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They reserved their remarkable talents for social reunions, perhaps in modest salons, where among distinguished men and women they could pour out the treasures of the soul and mind; where they could inspire and draw out the sentiments of those who were gifted and distinguished. Madame du Deffand lived quietly in the convent of St.
Even Mme. du Deffand, whom Sainte Beuve ranks next to Voltaire as the purest classic of the epoch in prose, says of herself, "I do not know a word of grammar; my manner of expressing myself is always the result of chance, independent of all rule and all art."
Geoffrin, Mme. du Deffand, Mlle. de Lespinasse, Mme. du Châtelet In studying the vast numbers of salons of the eighteenth century, three types are discernible, each of which was prominent and in full sway throughout the century up to the Revolution.
When Madame du Deffand said that its title should have been De l'Esprit sur les Lois she put her finger on its weak spot. Montesquieu's generalizations are always bold, always original, always fine; unfortunately, they are too often unsound into the bargain. The fluid elusive facts slip through his neat sentences like water in a sieve.
The one thing upon which Mme. du Deffand most prided herself was frankness. She hated finesse, and had stipulated that she would not tolerate artifice in any form.
In her youth, she was beautiful and fascinating, with numerous lovers and numberless suitors, but she grew even more famous as her age increased; when infirm and blind, and living in a convent, she ruled by virtue of her acknowledged authority and was still able to cope with the greatest philosophers, the chief and dean of whom, Voltaire, wrote the following four lines: "Qui vous voit et qui vous entend Perd bientôt sa philosophie; Et tout sage avec Du Deffand Voudrait en fou passer sa vie."
After her death in 1733, her salon ceased to exist, but others, patterned after hers, soon sprang up; to those, her friends attached themselves—Fontenelle frequented several, Hénault became the leader of that of Mme. du Deffand.
The war between the partizans of the old and the new was as lively then as it is today. "La Motte and Fontenelle prefer the moderns," said the caustic Mme. du Deffand; "but the ancients are dead, and the moderns are themselves."
She soon succeeded in attracting to her hôtel the best esprit of Paris: Diderot, Suard, Grimm, Comte de Schomberg, Marmontel, D'Alembert, Thomas, Saint-Lambert, Helvétius, Ducis, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the Abbés Raynal, Armand, and Morellet, Mme. Geoffrin, Mme. du Deffand, Mme. de Marchais, Mme.
Owing to the jealousy of Mme. du Deffand, a separation ensued in 1764, when she retired some distance from the Convent Saint-Joseph to very modest apartments, where, by means of her friends, she was able to receive in a dignified way. The Maréchale de Luxembourg completely fitted up her apartment, the Duc de Choiseul succeeded in getting her an annual pension from the king, and Mme.
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