765, though
there is no actual evidence that he did. Before leaving, moreover,
Hume would have time to introduce his friend to the famous men of
Paris itself, and to initiate him into those literary and fashionable
circles in which he had moved like a demigod for the preceding two
years. The philosophe was then king in Paris, and Hume was king of the
philosophes, and everything that was great in court or salon fell down
and did him obeisance. "Here," he tells Robertson, "I feed on
ambrosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe incense only, and walk on
flowers. Every one I meet, and especially every woman, would consider
themselves as failing in the most indispensable duty if they did not
favour me with a lengthy and ingenious discourse on my celebrity."
Hume could, therefore, open to his friend every door in Paris that was
worth entering, but Smith's own name was also sufficiently known and
esteemed, at least among men of letters, in France to secure to him a
cordial welcome for his own sake. _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_ had
been translated, at the suggestion of Baron d'Holbach, by E. Dous, and
the translation had appeared in 1764 under the title of _Metaphysique
de l'Ame_. It was unfortunately a very bad translation, for which
Grimm makes the curious apology that it was impossible to render the
ideas of metaphysics in a foreign language as you could render the
images of poetry, because every nation had its own abstract
ideas.[160] But though the book got probably little impetus from this
translation, it had been considerably read in the original by men of
letters when it first came out, and many of them had then formed, as
Abbe Morellet says he did, the highest idea of Smith's sagacity and
depth, and were prepared to meet the author with much interest.

Smith went more into society in the few months he resided in Paris
than at any other period of his life. He was a regular guest in almost
all the famous literary salons of that time--Baron d'Holbach's,
Helvetius', Madame de Geoffrin's, Comtesse de Boufflers', Mademoiselle
l'Espinasse's, and probably Madame Necker's. Our information about his
doings is of course meagre, but there is one week in July 1766 in
which we happen to have his name mentioned frequently in the course of
the correspondence between Hume and his Paris friends regarding the
quarrel with Rousseau, and during that week Smith was on the 21st at
Mademoiselle l'Espinasse's, on the 25th at Comtesse de Bou