some measure to the world over which it rules, took them up. If
the drawing rooms of the seventeenth century were the cradles of
refined manners and a new literature, those of the eighteenth
were literally the cradles of a new philosophy.

The practical growth and spread of French philosophy was too
closely interwoven with the history of the salons not to call for
a word here. Its innovations were faintly prefigured in the
coterie of Mme. de Lambert, where it colored almost imperceptibly
the literary and critical discussions. But its foundations were
more firmly laid in the drawing room of Mme. de Tencin, where the
brilliant wit and radical theories of Montesquieu, as well as the
pronounced materialism of Helvetius, found a congenial
atmosphere. Though the mingled romance and satire of the "Persian
Letters," with their covert attack upon the state and society,
raised a storm of antagonism, they called out a burst of
admiration as well. The original and aggressive thought of men
like Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, and Diderot, with its
diversity of shading, but with the cardinal doctrine of freedom
and equality pervading it all, had found a rapidly growing
audience. It no longer needed careful nursing, in the second
half of the century. It had invaded the salons of the haute
noblesse, and was discussed even in the anterooms of the court.
Mme. de Pompadour herself stole away from her tiresome lover-king
to the freethinking coterie that met in her physician's
apartments in the Entresol at Versailles, and included the
greatest iconoclasts of the age. If she had any misgivings as to
the outcome of these discussions, they were fearlessly cast aside
with "Apres Nous le Deluge." "In the depth of her heart she was
with us," said Voltaire when she died.