beg you to spare me three things, ques- | French civilization is from Walpole's tions, arguments, and sermons."

pen.

In the span of her eighty years Madame du Deffand had witnessed great Madame du Deffand [he writes to Gray changes. She had seen the gloom of in 1766] is now very old, and stone-blind, the last days of Louis the Fourteenth, but retains all the vivacity, wit, memory, the wild excesses of the Regency, and judgment, passions, and agreeableness of her youth. She goes to operas, plays, supshe lived to hear with unheeding ears the first mutterings of the Revolution. pers, and Versailles; gives dinners twice a week, has everything new read to her, Without decided beauty, she had yet makes new songs and epigrams very admicontrived to subjugate princes and rably, and remembers every one that has philosophers by her wit and her bril- been made these fourscore years; correliant eyes. But her greatest social tri-sponds with Voltaire, dictates letters to umphs were won when she was old and him, contradicts him, is no bigot to him, blind. It was in the last twenty-seven or to any one else, and laughs both at the years of her life, in her rooms in the clergy and philosophers. In a dispute, into Convent St. Joseph, Rue St. Domi- which she easily falls, she is very warm, nique, that she gathered round her and yet scarce ever in the wrong; her judg"tub of Diogenes," as she loved to call ment on every subject is as just as possible; on every point of conduct as wrong her high-backed chair, foreign princes, as possible, for she is all love and hatred, ambassadors, ministers, encyclopedists, passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, all that were worth knowing in Paris in still anxious to be loved—I don't mean by the last quarter of a century before the lovers and a vehement enemy but openly. Affectionate as Madame de Sévigné she has none of her prejudices, but a more

Revolution.

that

sets to right their disciples, and finds conversation for everybody. As she can have no amusement but conversation, the least solitude or ennui is insupportable to her;

with the most delicate frame in the world her spirits hurry her through a life of fatigue that would kill me if I were to stay here. If we return by one in the morning from suppers in the country, she proposes driving to the Boulevard, or the Foire, because it is too early to go to bed.

At the age of seventy she conceived a passionate fondness for Horace Wal-universal taste; she humbles the learned, pole, and in the intervals of his visits corresponded with him from 1766 till almost the day of her death in 1780. During that time she kept him so thoroughly informed of French affairs, when, at the time of the disgrace of the Duc de Choiseul, with whom she was intimately connected, Walpole's rooms in Arlington Street were mysteriously ransacked of papers, it was generally supposed that the thieves were agents of the French government. Madame In the memoirs of her own countrydu Deffand's letters, however, survived men Madame du Deffand is a familiar that disaster, and have preserved, as figure, but their treatment of her is not all lovers of such literature know, an so uniformly sympathetic. It is perextraordinary picture of the last years haps a little like that she was accused of the Ancien Régime. Side by side of applying to her own friends. "Mawith this, they have the minor interest dame du Deffand," says M. Thomas, of an epistolary drama, in which Wal-"reminds me of an ingenuous speech pole plays the ungrateful part of Ma- of a doctor I once knew. My friend dame de Grignan, and Madame du fell ill; I doctored him; he died; I Deffand that of Madame de Sévigné dissected him."" For dissection was with a difference. The plight of the vogue; it was natural in a people the undemonstrative Englishman, thus living so incessantly in society. The posed as a reluctant idol, is sometimes memoirs and correspondence of those not a little ridiculous, and that of his days are full of portraits (often exdisappointed worshipper not a little tremely insipid), and they were the painful; yet the most sympathetic por- constant amusement of fashionable trait we have of this curious product of wits. The tendency took its most mor

1

bid form in the "Confessions" of Jean | discussing. "They talk philosophy at Jacques Rousseau; but this love of balls," says Ségur again, "and moral analysis, of going back to first princi- science in boudoirs." These people ples and first experiences of the senses, of quality, "who know everything was the key-note of much of the litera- without the trouble of learning," estabture, as well as the science of France lished clubs for the study of natural in the eighteenth century. It would science; they attended the most seem that the condition of society was learned discussions at the academies ; so mortal, that it must brood upon its one marquise goes to see dissections own symptoms and analyze every sen- performed; another dissects with her sation, if so it might find out what ailed own hands. it. Whenever we can penetrate behind And philosophy was quite ready to the gaiety and talk, the ceaseless stir meet them half-way. The most seriof pleasure, it is the same story; a ous scientific works were dedicated to restless retrospection, a craving to women, and some of the profoundest solve somehow the miserable mystery speculations in the imaginary dialogues of humanity, to find some foothold in of Voltaire and Diderot were put into the bottomless pit of the unknown, lies the mouth of the marquis or the marébehind this brilliant social life of which chale. It was a part of the philosophic we hear so much. It drove men, who faith that the methods by which scienhad thrown off every form of ancient tific truth might be attained were so belief and custom as an intolerable obvious, so clear to the most uninburden, to the mystical doctrines of structed understanding, that, given the Swedenborg or St. Martin, to dreams facts, no more trouble was needed than of the possibility of communication be- the power to follow out the successive tween men and spirits, of the uni- links of an argument. Even women, versal efficacy of the animal magnetism it was said, might thus be made to of Mesmer, or of the infallibility understand its mysteries. The deepest of the utterances of somnambulism. | subjects were discussed not only in the "France," says M. de Ségur, who lived salons frequented by the encyclopethrough so many stages of the revolu- dists, but in those presided over by tionary fever, "was in those last years visibly tormented with that restlessness, that uneasiness, that extravagance of feeling, which precedes great moral and political crises."

Vol

women. It was natural that under such an influence the expression of the thought, the art of style, should become of supreme importance. "Pour faire passer 'L'Esprit des Lois' MonThe salons, which had been the cen- tesquieu faisait de l'esprit sur les lois," tres of intellectual life since the days says Madame du Deffand. As a result, of Louis the Fourteenth, took the fever the man of science in France could not seriously. They were seized with a be the mere student, the line of depassion for philosophy, for philan- marcation between the literary and the thropy, for all the whims which were scientific man ceased to exist. taking shape in the storm-laden air of taire makes scientific experiments with those days before the flood. They em- the prism of Newton and the thermombraced the deism of Voltaire, the ma- eter of Réaumur; he sends pamphlets terialism of Diderot and D'Holbach, to the Academy of Science on the the pure atheism of Helvetius; or they measure of motive force and the nadreamed with Rousseau and St. Pierre ture and propagation of heat. The of a renovated humanity yielding to mathematician D'Alembert writes upon every impulse of nature, and by that elocution, the naturalist Buffon upon meaus returning to its pristine inno- style, the psychologist Condillac on cence. It is not only Walpole who the art of writing; and men of scigrumbles that the French were no ence, morals, politics, each and all had longer the same people, that they had the habit of writing, speaking, and lost their vivacity, and were forever thinking before a fashionable audience.

Philosophy popularized itself for soci- | social revolt, because, as the Princess ety, and in return society had a passion, Charlotte of Lorraine was to open the not only for philosophy, but for philos- ball, the bride was suspected of wishophers. When Hume was in Paris, ing to establish the precedence of the as secretary to the embassy of Lord house of Lorraine. Thus the first Hertford, "no lady's toilet was com- mortification that the unhappy Marie plete without him," and the "peasant Antoinette was to suffer on French soil of the Danube " became the rage, in was at the hands of the nobility; for spite of his homely manners and bad the resistance on this point was so French. Every lady of quality must obstinate that it had finally to be conhave her "tame author (auteur du ceded that, though the princess should logis)." Madame Necker has Gibbon, open the ball, it should be solely on Marmontel, and Thomas in her train; account of her relationship with the the Duchesse de Choiseul has l'Abbé dauphiness, and should not be considBarthélemi; D'Alembert was for a ered as a precedent for the future. long time the constant companion of On the whole, however, it was this Madame du Deffand; Madame du very spirit of equality which made Châtelet, "the divine Emily," trium-Paris so attractive to foreigners. At phantly enthralls Voltaire.

66

no other capital does there seem to With the applause of such allies, have been so much ease, such an society was gaily content to turn the absence of the constraint which comes weapons of philosophy against the from social assumption, as at Paris fabric and foundation of its own exist- during the last decade before the Revence. Above all, the "great souls " of olution. Walpole notices a marked the young generation gloried in the difference in the reception given to friendship of the plebeian philosophers. strangers in his later visits to Paris. They preferred a word of praise from At this time there was a craze for Diderot or D'Alembert to the most English fashions and the English marked favor of a prince." It was for Constitution; the philosophers had them that the earlier watch word, introduced the English philosophy; "Liberty, Equality, Humanity," was and society was substituting with encoined. The spirit of equality had thusiasm the comparative simplicity struck deep roots among the nobility of the English dress for the imposing long before it reached the Third Es- costumes of the French court, and the tate," says Ségur. Literary titles in wild nature of an English garden for some instances took precedence of formal alleys and trimmed trees. The those of the nobility, and literary men, communication between London and even of the second and third grade, Paris became incessant, for were treated with infinitely more dis-"French disease," as the newspapers tinction than a provincial noble could called it, had quite as strong a hold hope to win in the salons of Paris. upon English society, and the prosWith this exception, the wide division perity of the country round Boulogne between the middle class and the no- was attributed to the incessant passage bles remained unbridged; but among of English milords. themselves the sole pre-eminence recognized by the nobility was the ancient right of the peers to seats in the Parliament and to the honors of the Louvre, while duchesses claimed the tabouret, the privilege of a seat in the presence of royalty. In all other respects, a perfect ceremonial equality was observed. The state-ball on the occasion of the marriage of the dauphin was the sigual for a kind of

the

This was the whimsical aspect of a deeply rooted influence. "If any thing," says Ségur, "could sharpen our burning impatience for the reign of liberty and tolerance, it was the comparison of our present situation with that of the English. Montesquieu had opened our eyes to the advantages of the British institutions; the brilliant but frivolous life of our nobility, both at court and in Paris, could not satisfy

from contempt, not contemplation, make the churches and convents appear like abandoned theatres, destined to destruction. The monks trot about as if they had not long to stay there, and what used to be holv gloom is now but dirt and darkness."

our self-respect, when we thought of The infidelity which was the fashion the dignity and independence, the use- in society was of much the same charful and important existence of a peer acter. "Don't fancy," says Walpole, of England, of a member of the House" that persons of quality-the men, of Commons, and of the calm and at least. -are atheists. Happily for proud liberty of all the citizens of Great them, poor souls, they are not capable Britain." of pushing argument so far. But they The part taken by the philosophical assent to a great many enormities party in foreign politics is a curious because it is the fashion, and they page in the history of their opinions. don't know how to refute them." For But there were some aspects of this the materialists had decreed that in drawing-room philosophy which more the processes of nature there was no nearly affected the life of Madame du exterior directing force, but only an Deffand. While still a child at her interior developing force; and in obeconvent, beautiful, piquant, and witty, dience to their impulse society had she found it impossible, even at the agreed to abolish Providence long age of ten, to understand religion. before the goddess of Reason was Those were the last years of Louis the enthroned on the altar of Notre Dame. Fourteenth, when such doubts were "The vision is dispelled," writes Walalready in the air, when the reaction pole, with a curious prophetic instinct. had set in from the enforced austeri-"The want of fervor in the religious, ties which a remorseful king was prac- the solitude that one knows proceeds tising by proxy on an unwilling court. The seventeenth century had been a century of devotion; the eighteenth began with infidelity, and Mademoiselle de Vichy-Chamrond in the recesses of her convent faithfully reflected its spirit. The great Massillon was sent to reason with her; and, says Madame du For her part, Madame du Deffand, Deffand, in a letter to Voltaire in 1765 with her usual sense of the fitness of "My spirit shrank before his. Yet I things, never paraded her incredulity did not yield to his reasons, but to the in a society which considered it a mark imposing personality of the reasoner." of advanced thought to be atheist. It She was never in fact convinced, but is her letters which are full from end to the only apparent alternative was sub-end of what Grimm calls "that dumb mission to a Church which still persecuted heretics and the scepticism of some of whose prelates was notorious. The demand upon her stock of faith was too great; her reason revolted against its accepted superstitions; she lapsed into that green-sickness of the soul, an incapacity to form an opinion. "I suffer my mind to float in a very limbo of indecision," she says. "Doubt appears to me so natural that I dare not dispute an assertion for fear I should in my turu be tempted to assert." Madame de Genlis, who knew her only in her old age, thought her unworthy even to be called a sceptic, since she had never taken the trouble to study any religious question profoundly.

disquiet which is agitating men's minds, a phenomenon characteristic of our times." She professes to adore philosophy, yet is forever falling foul of the philosophers. One boasts in her presence of having destroyed a whole forest of prejudices; "And so," she says, "you bring us all these silly tales instead." She calls them the "livery servants of Voltaire.” "Never were men," she writes to him, "less philosophical, less tolerant; they crush all those who do not cringe to them; they preach equality because they love to dominate; they believe themselves to be the very first men in the world, because they think what every one else thinks, who think at all." At another time she sends Voltaire a letter

It

from the President Hénault, with a moment these pleasures were interwords that show how she is haunted rupted by an unexpected scene. with the horrors of a godless universe. was at a masked ball; there came in "Ah! at least heathenism had one six masks, two carrying torches, the resource. Pandora would have left us others a litter on which lay a man with Hope at the bottom of her box; she a mask and domino; they put down was hidden under all the evils as if the litter in the middle of the room and kept back to make up for them. But went out. Immediately the gay crowd we, a thousand times more barbarous, surrounded the masked figure upon the we destroy all, and have saved only litter and begged him to dance, but he the miseries of life. We have de- made no reply. They snatched off his stroyed spirituality; the universe is mask, and behold it was a corpse! nothing now but senseless matter "The horrible jest," adds the chronformed by chance. Nothing speaks to icler, "stopped only for a moment the us, nothing hears us; we are sur-mad rush for pleasure." But that was rounded by the ruins of a world." in the days of the Regency, and the “And you, M. de Voltaire," she adds, world grew more sober. Yet still the "declared lover of truth, tell me hon-grim dance of Death threads its way estly, have you found her? You have amidst those perfumed and powdered been frightening and destroying error, figures. The Marquis d'Argenson tells but what have you put in its place? Is the story, in his memoirs, of Madame there anything real? Is not every-du Prie, who had been an associate, if thing an illusion ?" With one breath not a friend of Madame du Deffaud. she is mocking at the deism of Voltaire, with the next she is wishing with pathetic inconsequence that she were religious, "the happiest condition," she says, "which seems to me possible in the world." And she tells Walpole, who has more sympathy with that point of view than most of her correspondents, that she means to have recourse to the practices of religion, in the hope of finding in them "some consolation, or at least a remedy for ennui."

For two years she governed France in governing the Duc de Bourbon, Louis the Fifteenth's first minister after the death of the regent. At the end of that time they were both disgraced, and she exiled to Courbe Epine in Normandy. "Then she took the resolution to poison herself in such a month, on such a day, at such an hour. She announced her death, as a prophecy, but none believed her, for she was always full of gaiety, and one could not suspect it to be assumed, for she The terror of the future forever seemed incapable of sustaining a part haunts the brilliant little Freuch-so long. But with a foolish vanity, she woman. "As for me," she says over wished to make herself renowned by and over again, "I have but one feel- her death, by following what we called ing, one grief, one misfortune, and that is the misery of having been born. There is no part that one might play on the theatre of the world which I should | prefer to extinction; and yet, inconsistent as it may seem, if I could receive the most conclusive evidence that I must suffer it, I should not the less dread death." It is the skeleton, the corpse at her feet, which comes in like that ghastly intruder of which some one tells us in the "Correspondence of Madame Mère du Régent." Every- tortures by a virulent poison. where they were dancing, at the makes one think," says D'Argenson, theatre, in the town, at court. But for" of those compacts with the devil,

the 'English fashion' of suicide. Meantime she held high festival at Courbe Epine. People from court [and among them Madame du Deffand] came there, and they danced and dined and played comedies. She herself appeared upon the stage two days before her voluntary death, and recited three hundred lines with as much feeling and as accurate a memory as if she were perfectly happy." Then at the very hour she had fixed she dies in

"It