what pains and chagrins were not compensated by the bit of lemon-colored ribbon and its small meed of distinction!
The little princess worked valiantly for political power, but she worked in vain. The conspiracy against the regent, which seemed to threaten another Fronde, came to nothing, and this ardent instrigante, who had the disposition to "set the four corners of the kingdom on fire" to attain her ends, found her party dispersed and herself in prison. But this was only an episode, and though it gave a death blow to her dreams of power, it did not quench her irrepressible ardor. If she could not rule in one way, she would in another. As soon as she regained her freedom, her little court was again her kingdom, and no sovereign ever reigned more imperiously. "I am fond of company," she said, "for I listen to no one, and every one listens to me." It was an incessant thirst for power, a perpetual need of the sweet incense of flattery, that was at the bottom of this "passion for a multitude." "She believed in herself," writes Mlle. de Launay, afterward Baronne de Staal, "as she believed in God or Descartes, without examination and without discussion."
This lady's maid, who loved mathematics and anatomy, was familiar with Malebranche and Descartes, and left some literary reputation as a writer of gossipy memoirs, was a prominent figure in the lively court at Sceaux for more than forty years, and has given us some vivid pictures of her capricious mistress. A young girl of clear intellect and good education, but without rank, friends, or fortune, she was forced to accept the humiliating position of femme de chambre with the Duchesse du Maine, who had been attracted by her talents. She was brought into notice through a letter to Fontenelle, which was thought witty enough to be copied and circulated. If she had taken this cool dissector of human motives as a model, she certainly did credit to his teaching. Her curiously analytical mind is aptly illustrated by her novel method of measuring her lover's passion. He was in the habit of accompanying her home from the house of a friend. When he began to cross the square, instead of going round it, she concluded that his love had diminished in the exact proportion of two sides of a square to the diagonal. Promoted to the position of a companion, she devoted herself to the interests of her restless mistress, read to her, talked with her, wrote plays for her, and was the animating spirit of the famous Nuits Blanches. While the duchess was in exile she shared her disgrace, refused to betray her, and was sent to the Bastille for her loyalty. She resigned herself to her imprisonment with admirable philosophy, amused herself in the study of Latin, in watching the gambols of a cat and kitten, and in carrying on a safe and sentimental flirtation with the fascinating Duc de Richelieu, who occupied an adjoining cell and passed the hours in singing with her popular airs from Iphigenie. "Sentimental" is hardly a fitting word to apply to the coquetries of this remarkably clear and calculating young woman. She returned with her patroness to Sceaux, found many admirers, but married finally with an eye to her best worldly interests, and, it appears, in the main happily—at least, not unhappily. The shade of difference implies much. She had a keen, penetrating intellect which nothing escaped, and as it had the peculiar clearness in which people and events are reflected as in a mirror, her observations are of great value. "Aside from the prose of Voltaire, I know of none more agreeable than that of Mme. de Staal de Launay," said Grimm. Her portrait of her mistress serves to paint herself as well.
"Mme. la Duchesse du Maine, at the age of sixty years, has yet learned nothing from experience; she is a child of much talent; she has its defects and its charms. Curious and credulous, she wishes to be instructed in all the different branches of knowledge; but she is contented with their surface. The decisions of those who educated her have become for her principles and rules upon which her mind has never formed the least doubt; she submits once for all. Her provision for ideas is made; she rejects the best demonstrated truths and resists the best reasonings, if they are contrary to the first impressions she has received. All examination is impossible to her lightness, and doubt is a state which her weakness cannot support. Her catechism and the philosophy of Descartes are two systems which she understands equally well.... Her mirror cannot make her doubt the charms of her face; the testimony of her eyes is more questionable than the judgment of those who have decided that she is beautiful and well-formed. Her vanity is of a singular kind, but seems the less offensive because it is not reflective, though in reality it is the more ridiculous, Intercourse with her is a slavery; her tyranny is open; she does not deign to color it with the appearance of friendship. She says frankly that she has the misfortune of not being able to do without people for whom she does not care. She proves it effectually. One sees her learn with indifference the death of those who would call forth torrents of tears if they were a quarter of an hour too late for a card party or a promenade."
But this vain and self-willed woman read Virgil and Terence in the original, was devoted to Greek tragedies, dipped into philosophy, traversed the surface of many sciences, turned a madrigal with facility, and talked brilliantly. "The language is perfect only when you speak it or when one speaks of you," wrote Mme. de Lambert, in a tone of discreet flattery. "No one has ever spoken with more correctness, clearness, and rapidity, neither in a manner more noble or more natural," said Mlle. de Launay.
Through this feminine La Bruyere, as Sainte-Beuve has styled her, we are introduced to the life at Sceaux. It was the habit of the guests to assemble at eight, listen to music or plays, improvise verses for popular airs, relate racy anecdotes, or amuse themselves with proverbs. "Write verses for me," said the insatiable duchess when ill; "I feel that verses only can give me relief." The quality does not seem to have been essential, provided they were sufficiently flattering. Sainte-Aulaire wrote madrigals for her. Malezieu, the learned and versatile preceptor of the Duc du Maine, read Sophocles and Euripides. Mme. du Maine herself acted the roles of Athalie and Iphigenie with the famous Baron. They played at science, contemplated the heavens through a telescope and the earth through a microscope. In their eager search for novelty they improvised fetes that rivaled in magnificence the Arabian Nights; they posed as gods and goddesses, or, affecting simplicity, assumed rustic and pastoral characters, even to their small economies and romantic platitudes. Mythology, the chivalry of the Middle Ages, costumes, illuminations, scenic effects, the triumphs of the artists, the wit of the bel esprit—all that ingenuity could devise or money could buy was brought into service. It was the life that Watteau painted, with its quaint and grotesque fancies, its sylvan divinities, and its sighing lovers wandering in endless masquerade, or whispering tender nothings on banks of soft verdure, amid the rustle of leaves, the sparkle of fountains, the glitter of lights, and the perfume of innumerable flowers. It was a perpetual carnival, inspired by imagination, animated by genius, and combining everything that could charm the taste, distract the mind, and intoxicate the senses. The presiding genius of this fairy scene was the irrepressible duchess, who reigned as a goddess and demanded the homage due to one. Well might the weary courtiers cry out against les galeres du bel esprit.
But this fantastic princess who carried on a sentimental correspondence with the blind La Motte, and posed as the tender shepherdess of the adoring but octogenarian Sainte-Aulaire, had no really democratic notions. There was no question in her mind of the divine right of kings or of princesses. She welcomed Voltaire because he flattered her vanity and amused her guests, but she was far enough from the theories which were slowly fanning the sparks of the Revolution. Her rather imperious patronage of literary and scientific men set a fashion which all her world tried to follow. It added doubtless to the prestige of those who were insidiously preparing the destruction of the very foundations on which this luxurious and pleasure-loving society rested. But, after all, the bond between this restless, frivolous, heartless coterie and the genuine men of letters was very slight. There was no seriousness, no earnestness, no sincerity, no solid foundation.
The literary men, however, who figured most conspicuously in the intimate circle of the Duchesse du Maine were not of the first order. Malezieu was learned, a member of two Academies, faintly eulogized by Fontenelle, warmly so by Voltaire, and not at all by Mlle. de Launay; but twenty-five years devoted to humoring the caprices and flattering the tastes of a vain and exacting patroness were not likely to develop his highest possibilities. There is a point where the stimulating atmosphere of the salon begins to enervate. His clever assistant, the Abbe Genest, poet and Academician, was a sort of Voiture, witty, versatile, and available. He tried to put Descartes into verse, which suggests the quality of his poetry. Sainte-Aulaire, who, like his friend Fontenelle, lived a century, frequented this society more or less for forty years, but his poems are sufficiently light, if one may judge from a few samples, and his genius doubtless caught more reflections in the salon than in a larger world. He owed his admission to the Academy partly to a tender quatrain which he improvised in praise of his lively patroness. It is true we have occasional glimpses of Voltaire. Once he sought an asylum here for two months, after one of his numerous indiscretions, writing tales during the day, which he read to the duchess at night. Again he came with his "divine Emilie," the learned Marquise du Chatelet, who upset the household with her eccentric ways. "Our ghosts do not show themselves by day," writes Mlle. de Launay; "they appeared yesterday at ten o'clock in the evening. I do not think we shall see them earlier today; one is writing high facts, the other, comments upon Newton. They wish neither to play nor to promenade; they are very useless in a society where their learned writings are of no account." But Voltaire was a courtier, and, in spite of his frequent revolts against patronage, was not at all averse to the incense of the salons and the favors of the great. It was another round in the ladder that led him towards glory.
The cleverest women in France were found at Sceaux, but the dominant spirit was the princess herself. It was amusement she wanted, and even men of talent were valued far less for what they were intrinsically than for what they could contribute to her vanity or to her diversion. "She is a predestined soul," wrote Voltaire. "She will love comedy to the last moment, and when she is ill I counsel you to administer some beautiful poem in the place of extreme unction. One dies as one has lived."
Mme. du Maine represented the conservative side of French society in spite of the fact that her abounding mental vitality often broke through the stiff boundaries of old traditions. It was not because she did not still respect them, but she had the defiant attitude of a princess whose will is an unwritten law superior to all traditions. The tone of her salon was in the main dilettante, as is apt to be 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.
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 talent and her influence were unquestioned. She posed in turn as a saint, an intrigante, and a femme d'esprit, with marked success in every one of these roles. But it was not a comedy she was playing for the amusement of the hour. Beneath the velvet softness of her manner there was a definite aim, an inflexible purpose. With the tact and facility of a Frenchwoman, she had a strong, active intellect, boundless ambition, indomitable energy, and the subtlety of an Italian.
An incident of her early life, related by Mme. du Deffand, furnishes a key to her complex character, and reveals one secret of her influence. Born of a poor and proud family in Grenoble, in 1681, Claudine Alexandrine Guerin de Tencin was destined from childhood for the cloister. Her strong aversion to the life of a nun was unavailing, and she was sent to a convent at Montfleury. This prison does not seem to have been a very austere one, and the discipline was far from rigid. The young novice was so devout that the archbishop prophesied a new light for the church, and she easily persuaded him of the necessity of occupying the minds of the religieuses by suitable diversions. Though not yet sixteen, this pretty, attractive, vivacious girl was fertile in resources, and won her way so far into the good graces of her superiors as to be permitted to organize reunions, and to have little comedies played which called together the provincial society. She transformed the convent, but her secret disaffection was unchanged. She took the final vows under the compulsion of her inflexible father, then continued her role of devote to admirable purpose. By the zeal of her piety, the severity of her penance, and the ardor of her prayers, she gained the full sympathy of her ascetic young confessor, to whom she confided her feeling of unfitness for a religious life, and her earnest desire to be freed from the vows which sat so uneasily upon her sensitive conscience. He exhorted her to steadfastness, but finally she wrote him a letter in which she confessed her hopeless struggle against a consuming passion, and urged the necessity of immediate release. The conclusion was obvious. The Abbe Fleuret was horrified by the conviction that this pretty young nun was in love with himself, and used his influence to secure her transference to a secular order at Neuville, where as chanoinesse, she had many privileges and few restrictions. Here she became at once a favorite, as before, charming by her modest devotion, and amusing by her brilliant wit. Artfully, and by degrees, she convinced those in authority of the need of a representative in Paris. This office she was chosen to fill. Playing her pious part to the last, protesting with tears her pain at leaving a life she loved, and her unfitness for so great an honor she set out upon her easy mission. There are many tales of a scandalous life behind all this sanctity and humility, but her new position gave her consideration, influence, and a good revenue. "Young, beautiful, clever, with an adorable talent," this "nun unhooded" fascinated the regent, and was his favorite for a few days. But her ambition got the better of her prudence. She ventured upon political ground, and he saw her no more. With his minister, the infamous Dubois, she was more successful, and he served her purpose admirably well. Through her notorious relations with him she enriched her brother and secured him a cardinal's hat. The intrigues of this unscrupulous trio form an important episode in the history of the period. When Dubois died, within a few months of the regent, she wept, as she said, "that fools might believe she regretted him."
Her clear, incisive intellect and conversational charm would have assured the success of any woman at a time when these things counted for so much. "At thirty-six," wrote Mme. du Deffand, "she was beautiful and fresh as a woman of twenty; her eyes sparkled, her lips had a smile at the same time sweet and perfidious; she wished to be good, and gave herself great trouble to seem so, without succeeding." Indolent and languid with flashes of witty vivacity, insinuating and facile, unconscious of herself, interested in everyone with whom she talked, she combined the tact, the finesse, the subtle penetration of a woman with the grasp, the comprehensiveness, and the knowledge of political machinery which are traditionally accorded to a man. "If she wanted to poison you, she would use the mildest poison," said the Abbe Trublet.
"I cannot express the illusion which her air of nonchalance and easy grace left with me," says Marmontel. "Mme. de Tencin, the woman in the kingdom who moved the most political springs, both in the city and at court, was for me only an indolente. Ah, what finesse, what suppleness, what activity were concealed beneath this naive air, this appearance of calm and leisure!" But he confesses that she aided him greatly with her counsel, and that he owed to her much of his knowledge of the world.
"Unhappy those who depend upon the pen," she said to him; "nothing is more chimerical. The man who makes shoes is sure of his wages; the man who makes a book or a tragedy is never sure of anything." She advises him to make friends of women rather than of men. "By means of women, one attains all that one wishes from men, of whom some are too pleasure-loving, others too much preoccupied with their personal interests not to neglect yours; whereas women think of you, if only from idleness. Speak this evening to one of them of some affair that concerns you; tomorrow at her wheel, at her tapestry, you will find her dreaming of it, and searching in her head for some means of serving you."
Prominent among her friends were Bolingbroke and Fontenelle. "It is not a heart which you have there," she said to the latter, laying her hand on the spot usually occupied by that organ, "but a second brain." She had enlisted what stood in the place of it, however, and he interested himself so far as to procure her final release from her vows, through Benedict XIV, who, as Cardinal Lambertini, had frequented her salon, and who sent her his portrait as a souvenir, after his election to the papacy.
Through her intimacy with the Duc de Richelieu, Mme. de Tencin made herself felt even in the secret councils of Louis XV. Her practical mind comprehended more clearly than many of the statesmen the forces at work and the weakness that coped with them. "Unless God visibly interferes," she said, "it is physically impossible that the state should not fall in pieces." It was her influence that inspired Mme. de Chateauroux with the idea of sending her royal lover to revive the spirits of the army in Flanders. "It is not, between ourselves, that he is in a state to command a company of grenadiers," she wrote to her brother, "but his presence will avail much. The troops will do their duty better, and the generals will not dare to fail them so openly... A king, whatever he may be, is for the soldiers and people what the ark of the covenant was for the Hebrews; his presence alone promises success."
Her devotion to her friends was the single redeeming trait in her character, and she hesitated at nothing to advance the interests of her brother, over whose house she gracefully presided. But she failed in her ultimate ambition to elevate him to the ministry, and her intrigues were so much feared that Cardinal Fleury sent her away from Paris for a short time. Her disappointments, which it is not the purpose to trace here, left her one of the disaffected party, and on her return her drawing room became a rallying point for the radical thinkers of France.
Such was the woman who courted, flattered, petted, and patronized the literary and scientific men of Paris, called them her menagerie, put them into a sort of uniform, gave them two suppers a week, and sent them two ells of velvet for small clothes at New Year's. Of her salon, Marmontel gives us an interesting glimpse. He had been invited to read one of his tragedies, and it was his first introduction.
"I saw assembled there Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Mairan, Marivaux, the young Helvetius, Astruc, and others, all men of science or letters, and, in the midst of them, a woman of brilliant intellect and profound judgment, who, with her kind and simple exterior, had rather the appearance of the housekeeper than the mistress. This was Mme. de Tencin.... I soon perceived that the guests came there prepared to play their parts, and that their wish to shine did not leave the conversation always free to follow its easy and natural course. Every one tried to seize quickly and on the wing the moment to bring in his word, his story, his anecdote, his maxim, or to add his dash of light and sparkling wit; and, in order to do this opportunely, it was often rather far-fetched. In Marivaux, the impatience to display his finesse and sagacity was quite apparent. Montesquieu, with more calmness, waited for the ball to come to him, but he waited. Mairan watched his opportunity. Astruc did not deign to wait. Fontenelle alone let it come to him without seeking it, and he used so discreetly the attention given him, that his witty sayings and his clever stories never occupied more than a moment. Alert and reserved, Helvetius listened and gathered material for the future."
Mme. de Tencin loved literature and philosophy for their own sake, and received men of letters at their intrinsic value. She encouraged, too, the freedom of thought and expression at that time so rare and so dangerous. It was her influence that gave its first impulse to the success of Montesquieu's esprit DES LOIS, of which she personally bought and distributed many copies. If she talked well, she knew also how to listen, to attract by her sympathy, to aid by her generosity, to inspire by her intelligence, to charm by her versatility.
Another figure flits in and out of this salon, whose fine qualities of soul shine so brightly in this morally stifling atmosphere that one forgets her errors in a mastering impulse of love and pity. There is no more pathetic history in this arid and heartless age than that of Mlle. Aisse, the beautiful Circassian, with the lustrous, dark, Oriental eyes, who was brought from Constantinople in infancy by the French envoy, and left as a precious heritage to Mme. de Ferriol, the intriguing sister of Mme. de Tencin, and her worthy counterpart, if not in talent, in the faults that darkened their common womanhood. This delicate young girl, surrounded by worldly and profligate friends, and drawn in spite of herself into the errors of her time, redeemed her character by her romantic heroism, her unselfish devotion, and her final revolt against what seemed to be an inexorable fate. The struggle between her self-forgetful love for the knightly Chevalier d'Aydie and her sensitive conscience, her refusal to cloud his future by a portionless marriage, and her firmness in severing an unholy tie, knowing that the sacrifice would cost her life, as it did, form an episode as rare as it is tragical. But her exquisite personality, her rich gifts of mind and soul, her fine intelligence, her passionate love, almost consecrated by her pious but fatal renunciation, call up one of the loveliest visions of the century—a vision that lingers in the memory like a medieval poem.
Mme. de Tencin amused her later years b writing sentimental tales, which were found among her papers after her death. These were classed with the romances of Mme. de La Fayette. Speaking of the latter, La Harpe said, "Only one other woman succeeded, a century later, in painting with equal power the struggles of love and virtue." It is one of the curious inconsistencies of her character, that her creations contained an element which her life seems wholly to have lacked. Behind all her faults of conduct there was clearly an ideal of purity and goodness. Her stories are marked by a vividness and an ardor of passion rarely found in the insipid and colorless romances of the preceding age. Her pictures of love and intrigue and crime are touched with the religious enthusiasm of the cloister, the poetry of devotion, the heroism of self-sacrifice. Perhaps the dark and mysterious facts of her own history shaped themselves in her imagination. Did the tragedy of La Fresnaye, the despairing lover who blew out his brains at her feet, leaving the shadow of a crime hanging over her, with haunting memories of the Bastille, recall the innocence of her own early convent days? Did she remember some long-buried love, and the child left to perish upon the steps of St. Jean le Rond, but grown up to be her secret pride in the person of the great mathematician and philosopher d'Alembert? What was the subtle link between this worldly woman and the eternal passion, the tender self-sacrifice of Adelaide, the loyal heroine who breathes out her solitary and devoted soul on the ashes of La Trappe, unknown to her faithful and monastic lover, until the last sigh? The fate of Adelaide has become a legend. It has furnished a theme for the poet and the artist, an inspiration for the divine strains of Beethoven, another leaf in the annals of pure and heroic love. But the woman who conceived it toyed with the human heart as with a beautiful flower, to be tossed aside when its first fragrance was gone. She apparently knew neither the virtue, nor the honor, nor the purity, nor the truth of which she had so exquisite a perception in the realm of the imagination. Or were some of the episodes which darken the story of her life simply the myths of a gossiping age, born of the incidents of an idle tale, to live forever on the pages of history?
But it was not as a literary woman that Mme. de Tencin held her position and won her fame. Her gifts were eminently those of her age and race, and it may be of interest to compare her with a woman of larger talent of a purely intellectual order, who belonged more or less to the world of the salons, without aspiring to leadership, and who, though much younger, died in the same year. Mme. du Chatelet was essentially a woman of letters. She loved the exact sciences, expounded Leibnitz, translated Newton, gave valuable aid to Voltaire in introducing English thought into France, and was one of the first women among the nobility to accept the principles of philosophic deism. "I confess that she is tyrannical," said Voltaire; "one must talk about metaphysics, when the temptation is to talk of love. Ovid was formerly my master; it is now the turn of Locke." She has been clearly but by no means pleasantly painted for us in the familiar letters of Mme. de Graffigny, in the rather malicious sketches of the Marquise de Crequi, and in the still more strongly outlined portrait or Mme. du Deffand, as a veritable bas bleu, learned, pedantic, eccentric, and without grace or beauty. "Imagine a woman tall and hard, with florid complexion, face sharp, nose pointed—VOILA LA BELLE EMILIE," writes the latter; "a face with which she was so contented that she spared nothing to set it off; curls, topknots, precious stones, all are in profusion... She was born with much esprit; the desire of appearing to have more made her prefer the study of the abstract sciences to agreeable branches of knowledge; she thought by this singularity to attain a greater reputation and a decided superiority over all other women. Madame worked with so much care to seem what she was not, that no one knew exactly what she was; even her defects were not natural." "She talks like an angel"—"she sings divinely"—"our sex ought to erect altars to her," wrote Mme. de Graffigny during a visit at her chateau. A few weeks later her tone changed. They had quarreled. Of such stuff is history made. But she had already given a charming picture of the life at Cirey.
Mme. du Chatelet plunged into abstractions during the day. In the evening she was no more the savante, but gave herself up to the pleasures of society with the ardor of a nature that was extreme in everything. Voltaire read his poetry and his dramas, told stories that made them weep and then laugh at their tears, improvised verses, and amused them with marionettes, or the magic lantern. La belle Emilie criticized the poems, sang, and played prominent parts in the comedies and tragedies of the philosopher poet, which were first given in her little private theater. Among the guests were the eminent scientist, Maupertuis, her life-long friend and teacher; the Italian savant, Algarotti, President Henault, Helvetius, the poet, Saint-Lambert, and many others of equal distinction. "Of what do we not talk!" writes Mme. de Graffigny. "Poetry, science, art, everything, in a tone of graceful badinage. I should like to be able to send you these charming conversations, these enchanting conversations, but it is not in me."
Mme. du Chatelet owned for several years the celebrated Hotel Lambert, and a choice company of savants assembled there as in the days when Mme. de Lambert presided in those stately apartments. But this learned salon had only a limited vogue. The thinking was high, but the dinners were too plain. The real life of Mme. du Chatelet was an intimate one. "I confess that in love and friendship lies all my happiness," said this astronomer, metaphysician, and mathematician, who wrote against revelation and went to mass with her free-thinking lover. Her learning and eccentricities made her the target for many shafts of ridicule, but she counted for much with Voltaire, and her chief title to fame lies in his long and devoted friendship. He found the "sublime and respectable Emilie" the incarnation of all the virtues, though a trifle ill-tempered. The contrast between his kindly portrait and those of her feminine friends is striking and rather suggestive.
"She joined to the taste for glory a simplicity which does not always accompany it, but which is often the fruit of serious studies. No woman was ever so learned, and no one deserves less to be called a femme savante. Born with a singular eloquence, this eloquence manifested itself only when she found subjects worthy of it... The fitting word, precision, justness, and force were the characteristics of her style. She would rather write like Pascal and Nicole than like Mme. de Sevigne; but this severe strength and this vigorous temper of her mind did not render her inaccessible to the beauties of sentiment. The charms of poetry and eloquence penetrated her, and no one was ever more sensitive to harmony... She gave herself to the great world as to study. Everything that occupies society was in her province except scandal. She was never known to repeat an idle story. She had neither time nor disposition to give attention to such things, and when told that some one had done her an injustice, she replied that she did not wish to hear about it."
"She led him a life a little hard," said Mme. de Graffigny, after her quarrel; but he seems to have found it agreeable, and broke his heart—for a short time—when she died. "I have lost half of my being," he wrote—"a soul for which mine was made." To Marmontel he says: "Come and share my sorrow. I have lost my illustrious friend. I am in despair. I am inconsolable." One cannot believe that so clear-sighted a man, even though a poet, could live for twenty years under the spell of a pure illusion. What heart revelations, what pictures of contemporary life, were lost in the eight large volumes of his letters which were destroyed at her death!
While Mme. de Tencin studied men and affairs, Mme. du Chatelet studied books. One was mistress of the arts of diplomacy, gentle but intriguing, ambitious, always courting society and shunning solitude. The other was violent and imperious, hated finesse, and preferred burying herself among the rare treasures of her library at Cirey.
The influence of Mme. de Tencin was felt, not only in the social and intellectual, but in the political life of the century. The traditions of her salon lingered in those which followed, modified by the changes that time and personal taste always bring. Mme. du Chatelet was more learned, but she lacked the tact and charm which give wide personal ascendancy. Her influence was largely individual, and her books have been mostly forgotten. These women were alike defiant of morality, but taken all in all, the character of Mme. Chatelet has more redeeming points, though little respect can be accorded to either. With the wily intellect of a Talleyrand, Mme. de Tencin represents the social genius, the intelligence, the esprit, and the worst vices of the century on which she has left such conspicuous traces.
"She knew my tastes and always offered me those dishes I preferred," said Fontenelle when she died in 1740. "It is an irreparable loss." Perhaps his hundred years should excuse his not going to her funeral for fear of catching cold.