and friendship lies all my happiness," said
this astronomer, metaphysician, and mathematician, who wrote against
revelation and went to mass with her free-thinking lover. Her learning
and eccentricities made her the target for many shafts of ridicule, but
she counted for much with Voltaire, and her chief title to fame lies in
his long and devoted friendship. He found the "sublime and respectable
Emilie" the incarnation of all the virtues, though a trifle
ill-tempered. The contrast between his kindly portrait and those of her
feminine friends is striking and rather suggestive.

"She joined to the taste for glory a simplicity which does not always
accompany it, but which is often the fruit of serious studies. No woman
was ever so learned, and no one deserves less to be called a femme
savante. Born with a singular eloquence, this eloquence manifested
itself only when she found subjects worthy of it... The fitting word,
precision, justness, and force were the characteristics of her style.
She would rather write like Pascal and Nicole than like Mme. de Sevigne;
but this severe strength and this vigorous temper of her mind did not
render her inaccessible to the beauties of sentiment. The charms of
poetry and eloquence penetrated her, and no one was ever more sensitive
to harmony... She gave herself to the great world as to study.
Everything that occupies society was in her province except scandal.
She was never known to repeat an idle story. She had neither time nor
disposition to give attention to such things, and when told that some
one had done her an injustice, she replied that she did not wish to hear
about it."

"She led him a life a little hard," said Mme. de Graffigny, after
her quarrel; but he seems to have found it agreeable, and broke his
heart--for a short time--when she died. "I have lost half of my being,"
he wrote--"a soul for which mine was made." To Marmontel he says: "Come
and share my sorrow. I have lost my illustrious friend. I am in despair.
I am inconsolable." One cannot believe that so clear-sighted a man, even
though a poet, could live for twenty years under the spell of a pure
illusion. What heart revelations, what pictures of contemporary life,
were lost in the eight large volumes of his letters which were destroyed
at her death!

While Mme. de Tencin studied men and affairs, Mme. du Chatelet studied
books. One was mistress of the arts of diplomacy, gentle but intriguing,
ambitious, always courti