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Updated: June 18, 2025
Until her dotage this woman, who, from a natural selfishness and lack of sympathy, was incapable of loving with the characteristic ardor of the women of her time, by knowing how to inspire love in others, controlled and held near her the famous men and women of her age. When she began to realize the calamity of her failing sight, which was probably due to her general state of restlessness and the resultant physical decay, she received, as companion, a relative, Mlle. de Lespinasse, who undertook the most difficult, disagreeable, and ungrateful task of waiting on the marquise. As Mme. du Deffand arose in time to receive at six, mademoiselle soon announced to the friends that she herself would be visible at an earlier hour. Thus, it happened that Marmontel, Turgot, Condorcet, and d'Alembert regularly assembled in mademoiselle's room—a proceeding which soon led to a rupture between the two women and a breach between Mme. du Deffand and d'Alembert. The marquise was therefore left alone, blind, but too proud to tolerate pity, yet by her conversation retaining her power of fascination. It was about this time that Horace Walpole became connected with her life. Upon the death of Mme. Geoffrin, she, hearing of the imposing ceremonies and funeral orations, exclaimed: Voil
This Princesse de Talmond, as we shall see, was the unworthy Flora Macdonald of Charles in his later wanderings, his protectress, and, unlike Flora, his mistress. She must have been nearly forty in 1749, and some ten years older than her lover. We shall later, when Charles is concealed by the Princesse de Talmond, present the reader with her 'portrait' by the mordant pen of Madame du Deffand.
It happened once that this learned pair dropped unexpectedly into a fashionable circle in the château of a French nobleman. A Madame de Staël, the persifleur in office of Madame Du Deffand, has copiously narrated the whole affair. They arrived at midnight like two famished spectres, and there was some trouble to put them to supper and bed.
"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.
She did not adopt or reject the whole plan, but fully retained the purport of the maxim. In short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and punishments. Her great enemy, Madame du Deffand, was for a short time mistress of the Regent, is now very old and stoneblind, but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, passions, and agreeableness.
"I could offer the king only uprightness and good-heartedness," he said himself, "two qualities insufficient to make a minister, even a mediocre one." "M. de Malesherbes has doubts about everything," wrote Madame du Deffand; "M. Turgot has doubts about nothing."
Madame du Deffand made this a reproach against M. Necker as well as his wife "He wants one quality, that which is most conducive to agreeability, a certain readiness which, as it were, provides wits for those with whom one talks; he doesn't help to bring out what one thinks, and one is more stupid with him than one is all alone or with other folks."
But a husband was at last found for her, and merely to escape the monotony of her secluded existence, she was glad, at twenty-one, to become the wife of the Marquis du Deffand a good but uninteresting man, much older than herself. Brilliant, fascinating, restless, eager to see and to learn, she felt herself in her element in the gay world of Paris.
Mme. du Deffand exemplified this stage of mental unbalance; and when she wrote of her former friend and companion: "Mlle. de Lespinasse died to-day at two o'clock; formerly, that would have been an event for me; to-day, it is nothing at all," she gave an idea of the indifference which was characteristic of the society of the time—an indifference which developed into an incurable malady and an all-consuming egoism, stifling the heart-beat of that world which was weary of everything and yet was unwilling to close its eyes.
La Marechale de Luxembourg The Temple Comtesse de Boufflers Mme. du Deffand Her Convent Salon Rupture with Mlle. de Lespinasse Her Friendship with Horace Walpole Her brilliancy and Her Ennui
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