rkling
cataract swept on unheeding. And indeed to listen was the wiser part--to
drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable,
exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the
pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a
breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. Then at
moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of radiant
jewels, which one caught as one might. Some of these have come down to
us. Her remark on Montesquieu's great book--'C'est de l'esprit sur les
lois'--is an almost final criticism. Her famous 'mot de Saint Denis,' so
dear to the heart of Voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded. A
garrulous and credulous Cardinal was describing the martyrdom of Saint
Denis the Areopagite: when his head was cut off, he took it up and
carried it in his hands. That, said the Cardinal, was well known; what
was not well known was the extraordinary fact that he walked with his
head under his arm all the way from Montmartre to the Church of Saint
Denis--a distance of six miles. 'Ah, Monseigneur!' said Madame du
Deffand, 'dans une telle situation, il n'y a que le premier pas qui
coute.' At two o'clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests began to
go; the dreadful moment was approaching. If Madame de Gramont happened
to be there, there was still some hope, for Madame de Gramont abhorred
going to bed almost as much as Madame du Deffand. Or there was just a
chance that the Duc de Choiseul might come in at the last moment, and
stay on for a couple of hours. But at length it was impossible to
hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door. She swept off, but it
was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was
ordered to drive about the Boulevards for an hour before going home.

It was, after all, only natural that she should put off going to bed,
for she rarely slept for more than two or three hours. The greater part
of that empty time, during which conversation was impossible, she
devoted to her books. But she hardly ever found anything to read that
she really enjoyed. Of the two thousand volumes she possessed--all bound
alike, and stamped on the back with her device of a cat--she had only
read four or five hundred; the rest were impossible. She perpetually
complained to Walpole of the extreme dearth of reading matter. In
nothing, indeed, is the contrast more marked between that age and ours
than in th