Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/20

10 he called her "Hypatie"; and testified the genuineness of his regard by scolding her about her religious opinions. Needless to say these were not infidel, but they were, in Grimm's opinion, disastrously illogical; and, his fine taste in such matters being offended, he expressed his displeasure on one occasion in no measured terms. Madame Necker retorted, for she loved a discussion too fervently ever to be meek; but apparently Grimm was too much for her. Either his arguments were irrefragable, or his manner was irritating; the result was that Madame Necker—to the polite consternation of her numerous guests—dissolved into tears.

Humiliated, on reflection, at having made such a scene, with characteristic ardour she seized the opportunity to write Grimm a high-flown apology; and an interchange of letters followed in which the philosopher compared the lady to Venus completed by Minerva, and Madame Necker ransacked the universe for metaphors wherewith to express her admiration of the gentleman's sensibility.

As the Neckers spent their summer at St. Ouen—not the historic Château associated with Louis XVIII., but another in the neighbourhood, and of the same name—the proximity to Paris enabled them to continue unbroken their series of dinners, suppers, and receptions twice a week.

Many of the guests were notable personages, and most of them types which vanished for ever a few years later—engulphed by the storm-wave of the Revolution. There was the Abbé Morellet, clear-headed, gravely ironical, with as much tact in concealing as in displaying the range of his knowledge and the depth of his insight; St. Lambert, a little