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I left every Saturday for Paris, where I spent the next day and most of Monday with my mother. There were at Versailles two old friends of my mother, from Rennes; the Comtesses de Châteauville, a pair of very respectable and well educated elderly ladies, who entertained only a select society. I went two or three times a week to spend an evening with them.
Her father wrote to compliment them on their prowess, and addressed his letter a Mesdames les Comtesses, Marechales de Camp dans l'armee de ma fille contre le Mazarin. Officers and soldiers took part in the pleasantry; and, as Madame de Frontenac passed on horseback before the troops, they saluted her with the honors paid to a brigadier.
The king would not suffer either the duchesse de Grammont or the comtesses d'Egmont and de Brienne to accompany us upon this excursion. It has likewise been asserted, that neither the duchesse de Grammont nor the princesse de Beauvau was present during the king's first visit to Chantilly: that is not correct; it was at the second that they were forbidden by Louis to join the party.
Here she gathered about her her two lovers, le Président Hénault and Pont de Veyle, besides D'Alembert, Turgot, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Necker, Walpole, the Abbés Barthélemy and Pernetty, the Chevalier de Lisle, de Formant, le Docteur Gatti, Hume, Gibbon, Baron de Gleichen, and many other celebrities, including the Princesses de Beauvau, de Poix, de Talmont, the Duchesses de Choiseul, d'Aiguillon, de Gramont, the Maréchale de Luxembourg, the Marquises de Boufflers and du Châtelet, the Comtesses de Rochefort, de Broglie, de Forcalquier, Mme.
But the bêtes all flocked to the salon bourgeois, and consequently a more brilliant gathering never assembled in a salon; here sat, enjoying the liberal hospitalities, Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Marmontel, Helvétius, Diderot, D'Alembert, Thomas, D'Holbach, Hume, Morellet, Mlle. de Lespinasse, the Marquis de Duras, Comtesses d'Egmont and de Brionne.
At those functions, such celebrities as the Comtesses d'Egmont and de Brionne, the Marquise de Duras, and the Prince de Rohan were frequent guests. Mme. Geoffrin was shrewd and tactful enough to avoid politics and not to permit discussions of a political nature at her salon—precautions which she observed to keep the government from interfering with her fortune and mode of living.
The king would not suffer either the duchesse de Grammont or the comtesses d'Egmont and de Brienne to accompany us upon this excursion. It has likewise been asserted, that neither the duchesse de Grammont nor the princesse de Beauvau was present during the king's first visit to Chantilly: that is not correct; it was at the second that they were forbidden by Louis to join the party.
She was everywhere recognized as head of affairs; the officers of the army drank her health on their knees, when she dined with them, while the trumpets sounded and the cannons roared; Condé, when absent, left instructions to his officers, "Obey the commands of Mademoiselle, as my own"; and her father addressed a despatch from Paris to her ladies of honor, as Field-Marshals in her army: "À Mesdames les Comtesses Maréchales de Camp dans l'Armée de ma Fille contre le Mazarin."
France is the paradise for old women, particularly if they are spirituelle; but England is the purgatory. The Comtesses de Bellegarde called on me to-day, and two more warm-hearted or enthusiastic persons I never saw. Though no longer young, they possess all the gaiety of youth, without any of its thoughtlessness, and have an earnestness in their kindness that is very pleasant.
Though the Countess aspired to reign in Paris and tried to keep pace with Mesdames the Duchesses de Maufrigneuse and du Chaulieu, the Marquises d'Espard and d'Aiglemont, the Comtesses Feraud, de Montcornet, and de Restaud, Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches, she did not yield to the addresses of the young Vicomte de Portenduere, who made her his idol.
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