us, envious, wicked, whom one must hate or scorn." To some one who
was eulogizing a mediocre man, adding that all the world was of the
same opinion, she replied, "I make small account of the world, Monsieur,
since I perceive that one can divide it into three parts, les trompeurs,
les trompes, et les trompettes." Still it is life alone that interests
her. Though she is not satisfied with people, she has always the hope
that she will be. In literature she likes only letters and memoirs,
because they are purely human; but the age has nothing that pleases her.
"It is cynical or pedantic," she writes to Voltaire; "there is no grace,
no facility, no imagination. Everything is a la glace, hardness without
force, license without gaiety; no talent, much presumption."

As age came on, and she felt the approach of blindness, she found a
companion in Mlle. de Lespinasse, a young girl of remarkable gifts, who
had an obscure and unacknowledged connection with her family. For
ten years the young woman was a slave to the caprices of her exacting
mistress, reading to her through long nights of wakeful restlessness,
and assisting to entertain her guests. The one thing upon which Mme. du
Deffand most prided herself was frankness. She hated finesse, and had
stipulated that she would not tolerate artifice in any form. It was
her habit to lie awake all night and sleep all day, and as she did not
receive her guests until six o'clock, Mlle. de Lespinasse, whose amiable
character and conversational charm had endeared her at once to the
circle of her patroness, arranged to see her personal friends--among
whom were d'Alembert, Turgot, Chastellux, and Marmontel--in her own
apartments for an hour before the marquise appeared. When this came to
the knowledge of the latter, she fell into a violent rage at what she
chose to regard as a treachery to herself, and dismissed her companion
at once. The result was the opening of a rival salon which carried off
many of her favorite guests, notably d'Alembert, to whom she was much
attached. "If she had died fifteen years earlier, I should not have lost
d'Alembert," was her sympathetic remark when she heard of the death of
Mlle. de Lespinasse.

But the most striking point in the career of this worldly woman was
her friendship for Horace Walpole. When they first met she was nearly
seventy, blind, ill-tempered, bitter, and hopelessly ennuyee. He was not
yet fifty, a brilliant, versatile man of the world, and saw