Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/25

Rh arbiter of politeness and fine manners, was felicitously and untranslatably described by Madame du Deffand, in one delightful phrase, as "Chatte Rose!" Upon all those who met her at this period (when she was already nearly seventy), she seems to have produced the same impression of softness and elegance, of fine malice and caressing irresistible ways.

Madame de Souza—that sweet little woman round whose name the perfume of her own roses still seems to cling—drew a portrait of the Maréchale in her novel Eugénie de Rothelin, under the name of the Maréchale d'Estouteville; nor did she, as Ste. Beuve tells us, forget to introduce, by way of contrast, in the person of Madame de Rieny, the pretty and winning Duchess de Lauzun, grand-niece of the Maréchale, and another flower of Madame Necker's salon.

This little Duchess, "joli petit oiseau à l'air effarouché" (to quote Madame du Deffand once again), was so devoted an admirer of M. Necker, that, hearing somebody in the Tuileries Gardens blame him, she slapped the speaker's face. Apart from this one outburst, which saves her from seeming too meek, she flits shadowy, sweet and pathetic, across the pages of her contemporaries. The record of her life, as we know it, is brief and touching. She kept herself unspotted from a most depraved world; loved a very unworthy husband and died, during the Terror, on the scaffold.

Another friend, and apparently a very sincere one, of Madame Necker, was Madame d'Houdetôt. Madame Necker seems to have accepted that interesting woman just as she was, including her relations with St. Lambert, whom the letters exchanged between the two ladies mention quite naturally. The affection which