head under his arm all the way from Montmartre to the Church of Saint
Denis--a distance of six miles. 'Ah, Monseigneur!' said Madame du
Deffand, 'dans une telle situation, il n'y a que le premier pas qui
coûte.' At two o'clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests began to
go; the dreadful moment was approaching. If Madame de Gramont happened
to be there, there was still some hope, for Madame de Gramont abhorred
going to bed almost as much as Madame du Deffand. Or there was just a
chance that the Duc de Choiseul might come in at the last moment, and
stay on for a couple of hours. But at length it was impossible to
hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door. She swept off, but it
was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was
ordered to drive about the Boulevards for an hour before going home.

It was, after all, only natural that she should put off going to bed,
for she rarely slept for more than two or three hours. The greater part
of that empty time, during which conversation was impossible, she
devoted to her books. But she hardly ever found anything to read that
she really enjoyed. Of the two thousand volumes she possessed--all bound
alike, and stamped on the back with her device of a cat--she had only
read four or five hundred; the rest were impossible. She perpetually
complained to Walpole of the extreme dearth of reading matter. In
nothing, indeed, is the contrast more marked between that age and ours
than in the quantity of books available for the ordinary reader. How the
eighteenth century would envy us our innumerable novels, our
biographies, our books of travel, all our easy approaches to knowledge
and entertainment, our translations, our cheap reprints! In those days,
even for a reader of catholic tastes, there was really very little to
read. And, of course, Madame du Deffand's tastes were far from
catholic--they were fastidious to the last degree. She considered that
Racine alone of writers had reached perfection, and that only once--in