Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/518

504 was at this time timid, and spoke but little; but being a little more introduced into company, she learnt the manners of the world, and was much admired. At the house of the famous Scarron she was a frequent visitor, and this celebrated wit began to feel a lively interest in her concerns, and loved her without daring to avow it. This extraordinary man was, at the same time, full of gaiety, wit, and infirmities. His figure was very much deformed, but he had a feeling heart, a lively and grotesque imagination, and much patience in his ill health and poverty. He was gay in despite of pain, and satirical without malice. When he heard of what she had to suffer from her aunt, he offered either to marry her, or to pay her pension in a convent; and Mademoiselle D'Aubigne answered, that she preferred that obligation which would empower her more constantly to shew her gratitude to her benefactor. Madame Neuillant consented, and they were married. She lived with him many years, and during all the time had never quitted his presence. When he was ill, she was his nurse; when better, his companion, his amanuensis, or his reader. It was during this life of study and active complaisance, that she learned, perhaps, that pliability of will and humour, and that extent of knowledge, which afterwards were of such material advantage to her.

Voltaire makes no scruple to say, that this part of her life was undoubtedly the happiest. Her beauty, but especially her wit (for she was never reckoned a perfect beauty) and unblemished reputation, distinguished her to great advantage, and her conversation was eagerly sought by the best company in Paris; but Scarron dying in 1660, she was reduced to the same indigent condition she was in before marriage. Her friends, however, endeavoured all they could to get the pension continued to her