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Updated: May 14, 2025
"It is believed," says President Henault, "that she was married to the Marquis de Sainte-Aulaire. He was a man of esprit, who only bethought himself, after more than sixty years, of his talent for poetry; and Mme. de Lambert, whose house was filled with Academicians, gained him entrance into the Academy, not without strong opposition on the part of Boileau and some others."
Sainte-Aulaire, who, like his friend Fontenelle, lived a century, frequented this society more or less for forty years, but his poems are sufficiently light, if one may judge from a few samples, and his genius doubtless caught more reflections in the salon than in a larger world.
I am vexed that M. de Sainte-Aulaire's elaborate Memoirs should have been utilised for such a book; generally, because I know M. de Sainte-Aulaire contemplated their publication, and because they deserved to appear in a separate form; and, personally and specially, because, of course, his accounts of his intercourse with my father, and the elaborate study of his character which he had written, are thus lost....
But this fantastic princess who carried on a sentimental correspondence with the blind La Motte, and posed as the tender shepherdess of the adoring but octogenarian Sainte-Aulaire, had no really democratic notions. There was no question in her mind of the divine right of kings or of princesses.
Sainte-Aulaire, tired of the perpetual excitement at Sceaux, characterized this salon by a witty quatrain: Je suis las de l'esprit, il me met en courroux, Il me renverse la cervelle; Lambert, je viens chercher un asile chez vous, Entre La Motte et Fontenelle.
Whether the report of this alliance was true or not, the families were closely united, as the daughter of Mme. de Lambert was married to a son of Sainte-Aulaire; it is certain that the enduring affection of this ancient friend lighted the closing years of her life. Though tinged with the new philosophy, Mme. de Lambert regarded religion as a part of a respectable, well-ordered life.
The names of Sainte-Aulaire, de Sacy, Mairan, President Henault, and others equally scholarly and witty, suffice to indicate the quality of the conversation, which treated lightly and gracefully of the most serious things.
Sainte-Aulaire wrote madrigals for her. Malezieu, the learned and versatile preceptor of the Duc du Maine, read Sophocles and Euripides. Mme. du Maine herself acted the roles of Athalie and Iphigenie with the famous Baron. They played at science, contemplated the heavens through a telescope and the earth through a microscope.
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