en
singularly free from the small vanities and vulgar ambitions so often
met there. She loved simple pleasures and the peaceful scenes of the
country. "What more have we to desire when we can enjoy the pleasures
of friendship and of nature?" she writes. "We may then pass lightly over
the small troubles of life." She counsels repose to her more restless
friend, and her warm expressions of affection have always the ring of
sincerity, which contrasts agreeably with the artificial tone of the
time. Mme. d'Houdetot lived to a great age, preserving always her
youthfulness of spirit and sweet serenity of temper, in spite of sharp
domestic sorrows. She took refuge from these in the life-long friendship
of Saint-Lambert, for whom Mme. Necker has usually a gracious message.
It is a curious commentary upon the manners of the age that one so rigid
and severe should have chosen for her intimate companionship two women
whose lives were so far removed from her own ideal of reserved decorum.
But she thought it best to ignore errors which her world did not regard
as grave, if she was conscious of them at all.

One finds greater pleasure in recalling her ardent and romantic
attachment to the granddaughter of the Marechale de Luxembourg, the
lovely Amelie de Boufflers, Duchesse de Lauzun, whose pen-portrait she
sketched so gracefully and so tenderly; whose gentle sweetness and shy
delicacy, in the rather oppressive glare of her surroundings, suggest
a modest wild flower astray among the pretentious beauties of the
hothouse, and whose untimely death on the scaffold has left her fragrant
memory entwined with a garland of cypress. But we cannot dwell upon the
intimate phases of this friendship, whose fine quality is shown in the
few scattered leaves of a correspondence overflowing with the wealth of
two rare though unequally gifted natures.

At a later period her husband's position in the ministry, and the
pronounced opinions of her brilliant daughter, gave to the salon of
Mme. Necker a marked political and semi-revolutionary coloring. Her
inclinations always led her to literary diversions, rather than to the
discussion of economic questions, but as Mme. de Stael gradually took
the scepter that was falling from her hand, she found it difficult to
guide the conversation into its old channels. Her pale, thoughtful face,
her gentle manner, her soft and penetrating voice, all indicated an
exquisitely feminine quality quite in unison with the sp