y will not return often.
Nature, in placing you in an ordinary position, has given you something
to relieve it. Your soul is noble and elevated, and you will never
remain in a crowd. It is the same with your person. It is distinguished
and attracts attention, without being beautiful. There is something
piquante about you... You have two things which do not often go
together: you are sweet and strong; your gaiety adorns you and relaxes
your nerves, which are too tense... You are extremely refined; you have
divined the world."

The age of portraits was not quite passed, and the privilege of seeing
one's self in the eyes of one's friends was still accorded, a fact to
which we owe many striking if sometimes rather highly colored pictures.
A few words from d'Alembert are of twofold interest. He writes some
years later:

"The regard one has for you does not depend alone upon your external
charms; it depends, above all, upon your intellect and your character.
That which distinguishes you in society is the art of saying to every
one the fitting word and that art is very simple with you; it consists
in never speaking of yourself to others, and much of themselves. It is
an infallible means of pleasing; thus you please every one, though
it happens that all the world pleases you; you know even how to avoid
repelling those who are least agreeable."

This epitome of the art of pleasing may be commended for its wisdom,
aside from the very delightful picture it gives of an amiable and
attractive woman. Again he writes:

"The excellence of your tone would not be a distinction for one reared
in a court, and speaking only the language she has learned. In you it is
a merit very real and very rare. You have brought it from the seclusion
of a province, where you met no one who could teach you. You were, in
this regard, as perfect the day after your arrival at Paris as you are
today. You found yourself, from the first, as free, as little out of
place in the most brilliant and most critical society as if you had
passed your life there; you have felt its usages before knowing them,
which implies a justness and fineness of tact very unusual, an exquisite
knowledge of les convenances."

It was her innate tact and social instinct, combined with rare gifts of
intellect and great conversational charm, that gave this woman without
name, beauty, or fortune so exceptional a position, and her salon so
distinguished a place among the brilliant cent