he
reasoners and beaux esprits "who direct the age and lead it to its
ruin." There were conservative women, too, who used their powerful
influence against them. It was in the salon of the delicate but ardent
young Princesse de Robecq that Palissot was inspired to write
the satirical comedy of "The Philosophers," in which Rousseau was
represented as entering on all fours, browsing a lettuce, and the
Encyclopedists were so mercilessly ridiculed. This spirited and heroic
daughter-in-law of the Duchesse de Luxembourg, the powerful patroness of
Rousseau, was hopelessly ill at the time, and, in a caustic reply to the
clever satire, the abbe Morellet did not spare the beautiful invalid who
desired for her final consolation only to see its first performance and
be able to say, "Now, Lord, thou lettest thy servant depart in peace,
for mine eyes have seen vengeance." The cruel attack was thought to have
hastened her death, and the witty abbe was sent to the Bastille; but
he came out in two months, went away for a time, and returned a greater
hero than ever. There is a picture, full of pathetic significance, which
represents the dying princess on her pillow, crowned with a halo of
sanctity, as she devotes her last hours to the defense of the faith she
loves. One is reminded of the sweet and earnest souls of Port Royal; but
her vigorous protest, which furnished only a momentary target for the
wit of the philosophers, was lost in the oncoming wave of skepticism.

The vogue of these men received its final stamp in the admiring
patronage of the greatest sovereigns in Europe. Voltaire had his
well-known day of power at the court of Frederick the Great. Grimm and
Diderot, too, were honored guests of that most liberal of despots, and
discussed their novel theories in familiar fashion with Catherine II,
at St. Petersburg. The reply of this astute and clear-sighted empress
to the eloquent plea of Diderot may be commended for its wisdom to the
dreamers and theorists of today.

"I have heard, with the greatest pleasure, all that your brilliant
intellect has inspired you to say; but with all your grand principles,
which I comprehend very well, one makes fine books and bad business. You
forget in all your plans of reform the difference of our two positions.
You work only on paper, which permits everything; it is quite smooth and
pliant, and opposes no obstacles to your imagination nor to your pen;
while I, poor empress, I work upon the human