Not the least among the attractions of this society was its
charming informality. A favorite custom in the literary and
philosophical salons was to give dinners, at an early hour, two
or three times a week. In the evening a larger company assembled
without ceremony. A popular man of letters, so inclined, might
dine Monday and Wednesday with Mme. Geoffrin, Tuesday with Mme.
Helvetius, Friday with Mme. Necker, Sunday and Thursday with Mme.
d'Holbach, and have ample time to drop into other salons
afterward, passing an hour or so, perhaps, before going to the
theater, in the brilliant company that surrounded Mlle. de
Lespinasse, and, very likely, supping elsewhere later. At many
of these gatherings he would be certain to find readings,
recitations, comedies, music, games, or some other form of
extemporized amusement. The popular mania for esprit, for
literary lions, for intellectual diversions ran through the
social world, as the craze for clubs and culture, poets and
parlor readings, musicales and amateur theatricals, runs through
the society of today. It had numberless shades and gradations,
with the usual train of pretentious follies which in every age
furnish ample material for the pen of the satirist, but it was a
spontaneous expression of the marvelously quickened taste for
things of the intellect. The woman who improvised a witty verse,
invented a proverb, narrated a story, sang a popular air, or
acted a part in a comedy entered with the same easy grace into
the discussion of the last political problem, or listened with
the subtlest flattery to the new poem, essay, or tale of the
aspiring young author, whose fame and fortune perhaps hung upon
her smile. In the musical and artistic salon of Mme. de la
Popeliniere the succession of fetes, concerts, and receptions