Through this feminine La Bruyere, as Sainte-Beuve has styled her,
we are introduced to the life at Sceaux. It was the habit of the
guests to assemble at eight, listen to music or plays, improvise
verses for popular airs, relate racy anecdotes, or amuse
themselves with proverbs. "Write verses for me," said the
insatiable duchess when ill; "I feel that verses only can give me
relief." The quality does not seem to have been essential,
provided they were sufficiently flattering. Sainte-Aulaire wrote
madrigals for her. Malezieu, the learned and versatile preceptor
of the Duc du Maine, read Sophocles and Euripides. Mme. du Maine
herself acted the roles of Athalie and Iphigenie with the famous
Baron. They played at science, contemplated the heavens through
a telescope and the earth through a microscope. In their eager
search for novelty they improvised fetes that rivaled in
magnificence the Arabian Nights; they posed as gods and
goddesses, or, affecting simplicity, assumed rustic and pastoral
characters, even to their small economies and romantic
platitudes. Mythology, the chivalry of the Middle Ages,
costumes, illuminations, scenic effects, the triumphs of the
artists, the wit of the bel esprit--all that ingenuity could
devise or money could buy was brought into service. It was the
life that Watteau painted, with its quaint and grotesque fancies,
its sylvan divinities, and its sighing lovers wandering in
endless masquerade, or whispering tender nothings on banks of
soft verdure, amid the rustle of leaves, the sparkle of
fountains, the glitter of lights, and the perfume of innumerable
flowers. It was a perpetual carnival, inspired by imagination,
animated by genius, and combining everything that could charm the
taste, distract the mind, and intoxicate the senses. The
presiding genius of this fairy scene was the irrepressible