ability. "There are so few great fortunes that are innocent,"
she writes to her son, "that I pardon your ancestors for not
leaving you one. I have done what I could to put in order our
affairs, in which there is left to women only the glory of
economy." It was not until the closing years of her life, from
1710 to 1733, that her social influence was at its height. She
was past sixty, at an age when the powers of most women are on
the wane, when her real career began. She fitted up luxurious
apartments in the Palais Mazarin, employing artists like Watteau
upon the decorations, and expending money as lavishly as if she
had been in the full springtide of life, instead of the golden
autumn. Then she gathered about her a choice and lettered
society, which seemed to be a world apart, a last revival of the
genius of the seventeenth century, and quite out of the main
drift of the period. "She was born with much talent," writes one
of her friends; "she cultivated it by assiduous reading; but the
most beautiful flower in her crown was a noble and luminous
simplicity, of which, at sixty years, she took it into her head
to divest herself. She lent herself to the public, associated
with the Academicians, and established at her house a bureau
d'esprit." Twice a week she gave dinners, which were as noted
for the cuisine as for the company, and included, among others,
the best of the forty Immortals. Here new works were read or
discussed, authors talked of their plans, and candidates were
proposed for vacant chairs in the Academy. "The learned and the
lettered formed the dominant element," says a critic of the time.
"They dined at noon, and the rest of the day was passed in
conversations, in readings, in literary and scientific
discussions. No card tables; it was in ready wit that each one
paid his contribution." Ennui never came to shed its torpors