correspondence, which, on account of its smoothness and emptiness,
like all books written for the great world, found very numerous
readers.

Deffant, moreover, like Geoffrin. was faithless to her friends; she
wished indeed to enjoy the most perfect freedom in their society, but
she was unwilling that they should publish abroad this freedom. And
she strongly disapproved of the vehemence with which her friends
assailed the existing order of things.

When she afterward lost a considerable part of her property, and
became blind, she occupied a small dwelling in an ecclesiastical
foundation in Paris, but continued to receive philosophers, poets
and artists in her house; and in order to give a little more life to
the conversation, she invited a young lady whose circumstances were
straitened to be her companion. This was Mademoiselle l'Espinasse.
L'Espinasse was not beautiful, but she was young, amiable, lively, and
more susceptible than we in Germany are accustomed either to allow or
to pardon. Deffant, on the other hand, was witty and intelligent, but
old, bitter, and withal egotistically insensible. The boldest scoffers
assembled around L'Espinasse, and there was afterward formed around
her a circle of her own. Deffant turned day into night, and night into
day. She and the Duchess of Luxembourg, who was inseparable from her,
received learned distinguished personages and foreigners, from six
o'clock in the evening during the greater part of the night.

The importance in which such ladies and such societies were held, not
merely in France but in all Europe, may be judged of from the fact,
that the breach between Deffant and her young companion was treated
in some measure as a public European event. The French minister and