Voltaire. "She will love comedy to the last moment, and when she
is ill I counsel you to administer some beautiful poem in the
place of extreme unction. One dies as one has lived."

Mme. du Maine represented the conservative side of French society
in spite of the fact that her abounding mental vitality often
broke through the stiff boundaries of old traditions. It was not
because she did not still respect them, but she had the defiant
attitude of a princess whose will is an unwritten law superior to
all traditions. The tone of her salon was in the main
dilettante, as is apt to be the case with any circle that plumes
itself most upon something quite apart from intellectual
distinction. It reflected the spirit of an old aristocracy, with
its pride, its exclusiveness, its worship of forms, but faintly
tinged with the new thought that was rapidly but unconsciously
encroaching upon time-honored institutions. Beyond the clever
pastimes of a brilliant coterie, it had no marked literary
influence. This ferment of intellectual life was one of the
signs of the times, but it led to no more definite and tangible
results than the turning of a madrigal or the sparkle of an
epigram.


CHAPTER XI. MADAME DE TENCIN AND MADAME DU CHATELET
An Intriguing Chanoinesse--Her Singular Fascination--Her Salon
--Its Philosophical Character--Mlle. Aisse--Romances of Mme. de
Tencin--D'Alembert--La Belle Emilie--Voltaire--The Two Women
Compared

It was not in the restless searchings of an old society for new