her only at
long intervals. Their curious correspondence extends over a period of
fifteen years, ending only with her death.

In a letter to Grayson, after meeting her, he writes: "Mme. du Deffand
is now very old and stone blind, but retains all her vivacity, wit,
memory, judgment, passion, and agreeableness. She goes to operas, plays,
suppers, Versailles; gives supper twice a week; has everything new read
to her; makes new songs and epigrams--aye, admirably--and remembers
every one that has been made these fourscore years. She corresponds with
Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him, is no bigot
to him or anybody, and laughs both at the clergy and the philosophers.
In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet
scarce ever in the wrong; her judgment on every subject is as just as
possible; on every point of conduct as wrong as possible; for she is all
love and hatred, passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious
to be loved--I don't mean by lovers--and a vehement enemy openly."

The acquaintance thus begun quickly drilled into an intimacy. Friendship
she calls this absorbing sentiment, but it has all the caprices and
inconsistencies of love. Fed by the imagination, and prevented by
separation from wearing itself out, it became the most permanent
interest of her life. There is something curiously pathetic in the
submissive attitude of this blind, aged, but spirited woman--who scoffs
at sentiment and confesses that she could never love anything--towards
the man who criticizes her, scolds her, crushes back her too ardent
feeling, yet calls her his dear old friend, writes her a weekly letter,
and modestly declares that she "loves him better than all France
together."

The spirit of this correspondence greatly modifies the impression which
her own words, as well as the facts of her career, would naturally give
us. We find in the letters of this period little of the freshness and
spontaneity that lent such a charm to the letters of Mme. de Sevigne and
her contemporaries. Women still write of the incidents of their lives,
the people they meet, their jealousies, their rivalries, their loves,
and their follies; but they think, where they formerly mirrored the
world about them. They analyze, they compare, the criticize, they
formulate their own emotions, they add opinions to facts. The gaiety,
the sparkle, the wit, the play of feeling, is not there. Occasionally
there is t