United States or Solomon Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
The Duc de Choiseul procured her a pension, and Mme. Geoffrin gave her an annuity. She carried with her a strong following of eminent men from the salon of Mme. du Deffand, among whom was d'Alembert, who remained faithful and devoted to the end.
It was men like these who thronged her own salon, together with such women as the Duchesse d'Anville, friend of the economists, the Duchesse de Chatillon whom she loved so passionately, and others well-known in the world of fashion and letters. But its tone was more philosophical than that of Mme. du Deffand. Though far from democratic by taste or temperament, she was so from conviction.
In one of his letters to Madame du Deffand, Horace Walpole writes of the English spring as "coming in with its accustomed severity," and such was our experience of a Virginian spring; or rather, it may be said that winter returned with renewed energy, and we had for several days snow, sleet, rain, and all possible abominations in the way of weather.
She pleases, she provokes: we love, hate, seek, and avoid her. It is as if she communicated to others the eccentricity of her own caprice. Where a character like hers met a nature like the Prince's, peace and quiet were clearly out of the question. Madame du Deffand is not more favourable to another friend of Charles, Madame d'Aiguillon.
When the Marquise de La Ferté-Imbault, one of the few virtuous women of the time, and of the highest aristocracy, was invited to attend the salon of Mme. Necker and was told that the Maréchale de Luxembourg, Mme. du Deffand, Mme. de Boufflers, and Mme.
So far the revolution had been bloodless, but its darker hour was to come. "I placed the deposed Emperor under the command of A. Orloff, with four 'chosen' officers and a detachment of 'quiet' and 'sober' men, and sent him to a distance of twenty-seven versts from St. Petersburg to a place called Ropsha, 'very retired, but very pleasant" so runs Catharine's account to Poniatowski. On the 15th he was dead; of "hemorrhoidal colic," said the official announcement; strangled, as Europe rightly believed, by Alexis Orloff with his own hands. It is hardly possible that this hideous murder was without Catharine's at least tacit consent. She certainly condoned the crime. There was danger in a name; and her sentiment was doubtless that of Lord Essex when the fate of Stafford hung in the balance: "Stone dead hath no fellow!" Already, where the Neva turns toward the Baltic, one wretched boy-Czar languished beneath the melancholy fortress of the Schluesselburg. Two years, and he too, after having known the bitterness of life, will be violently done to death in his turn. But Voltaire wrote to Madame du Deffand: "I am aware that people reproach her with some bagatelles
Even in the last decades of his life, when he sees the France of the future arising, he writes to Madame Du Deffand: "How trivial we are compared with the Greeks, the Romans, and the English"; and to Helvétius, about the same period , he admits the profound debts which France and Europe owe to the adventurous thought of England.
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.
Heartless, Mme. du Deffand is called, and her life seems to prove the truth of the verdict; but these letters throb and palpitate with feeling which she laughs at, but cannot still. It is the cry of the soul for what it has not; what the world cannot give; what it has somehow missed out of a cold, hard, restless, and superficial existence. With a need of loving, she is satisfied with no one.
Word Of The Day