Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/53

38 also the honours of literature ? . . . M. Dorat, who thinks he has reason to complain of her, has allowed himself to take vengeance in a play called *Les PrSneurs.' Several persons who have heard it read think it has more invention and more gaiety than M. Dorat has put into his other come- dies. The play turns on a young man whom they want to initiate into the mysteries of the modern philosophy, and to whom, in consequence, they teach the methods of acquiring celebrity in the quickest manner. M. d'Alembert and Mile, de Lespinasse play the chief roles. The story is told that one of their most zealous admirers, an old courtier who is very hard of hearing, when the plot of the new play was read before him, seeing every one about him ecstatic, cried out, louder than any of them, 'There now! that is good comedy.' "

We now know the friends who occupied the mind of Mile, de Lespiuasse ; we have next to speak of those who filled her heart. . ..

But here we must turn to the sketch of M. de Mora and M. de Guibert, and to the picture of the love, the passion, the remorse that consumed her life contained in Sainte- Beuve's essay which precedes these Notes. All further analysis would be superfluous, for what can be needed after the sympathetic but judicial insight of that true discerner of men and women ?

Nevertheless, for a clear understanding of the following letters, which are full of allusions that need a clue, it is well to refer once more to the particular fact that imderlies them, namely : the struggle in her soul between her love for M. de Mora and her passion for M. de Guibert. All the letters up to the time of M. de Mora's death have this struggle for their key-note, — a struggle naturally full of inconsistencies. After his death her remorse begins, and, embittered by M, de