Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/48

Rh Chasse. There, people talked from five o'clock to ten o'clock daily. We may say that for twelve years, from 1764 to 1776, there was not a day when the choicest society failed to be there, and not a day when Mile, de Lespinasse failed to receive it. Not for all the world would her friends have missed these daily festivals of intellect, grace, and elegance.

Other salons had their habitual guests, their reigning and dominating friends : with Mme. du Deffand were President Renault, Pont de Veyle, the Prince de Beauvau, the Choiseuls, and Horace Walpole, on his too rare journeys to Paris ; with Mme. Geoffrin, Marmontel and Antoine Thomas; with the Baron d'Holbach, Diderot and Grimm; but with Mile, de Lespinasse it was not even d'Alembert who reigned. In her salon alone were received on a footing of perfect equality, without marked preference, all that Paris had of most illus- trious in letters, sciences, and arts. D'Alembert was no more than an ordinary visitor, unus inter pares. But his talent as a talker made the place more delightful.

" His conversation," says Grimm, " offered all that could instruct and divert the mind. He lent himself with as much facility as good-will to whatever subject would please most generally; bringing to it an almost inexhaustible fund of ideas, anecdotes, and curious recollections. There was, I may say, no topic, however dry or frivolous in itself, that he had not the secret of making interesting. He spoke well, related with much precision, and brought out his point with a rapidity which was peculiar to him. All his humorous sayings have a delicate and profound originality,"

Variety — such was the special character of the salon of Mile, de Lespinasse; and this is particularly shown in the account that Grimm has left of it.

" Without fortune, without birth, without beauty, she had succeeded in collecting around her a very numerous, very