Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/42

Rh Mile, de Lespinasse was twenty-two years of age when she came to take the situation thus foreshadowed. Mme. du Deffand was fifty-seven, and already nearly blind. Long since celebrated for her wit, she was beginning to be so for her salon, where, side by side with men of letters, were found all that aristocracy could then present that was most distinguished for taste and intellect. Mile, de Lespinasse, on her first entrance to a world so new to her, was not out of place. Her tact, her intelligence won all suffrages ; we find the proof of it in the praises bestowed upon her by such good judges as the Chevalier d'Aydie, the Prince de Beauvau, and President H^nault. The qualities she may have lacked she soon acquired by contact with the most polished society that ever existed. " See what an education I received ! " she says herself. " Mme. du Deffand, President Hdnault, the Abb^ Bon, the Archbishop of Toulouse, the Archbishop of Aix, M. Turgot, M. d'Alembert, the Abb^ de Boismont, — these are the persons who taught me to speak and to think, and who have deigned to consider me as something."

This life in common lasted ten years, from 1754 to 1764. Begun under such auspices, for what reason did it become a burden to the one who proposed it and to the other who accepted it ? How came it to end in an open rupture which had all the importance of an event, and actually divided, almost into two camps, the society of that day ? Evidently there were faults on both sides : Mme. du Deffand abusing the superiority which her rank and her role as protectress gave her over Mile, de Lespinasse ; and the latter allowing, little by little, indifference and coldness to take the place of her early interest and zeal. But the true determining cause of the rupture was the rivalry, the jealousy perhaps, which grew up between the two women. We recall Mme. du Def- fand's words in the foregoing letter : " There is a point on