friendship of M. and Madame Necker; the former had given up tragedies and
moral tales; a pupil of Voltaire, without the splendor and inexhaustible
vigor of his master, he was less prone to license, and his feelings were
more serious; he was at that time correcting his _Elements de
Litterature,_ but lately published in the _Encyclopaedie,_ and commencing
the _Memoires d'un pere, pour servir d l'instruction de ses enfants_.
Thomas was editing his _Eloges,_ sometimes full of eloquence, often
subtle and delicate, always long, unexceptionable, and wearisome. His
noble character had won him the sincere esteem and affection of Madame
Necker. She, laboriously anxious about the duties politeness requires
from the mistress of a house, went so far as to write down in her tablets
"To recompliment M. Thomas more strongly on the song of France in his
poem of Pierre le Grand." She paid him more precious homage when she
wrote to him: "We were united in our youth in every honorable way; let us
be more than ever united now when ripe age, which diminishes the vivacity
of impressions, augments the force of habit, and let us be more than ever
necessary to one another when we live no longer save in the past and in
the future, for, as regards myself, I, in anticipation, lay no store by
the approbation of the circles which will surround us in our old age, and
I desire nothing among posterity but a tomb to which I may precede M.
Necker, and on which you will write the epitaph. Such resting-place will
be dearer to me than that among the poplars which cover the ashes of
Rousseau."

It was desirable to show what sort of society, cultivated and virtuous,
lively and serious, all in one, the new minister whom Louis XVI. had just
called to his side had managed to get about him. Though friendly with
the philosophers, he did not belong to them, and his wife's piety
frequently irked them. "The conversation was a little constrained
through the strictness of Madame Necker," says Abbe Morellet; "many
subjects could not be touched upon in her presence, and she was
particularly hurt by freedom in religious opinions." Practical
acquaintance with business had put M. Necker on his guard against the
chimerical theories of the economists. Rousseau had exercised more
influence over his mind; the philosopher's wrath against civilization
seemed to have spread to the banker, when the latter wrote in his _Traite
sur le commerce des grains,_ "One would say that