has left to us portraits of both the Princesse de Talmond and Madame
d'Aiguillon.

'Madame de Talmond has beauty and wit and vivacity; that turn for
pleasantry which is our national inheritance seems natural to her. .
. . But her wit deals only with pleasant frivolities; her ideas are
the children of her memory rather than of her imagination. French in
everything else, she is original in her vanity. Ours is more
sociable, inspires the desire to please, and suggests the means.
Hers is truly Sarmatian, artless and indolent; she cannot bring
herself to flatter those whose admiration she covets. . . . She
thinks herself perfect, says so, and expects to be believed. At this
price alone does she yield a semblance of friendship: semblance, I
say, for her affections are concentrated on herself . . . She is as
jealous as she is vain, and so capricious as to make her at once the
most unhappy and the most absurd of women. She never knows what she
wants, what she fears, whom she loves, or whom she hates. There is
no nature in her expression: with her chin in the air she poses
eternally as tender or disdainful, absent or haughty; all is
affectation. . . . She is feared and hated by all who live in her
society. Yet she has truth, courage, and honesty, and is such a
mixture of good and evil that no steadfast opinion about her can be
entertained. She pleases, she provokes: we love, hate, seek, and
avoid her. It is as if she communicated to others the eccentricity
of her own caprice.'

Where a character like hers met a nature like the Prince's, peace and
quiet were clearly out of the question.

Madame du Deffand is not more favourable to another friend of