o few great fortunes that
are innocent," she writes to her son, "that I pardon your ancestors
for not leaving you one. I have done what I could to put in order our
affairs, in which there is left to women only the glory of economy." It
was not until the closing years of her life, from 1710 to 1733, that her
social influence was at its height. She was past sixty, at an age when
the powers of most women are on the wane, when her real career began.
She fitted up luxurious apartments in the Palais Mazarin, employing
artists like Watteau upon the decorations, and expending money as
lavishly as if she had been in the full springtide of life, instead of
the golden autumn. Then she gathered about her a choice and lettered
society, which seemed to be a world apart, a last revival of the genius
of the seventeenth century, and quite out of the main drift of the
period. "She was born with much talent," writes one of her friends; "she
cultivated it by assiduous reading; but the most beautiful flower in her
crown was a noble and luminous simplicity, of which, at sixty years, she
took it into her head to divest herself. She lent herself to the public,
associated with the Academicians, and established at her house a bureau
d'esprit." Twice a week she gave dinners, which were as noted for the
cuisine as for the company, and included, among others, the best of the
forty Immortals. Here new works were read or discussed, authors talked
of their plans, and candidates were proposed for vacant chairs in the
Academy. "The learned and the lettered formed the dominant element,"
says a critic of the time. "They dined at noon, and the rest of the day
was passed in conversations, in readings, in literary and scientific
discussions. No card tables; it was in ready wit that each one paid his
contribution." Ennui never came to shed its torpors over these reunions,
of which the Academy furnished the most distinguished guests, in company
with grands seigneurs eager to show themselves as worthy by intelligence
as by rank to play a role in these gatherings of the intellectual elite.
Fontenelle was the presiding genius of this salon, and added to its
critical and literary spirit a tinge of philosophy. This gallant savant,
who was adored in society as "a man of rare and exquisite conversation,"
has left many traces of himself here. No one was so sparkling in
epigram; no one talked so beautifully of love, of which he knew nothing;
and no one talked to delightf