Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/21

6 to make them shine, and to seem to forget herself. Her con- versation was neither above nor below those with whom she talked ; she had the sense of measurement, proportion, accu- racy. She reflected so well the impressions of others, and received so visibly the effect of their minds, that others loved her for the success they felt they had with her. She raised this method to an art. " Ah ! how I wish," she exclaimed one day, " that I knew everybody's weakness." D'Alembert fastened on the words and blamed them, as proceeding from too great a desire to please, and to please every one. But even in that desire, and in the means it suggested to her she re- mained true, she was sincere. She said of herself, in expla- nation of her success with others that she held the " truth of all [le vrai de tout], while other women held the truth of nothing le vrai de rien]."

In conversing she had the gift of the right word, the instinct for the exact and choicest expression; common and trivial expressions disgusted her ; she was shocked, and could not recover herself. She was not precisely simple, though very natural. It was the same with her clothes. " She gave," some one said, " an idea of richness which by taste and choice was vowed to simplicity." Her literary taste was more lively [w/] than sure ; she loved, she adored Kacine, as master of the heart, but for all that she did not like the over-finished, she preferred the rough and sketchy. Whatever caught her by an inward fibre excited and uplifted her ; she could even have mercy on a worthless book for one or two situations in it which went to her soul. She has imitated Sterne in a couple of chapters which are worth little. As a writer, where she does not dream of being one, that is to say in her Letters, her pen is clear, firm, excellent, except for a few words such as sensitive, virtuous, which are repeated too often, and show the influence of Jean-Jacques.