Of all the women who presided over famous salons, Mme. Geoffrin
had perhaps the least claim to intellectual preeminence. The
secret of her power must have lain in some intangible quality
that has failed to be perpetuated in any of her sayings or
doings. A few commonplace and ill-spelled letters, a few wise or
witty words, are all the direct record she has left of herself.
Without rank, beauty, youth, education, or remarkable mental
gifts of a sort that leave permanent traces, she was the best
representative of the women of her time who held their place in
the world solely through their skill in organizing and conducting
a salon. She was in no sense a luminary; and conscious that she
could not shine by her own light, she was bent upon shining by
that of others. But, in a social era so brilliant, even this
implied talent of a high order. A letter to the Empress of
Russia, in reply to a question concerning her early education,
throws a ray of light upon her youth and her peculiar training.

"I lost my father and mother," she writes, "in the cradle. I was
brought up by an aged grandmother, who had much intelligence and
a well-balanced head. She had very little education; but her
mind was so clear, so ready, so active, that it never failed her;
it served always in the place of knowledge. She spoke so
agreeably of the things she did not know that no one wished her
to understand them better; and when her ignorance was too
visible, she got out of it by pleasantries which baffled the
pedants who tried to humiliate her. She was so contented with
her lot that she looked upon knowledge as a very useless thing
for a woman. She said: 'I have done without it so well that I
have never felt the need of it. If my granddaughter is stupid,
learning will make her conceited and insupportable; if she has