r, there was a scene, and Cirey was a paradise no more.
She came to Paris, ill, sad, and penniless. She wrote "Les Lettres
d'une Peruvienne" and found herself famous. She wrote "Cenie," which was
played at the Comedie Francaise, and her success was established. Then
she wrote another drama. "She read it to me," says one of her friends;
"I found it bad; she found me ill-natured. It was played; the public
died of ennui and the author of chagrin." "I am convinced that
misfortune will follow me into paradise," she said. At all events, it
seems to have followed her to the entrance.

Her salon was more or less celebrated. The freedom of the conversations
may be inferred from the fact that Helvetius gathered there the
materials for his "De l'Esprit," a book condemned by the Pope, the
Parliament, and the Sorbonne. It was here also that he found his
charming wife, a niece of Mme. de Graffigny, and the light of her house
as afterwards of his own.

A more permanent interest is attached to the famous dinners of Baron
d'Holbach, where twice a week men like Diderot, Helvetius, Grimm,
Marmontel, Duclos, the Abbe Galiani and for a time Buffon and Rousseau,
met in an informal way to enjoy the good cheer and good wines of this
"maitre d'hotel of philosophy," and discuss the affairs of the universe.
The learned and free-thinking baron was agreeable, kind, rich, and
lavish in his hospitality, but without pretension. "He was a man simply
simple," said Mme. Geoffrin. We have many pleasant glimpses of his
country place at Grandval, with its rich and rare collections, its
library, its pictures, its designs, and of the beautiful wife who turned
the heads of some of the philosophers, whom, as a rule, she did not like
overmuch, though she received them so graciously. "We dine well and a
long time," wrote Diderot. "We talk of art, of poetry, of philosophy,
and of love, of the greatness and vanity of our own enterprises... Of
gods and kings, of space and time, of death and of life."

"They say things to make a thunderbolt strike the house a hundred times,
if it struck for that," said the Abbe Morellet.

Among the few women admitted to these dinners was Mme. d'Epinay, for
whom d'Holbach, as well as his amiable wife, always entertained the
warmest friendship. This woman, whose position was not assured enough
to make people overlook her peculiar and unfortunate domestic
complications, has told the story of her own life in her long and
confidential