and though it gave a death blow to her dreams of power, it did
not quench her irrepressible ardor. If she could not rule in one
way, she would in another. As soon as she regained her freedom,
her little court was again her kingdom, and no sovereign ever
reigned more imperiously. "I am fond of company," she said, "for
I listen to no one, and every one listens to me." It was an
incessant thirst for power, a perpetual need of the sweet incense
of flattery, that was at the bottom of this "passion for a
multitude." "She believed in herself," writes Mlle. de Launay,
afterward Baronne de Staal, "as she believed in God or Descartes,
without examination and without discussion."

This lady's maid, who loved mathematics and anatomy, was familiar
with Malebranche and Descartes, and left some literary reputation
as a writer of gossipy memoirs, was a prominent figure in the
lively court at Sceaux for more than forty years, and has given
us some vivid pictures of her capricious mistress. A young girl
of clear intellect and good education, but without rank, friends,
or fortune, she was forced to accept the humiliating position of
femme de chambre with the Duchesse du Maine, who had been
attracted by her talents. She was brought into notice through a
letter to Fontenelle, which was thought witty enough to be copied
and circulated. If she had taken this cool dissector of human
motives as a model, she certainly did credit to his teaching.
Her curiously analytical mind is aptly illustrated by her novel
method of measuring her lover's passion. He was in the habit of
accompanying her home from the house of a friend. When he began
to cross the square, instead of going round it, she concluded
that his love had diminished in the exact proportion of two sides
of a square to the diagonal. Promoted to the position of a