and Academician, was a sort of Voiture, witty, versatile, and
available. He tried to put Descartes into verse, which suggests
the quality of his poetry. Sainte-Aulaire, who, like his friend
Fontenelle, lived a century, frequented this society more or less
for forty years, but his poems are sufficiently light, if one may
judge from a few samples, and his genius doubtless caught more
reflections in the salon than in a larger world. He owed his
admission to the Academy partly to a tender quatrain which he
improvised in praise of his lively patroness. It is true we have
occasional glimpses of Voltaire. Once he sought an asylum here
for two months, after one of his numerous indiscretions, writing
tales during the day, which he read to the duchess at night.
Again he came with his "divine Emilie," the learned Marquise du
Chatelet, who upset the household with her eccentric ways. "Our
ghosts do not show themselves by day," writes Mlle. de Launay;
"they appeared yesterday at ten o'clock in the evening. I do not
think we shall see them earlier today; one is writing high facts,
the other, comments upon Newton. They wish neither to play nor
to promenade; they are very useless in a society where their
learned writings are of no account." But Voltaire was a
courtier, and, in spite of his frequent revolts against
patronage, was not at all averse to the incense of the salons and
the favors of the great. It was another round in the ladder that
led him towards glory.

The cleverest women in France were found at Sceaux, but the
dominant spirit was the princess herself. It was amusement she
wanted, and even men of talent were valued far less for what they
were intrinsically than for what they could contribute to her
vanity or to her diversion. "She is a predestined soul," wrote