he tone of passion, as in the letters of Mlle. Aisse and Mlle.
de Lespinasse, but this is rare. Even passion has grown sophisticated
and deals with phrases. There is more or less artificiality in the
exchange of written thoughts. Mme. du Deffand thinks while she writes,
and what she sees takes always the color of her own intelligence. She
complains of her inability to catch the elusive quality, the clearness,
the flexibility of Mme. de Sevigne, whom she longs to rival because
Walpole so admires her. But if she lacks the vivacity, the simplicity,
the poetic grace of her model, she has qualities not less striking,
though less lovable. Her keen insight is unfailing. With masterly
penetration she grasps the essence of things. No one has portrayed
so concisely and so vividly the men and women of her time. No one has
discriminated between the shades of character with such nicety. No one
has so clearly fathomed the underlying motives of action. No one has
forecast the outcome of theories and events with such prophetic vision.
The note of bitterness and cynicism is always there. The nature of the
woman reveals itself in every line: keen, dry, critical, with clear
ideals which she can never hope to attain. But we feel that she has
stripped off the rags of pretension and brought us face to face with
realities. "All that I can do is to love you with all my heart, as I
have done for about fifty years," wrote Voltaire. "How could I fail to
love you? Your soul seeks always the true; it is a quality as rare as
truth itself." So far does she carry her hatred of insincerity that one
is often tempted to believe she affects a freedom from affectation. "I
am so fatigued with the vanity of others that I avoid the occasion of
having any myself," she writes. Is there not here a trace of the quality
she so despises?

But beneath all this runs the swift undercurrent of an absorbing
passion. A passion of friendship it may be, but it forces itself through
the arid shells of conventionalism; it is at once the agony and the
consolation of a despairing soul. Heartless, Mme. du Deffand is called,
and her life seems to prove the truth of the verdict; but these letters
throb and palpitate with feeling which she laughs at, but cannot still.
It is the cry of the soul for what it has not; what the world cannot
give; what it has somehow missed out of a cold, hard, restless, and
superficial existence. With a need of loving, she is satisfied with no
one. The