eristics which were prominent
in a remarkable degree--love and friendship. She appeared to interest
herself in everybody in such a way as to make him believe that he
was the preferred of her heart; loving everybody sincerely and
affectionately, she "lacked altogether the sentimental equilibrium."
Especially pathetic was her love for two men--the Count de Mora, a
Spanish nobleman, and a Colonel Guibert, who was celebrated for his
relations with Frederick the Great; although this wore terribly on
her, consuming her physical force, she always received her friends
with the same good grace, but often, after their departure, she would
fall into a frightful nervous fit from which she could find relief
only by the use of opium.

Her love for Guibert was known to her friends, but was a secret from
her platonic lover, D'Alembert. When, after a number of years of
untold sufferings which even opium could not relieve, she died in
1776, having been cared for to the last by D'Alembert, the Duke de La
Rochefoucauld, and her cousin, the Marquis d'Enlezy, it was with these
words on her dying lips, addressed to Guibert: "Adieu, my friend!
If ever I return to life, I should like to use it in loving you;
but there is no longer any time." When D'Alembert read in her
correspondence that she had been the mistress of Guibert for sixteen
years, he was disconsolate, and retired to the Louvre, which was
his privilege as Secretary of the Academy. He left there only to go
walking in the evening with Marmontel, who tried to console him by
recalling the changeableness of humor of Mlle. de Lespinasse. "Yes,"
he would reply, "she has changed, but not I; she no longer lived for
me, but I always lived for her. Since she is no longer, I don't
know why I am living. Ah, that I must still suffer these moments of
bitterness which she knew so well how to soothe and make me forget!
Do you remember the happy evenings we used to pass? What is there now?
Instead of her, when coming home, I find only her shadow! This Louvre
lodging is itself a tomb, which I enter only with fright."

Mlle. de Lespinasse died of grief for a lover's death, but she left
a group of lovers to lament her loss. In many respects she was not
unlike Mlle. de Scudery; exceptionally plain, her face was much
marked with smallpox, a disfigurement not uncommon in those days; her
exceedingly piercing and fine eyes, beautiful hair, tall and elegant
figure, excellent taste in dress, pleasing voice a