sparkled, her lips had a smile at the same time sweet and
perfidious; she wished to be good, and gave herself great trouble
to seem so, without succeeding." Indolent and languid with
flashes of witty vivacity, insinuating and facile, unconscious of
herself, interested in everyone with whom she talked, she
combined the tact, the finesse, the subtle penetration of a woman
with the grasp, the comprehensiveness, and the knowledge of
political machinery which are traditionally accorded to a man.
"If she wanted to poison you, she would use the mildest poison,"
said the Abbe Trublet.

"I cannot express the illusion which her air of nonchalance and
easy grace left with me," says Marmontel. "Mme. de Tencin, the
woman in the kingdom who moved the most political springs, both
in the city and at court, was for me only an indolente. Ah, what
finesse, what suppleness, what activity were concealed beneath
this naive air, this appearance of calm and leisure!" But he
confesses that she aided him greatly with her counsel, and that
he owed to her much of his knowledge of the world.

"Unhappy those who depend upon the pen," she said to him;
"nothing is more chimerical. The man who makes shoes is sure of
his wages; the man who makes a book or a tragedy is never sure of
anything." She advises him to make friends of women rather than
of men. "By means of women, one attains all that one wishes from
men, of whom some are too pleasure-loving, others too much
preoccupied with their personal interests not to neglect yours;
whereas women think of you, if only from idleness. Speak this
evening to one of them of some affair that concerns you; tomorrow
at her wheel, at her tapestry, you will find her dreaming of it,