The _Marquise du Deffaud_ was a very different personage to Madame
Geoffrin, whose great enemy she was. When Horace Walpole first entered
into the society of the Marquise, she was stone blind, and old; but
retained not only her wit, and her memory, but her passions. Passions,
like artificial flowers, are unbecoming to age: and those of the witty,
atheistical Marquise are almost revolting. Scandal still attached her
name to that of Hénault, of whom Voltaire wrote the epitaph beginning

'Henault, fameus par vos soupers
Et votre "chronologie,"' &c.

Hénault was for many years deaf; and, during the whole of his life,
disagreeable. There was something farcical in the old man's receptions
on his death-bed; whilst, amongst the rest of the company came Madame du
Deffand, a blind old woman of seventy, who, bawling in his ear, aroused
the lethargic man, by inquiring after a former rival of hers, Madame de
Castelmaron--about whom he went on babbling until death stopped his
voice.

She was seventy years of age when Horace Walpole, at fifty, became her
passion. She was poor and disreputable, and even the high position of
having been mistress to the regent could not save her from being decried
by a large portion of that society which centered round the _bel
esprit_. 'She was,' observes the biographer of Horace Walpole (the
lamented author of the 'Crescent and the Cross,') 'always gay, always
charming--everything but a Christian.' The loss of her eyesight did not
impair the remains of her beauty; her replies, her compliments, were
brilliant; even from one whose best organs of expression were mute.

A frequent guest at her suppers, Walpole's kindness, real or pretended,