Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/49

34 varied, and very assiduous society. Her circle met daily from five o'clock until nine in the evening. There we were sure to find choice men of all orders in the State, the Church, the Court, — military men, foreigners, and the most dis- tinguished men of letters. Every one agrees that though the name of M. d'Alembert may have drawn them thither, it was she alone who kept them there. Devoted wholly to the care of preserving that society, of which she was the soul and the charm, she subordinated to this purpose all her tastes and all her personal intimacies. She seldom went to the theatre or into the country, and when she did make an exception to this rule it was an event of which all Paris was notified in advance. . . . Politics, religion, philosophy, anec- dotes, news, nothing was excluded from the conversation, and, thanks to her care, the most trivial little narrative gained, as naturally as possible, the place and notice it deserved. News of all kinds was gathered there in its first freshness."

No one has better pictured than Marmontel the influence of Mile, de Lespinasse on her society, or made us feel more fully the sort of creative breath which, from this chaos, brought forth a world so brilliant and harmonious.

"I do not put," he says, " among the number of my private societies the assembly which gathered every evening in the apartments of Mile, de Lespinasse, for with the exception of a few friends of d'Alembert, such as the Chevalier de Chastellux, the Abbe Morellet, Saint-Lambert, and myself, the circle was formed of persons who were not bound together. She had taken them here and there in society, but so well assorted were they that once there they fell into harmony like the strings of an instrument touched by an able hand. Following out that comparison, I may say that she played the instrument with an art that came of genius ; she seemed