aken this cool dissector of human motives as
a model, she certainly did credit to his teaching. Her curiously
analytical mind is aptly illustrated by her novel method of measuring
her lover's passion. He was in the habit of accompanying her home from
the house of a friend. When he began to cross the square, instead of
going round it, she concluded that his love had diminished in the exact
proportion of two sides of a square to the diagonal. Promoted to the
position of a companion, she devoted herself to the interests of her
restless mistress, read to her, talked with her, wrote plays for her,
and was the animating spirit of the famous Nuits Blanches. While the
duchess was in exile she shared her disgrace, refused to betray her, and
was sent to the Bastille for her loyalty. She resigned herself to her
imprisonment with admirable philosophy, amused herself in the study of
Latin, in watching the gambols of a cat and kitten, and in carrying on
a safe and sentimental flirtation with the fascinating Duc de Richelieu,
who occupied an adjoining cell and passed the hours in singing with her
popular airs from Iphigenie. "Sentimental" is hardly a fitting word to
apply to the coquetries of this remarkably clear and calculating young
woman. She returned with her patroness to Sceaux, found many admirers,
but married finally with an eye to her best worldly interests, and,
it appears, in the main happily--at least, not unhappily. The shade of
difference implies much. She had a keen, penetrating intellect which
nothing escaped, and as it had the peculiar clearness in which people
and events are reflected as in a mirror, her observations are of great
value. "Aside from the prose of Voltaire, I know of none more agreeable
than that of Mme. de Staal de Launay," said Grimm. Her portrait of her
mistress serves to paint herself as well.

"Mme. la Duchesse du Maine, at the age of sixty years, has yet learned
nothing from experience; she is a child of much talent; she has
its defects and its charms. Curious and credulous, she wishes to be
instructed in all the different branches of knowledge; but she is
contented with their surface. The decisions of those who educated her
have become for her principles and rules upon which her mind has never
formed the least doubt; she submits once for all. Her provision for
ideas is made; she rejects the best demonstrated truths and resists the
best reasonings, if they are contrary to the first impressions she