United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She had a veritable heart of flame, that consumed not only itself but its frail tenement as well. Julie-Jeanne-Eleonore de Lespinasse, who was born at Lyons in 1732, had a birthright of sorrow.
It must be horrid to get letter after letter, full of wails! I don't see how Mademoiselle Julie de Lespinasse could write the letters she did; and I can't much blame Monsieur de Guibert for dreading to read them, always in the same key, and on the same note: "I suffer, I suffer. I want to die." Well, I've kept you waiting long enough, or have you, perhaps, read ahead?
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.
It would be a mistake to suppose that Beyle displayed in his private life the qualities of the superman. Neither his virtues nor his vices were on the grand scale. In his own person he never seems to have committed an 'espagnolisme. Perhaps his worst sin was that of plagiarism: his earliest book, a life of Haydn, was almost entirely 'lifted' from the work of a learned German; and in his next he embodied several choice extracts culled from the Edinburgh Review. On this occasion he was particularly delighted, since the Edinburgh, in reviewing the book, innocently selected for special approbation the very passages which he had stolen. It is singular that so original a writer should have descended to pilfering. But Beyle was nothing if not inconsistent. With all his Classicism he detested Racine; with all his love of music he could see nothing in Beethoven; he adored Italy, and, so soon as he was given his Italian consulate, he was usually to be found in Paris. As his life advanced he grew more and more wayward, capricious, and eccentric. He indulged in queer mystifications, covering his papers with false names and anagrams for the police, he said, were on his track, and he must be careful. His love-affairs became less and less fortunate; but he was still sometimes successful, and when he was he registered the fact upon his braces. He dreamed and drifted a great deal. He went up to San Pietro in Montorio, and looking over Rome, wrote the initials of his past mistresses in the dust. He tried to make up his mind whether Napoleon after all was the only being he respected; no there was also Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. He went to the opera at Naples and noted that 'la musique parfaite, comme la pantomime parfaite, me fait songer
At Grenade, however, there were no horses to be obtained, at least not more than three, and so, leaving the greater portion of my company behind, I set out, escorted only by Gilles and Antoine. Night had fallen long before we reached Lespinasse, and with it came foul weather.
In the meantime Mlle. de Lespinasse, sad and inconsolable, had met M. Guibert, a man of great versatility and many accomplishments, whose genius seems to have borne no adequate fruit.
Calm, reposeful, charitable, without affectation or pretension, but not untouched by ennui, the malady of her time, she held her position to the end of a long life which closed in 1777. "Alas," said d'Alembert, who had been in the habit of spending his mornings with Mlle. de Lespinasse until her death, and his evenings with Mme. Geoffrin, "I have neither evenings nor mornings left."
This phase of womanhood is well represented by Mlle. Aïssé and Mlle. de Lespinasse, both of whom felt an irresistible need of loving; they proclaimed their love and not only showed themselves to be capable of loving and of intense suffering, but proved themselves worthy of love which, in its highest form, they felt to be an unknown quantity at that time.
Mme. du Deffand was struck with her talent and a certain indefinable fascination of manner which afterwards became so potent. "You have gaiety," she wrote to her, "you are capable of sentiment; with these qualities you will be charming so long as you are natural and without pretension." After a negotiation of some months, Mlle. de Lespinasse went to Paris to live with her new friend.
He supped with the Duchess of Luxembourg, and heard a reading of La Harpe's Barmecides. It was high treason in this circle to frequent the rival salon of Mademoiselle Lespinasse, but either the law was relaxed in the case of foreigners, or else Burke kept his own counsel.
Word Of The Day