ctual vanity,
without the imagination to comprehend fully an individuality quite
remote from all her preconceived ideas. She was slow to accept the fact
that her system of education was at fault, and her failure to mold
her daughter after her own models was long a source of grief and
disappointment. She was ambitious too, and had not won her position
without many secret wounds. When misfortunes came, the blows that fell
upon her husband struck with double force into her own heart. She was
destined to share with him the chill of censure and neglect, the bitter
sting of ingratitude, the lonely isolation of one fallen from a high
place, whose friendship and whose favors count no more.

In the solitude of Coppet, where she died at fifty-seven, during the
last and darkest days of the Revolution, perhaps she realized in the
tireless devotion of her husband and the loving care of Mme. de Stael
the repose of heart which the brilliant world of Paris never gave her.

With all her gifts, which have left many records that may be read,
and in spite of a few shadows that fall more or less upon all earthly
relations, not the least of her legacies to posterity was the beautiful
example, rarer then than now, of that true and sympathetic family life
in which lies the complete harmony of existence, a safeguard against
the storms of passion, a perennial fount of love that keeps the spirit
young, the tranquility out of which spring the purest flowers of human
happiness and human endeavor.

There were many salons of lesser note which have left agreeable
memories. It would be pleasant to recall other clever and beautiful
women whose names one meets so often in the chronicles of the time, and
whose faces, conspicuous for their clear, strong outlines, still look
out upon us from the galleries that perpetuate its life; but the list is
too long and would lead us too far. From the moving procession of social
leaders who made the age preceding the Revolution so brilliant I have
chosen only the few who were most widely known, and who best represent
its dominant types and its special phases.

The most remarkable period of the literary salons was really closed with
the death of Mme. du Deffand, in 1780. Mme. Geoffrin had already been
dead three years, and Mlle. de Lespinasse, four. Some of the most noted
of the philosophers and men of letters were also gone, others were
past the age of forming fresh ties, the young men belonged to another
generati