kindly portrait and those of her feminine friends is striking and
rather suggestive.

"She joined to the taste for glory a simplicity which does not
always accompany it, but which is often the fruit of serious
studies. No woman was ever so learned, and no one deserves less
to be called a femme savante. Born with a singular eloquence,
this eloquence manifested itself only when she found subjects
worthy of it . . . The fitting word, precision, justness, and
force were the characteristics of her style. She would rather
write like Pascal and Nicole than like Mme. de Sevigne; but this
severe strength and this vigorous temper of her mind did not
render her inaccessible to the beauties of sentiment. The charms
of poetry and eloquence penetrated her, and no one was ever more
sensitive to harmony . . . She gave herself to the great world
as to study. Everything that occupies society was in her
province except scandal. She was never known to repeat an idle
story. She had neither time nor disposition to give attention to
such things, and when told that some one had done her an
injustice, she replied that she did not wish to hear about it."

"She led him a life a little hard," said Mme. de Graffigny, after
her quarrel; but he seems to have found it agreeable, and broke
his heart--for a short time--when she died. "I have lost half
of my being," he wrote--"a soul for which mine was made." To
Marmontel he says: "Come and share my sorrow. I have lost my
illustrious friend. I am in despair. I am inconsolable." One
cannot believe that so clear-sighted a man, even though a poet,
could live for twenty years under the spell of a pure illusion.
What heart revelations, what pictures of contemporary life, were