The figures are supposed to be portraits. Among others are Mme. de Luxembourg, the Comtesse de Boufflers, and the lovely but ill- fated young stepdaughter, Amelie, Comtesse de Lauzun, to whom she is so devoted; the beautiful Comtesse d'Egmont, Mme. de Beauvan, President Henault, the witty Pont de Veyle, Mairan, the versatile scientist, and the Prince de Conti. In the midst of this group the little Mozart, whose genius was then delighting Europe, sits at the harpsichord. The chronicles of the time give us pleasant descriptions of the literary diversions of this society, which met by turns at the Temple and Ile-Adam. But the Prince as well as the clever Comtesse had a strong leaning towards philosophy, and the amusements were interspersed with much conversation of a serious character that has a peculiar interest today when read by the light of after events.
Among the numerous salons of the noblesse there was one which calls for more than a passing word, both on account of its world- wide fame and the exceptional brilliancy of its hostess. Though far less democratic and cosmopolitan than that of Mme. Geoffrin, with which it was contemporary, its character was equally distinct and original. Linked by birth with the oldest of the nobility, allied by intellect with the most distinguished in the world of letters, Mme. du Deffand appropriated the best in thought, while retaining the spirit of an elegant and refined social life. She was exclusive by nature and instinct, as well as by tradition, and could not dispense with the arts and amenities which are the fruit of generations of ease; but the energy and force of her intellect could as little tolerate shallowness and pretension, however disguised beneath the graceful tyranny of forms. Her salon offers a sort of compromise between the freedom of the philosophical coteries and the frivolities of the purely fashionable ones. It included the most noted of the men of letters--those who belonged to the old aristocracy and a few to whom nature had given a prescriptive title of nobility--as well as the flower of the great world.
Her sarcastic wit, her clear intelligence, and her rare conversational gifts added a tone of individuality that placed her salon at the head of the social centers of the time in brilliancy and in esprit. In this group of wits, LITTERATEURS, philosophers, statesmen, churchmen, diplomats, and men of rank, Mme. du Deffand herself is always the most striking figure. The art of self-suppression she clearly did not possess. But the art of so blending a choice society that her own vivid personality was a pervading note of harmony she had to an eminent degree.
She could easily have made a mark upon her time through her intellectual gifts without the factitious aid of the men with whom her name is associated. But society was her passion society animated by intellect, sparkling with wit, and expressing in all its forms the art instincts of her race. She never aspired to authorship, but she has left a voluminous correspondence in which one reads the varying phases of a singularly capricious character. In her old age she found refuge from a devouring ennui in writing her own memoirs. Merciless to herself as to others, she veils nothing, revealing her frailties with a freedom that reminds one of Rousseau.
It is not the portrait of an estimable woman that we can paint from these records; but in her intellectual force, her social gifts, and her moral weakness she is one of the best exponents of an age that trampled upon the finest flowers of the soul in the blind pursuit of pleasure and the cynical worship of a hard and unpitying realism. Living from 1697 to 1780, she saw the train laid for the Revolution, and died in time to escape its horrors.
She traversed the whole experience of the women of her world with the independence and abandon of a nature that was moderate in nothing. It is true she felt the emptiness of this arid existence, and had an intellectual perception of its errors, but she saw nothing better. "All conditions appear to me equally unhappy, from the angel to the oyster," is the burden of her hopeless refrain.
She reveals herself to us as two distinct characters. The one best known is hard, bitter, coldly analytic, and mocks at everything bordering upon sentiment or feeling. The other, which underlies this, and of which we have rare glimpses, is frank, tender, loving even to weakness, and forever at war with the barrenness of a period whose worst faults she seems to have embodied, and whose keenest penalties she certainly suffered.
Voltaire, the lifelong friend whom she loved, but critically measured, was three years old when she was born; Mme. de Sevigne had been dead nearly a year. Of a noble family in Burgundy, Marie de Vichy-Chamroud was brought to Paris at six years of age and placed in the convent of St. Madeleine de Traisnel, where she was educated after the superficial fashion which she so much regrets in later years. She speaks of herself as a romantic, imaginative child, but she began very early to shock the pious sisters by her dawning skepticism. One of the nuns had a wax figure of the infant Jesus, which she discovered to have been a doll formerly dressed to represent the Spanish fashions to Anne of Austria. This was the first blow to her illusions, and had a very perceptible influence upon her life. She pronounced it a deception. Eight days of solitude with a diet of bread and water failed to restore her reverence. "It does not depend upon me to believe or disbelieve," she said. The eloquent and insinuating Massillon was called in to talk with her. "She is charming," was his remark, as he left her after two hours of conversation; adding thoughtfully, "Give her a five-cent catechism."
