frin had
perhaps the least claim to intellectual preeminence. The secret of her
power must have lain in some intangible quality that has failed to
be perpetuated in any of her sayings or doings. A few commonplace and
ill-spelled letters, a few wise or witty words, are all the direct
record she has left of herself. Without rank, beauty, youth, education,
or remarkable mental gifts of a sort that leave permanent traces, she
was the best representative of the women of her time who held their
place in the world solely through their skill in organizing and
conducting a salon. She was in no sense a luminary; and conscious that
she could not shine by her own light, she was bent upon shining by that
of others. But, in a social era so brilliant, even this implied talent
of a high order. A letter to the Empress of Russia, in reply to a
question concerning her early education, throws a ray of light upon her
youth and her peculiar training.

"I lost my father and mother," she writes, "in the cradle. I was brought
up by an aged grandmother, who had much intelligence and a well-balanced
head. She had very little education; but her mind was so clear, so
ready, so active, that it never failed her; it served always in the
place of knowledge. She spoke so agreeably of the things she did not
know that no one wished her to understand them better; and when her
ignorance was too visible, she got out of it by pleasantries which
baffled the pedants who tried to humiliate her. She was so contented
with her lot that she looked upon knowledge as a very useless thing for
a woman. She said: 'I have done without it so well that I have never
felt the need of it. If my granddaughter is stupid, learning will make
her conceited and insupportable; if she has talent and sensibility, she
will do as I have done--supply by address and with sentiment what she
does not know; when she becomes more reasonable, she will learn that for
which she has the most aptitude, and she will learn it very quickly.'
She taught me in my childhood simply to read, but she made me read much;
she taught me to think by making me reason; she taught me to know men
by making me say what I thought of them, and telling me also the opinion
she had formed. She required me to render her an account of all my
movements and all my feelings, correcting them with so much sweetness
and grace that I never concealed from her anything that I thought or
felt; my internal life was as visible as my ex