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As she believed that women were apt to distract the conversation, only one was usually invited to dine with them. Mlle. de Lespinasse, the intellectual peer and friend of these men, sat opposite her, and aided in conducting the conversation into agreeable channels. The talent of Mme.
All these judgments false and in the worst taste." A hint of the rivalry between the former friends is given in a letter from Horace Walpole. "There is at Paris," he writes, "a Mlle. de Lespinasse, a pretended bel esprit, who was formerly a humble companion of Mme. du Deffand, and betrayed her and used her very ill. I beg of you not to let any one carry you thither.
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.
Mlle. de Lespinasse, one of the leaders in the social world, with a prominent salon, was the illegitimate daughter of a Comtesse d'Albon, and her presiding genius was the illegitimate son of Mme. de Tencin; here we find the wealthiest and most elegant of the aristocracy coming from their palaces to meet, in friendly social and intellectual intercourse, men who lived on a mere pittance, dressed on almost nothing, lodged in the most wretched of dens, boarding wherever a salon or palace was opened to them.
"Diderot," said Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, "is an extraordinary man; he is out of his place in society; he was meant for the chief of a sect, a Greek philosopher, instructing youth. He pleases me greatly, but his manner does not touch my soul." And we understand this. People disputed what virtue is, but the dispute failed in that undefined spirit which makes men love and adore virtue.
Is it any wonder that in a country where conversation is considered an art capable of cultivation and having certain fixt principles, so many French women of humble birth, like Sophie Arnould and Julie Lespinasse, have earned their way to fame by their conversational powers? Is it any wonder that in France polite discussion is made the most exhilarating and delightful exercise in the world?
Inseparably connected with the name of Mme. du Deffand is that of her companion and rival, Mlle. de Lespinasse, the gifted, charming, tender and loving woman who presided over one of the most noted of the philosophical salons; who was the chosen friend and confidante of the Encyclopedists; and who died in her prime of a broken heart, leaving the world a legacy of letters that rival those of Heloise or the poems of Sappho, as "immortal pictures of passion."
Besides the Abbe de Bouffiers, by whom I was not beloved, and Madam de Bouffiers, in whose opinion I was guilty of that which neither women nor authors ever pardon, the other friends of Madam de Luxembourg never seemed much disposed to become mine, particularly the President Henault, who, enrolled amongst authors, was not exempt from their weaknesses; also Madam du Deffand, and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, both intimate with Voltaire and the friends of D'Alembert, with whom the latter at length lived, however upon an honorable footing, for it cannot be understood I mean otherwise.
Alas! those wonders are still wonders to them, and they still, I fancy, more than half believe in them. The letters are lying before me now, astonishing emanations, totally ridiculous to a prosaic American, but calculated to convince and stimulate the imagination of a petit bourgeois. The General in glowing terms paints his efforts to run down the Lespinasse conspirators.
The salon of Mlle. de Lespinasse, her rival, was of a different type, being exclusively intellectual, but permitting absolute liberty of expression of opinions. Born in 1732, at the house of a surgeon of Lyons, she was the illegitimate daughter of the Comtesse d'Albon and was baptized as the child of a man supposed to be named Claude Lespinasse.
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