Mile, de Lespinasse was twenty-two years of age when
she came to take the situation thus foreshadowed. Mme.
du Deffand was fifty-seven, and already nearly blind. Long
since celebrated for her wit, she was beginning to be so
for her salon, where, side by side with men of letters, were
found all that aristocracy could then present that was most
distinguished for taste and intellect. Mile, de Lespinasse,
on her first entrance to a world so new to her, was not out of
place. Her tact, her intelligence won all suffrages ; we find
the proof of it in the praises bestowed upon her by such good
judges as the Chevalier d'Aydie, the Prince de Beauvau, and
President H^nault. The qualities she may have lacked she
soon acquired by contact with the most polished society that
ever existed. " See what an education I received ! " she says
herself. " Mme. du Deffand, President Hdnault, the Abb^
Bon, the Archbishop of Toulouse, the Archbishop of Aix,
M. Turgot, M. d'Alembert, the Abb^ de Boismont, — these
are the persons who taught me to speak and to think, and
who have deigned to consider me as something."
This life in common lasted ten years, from 1754 to 1764. Begun under such auspices, for what reason did it become a burden to the one who proposed it and to the other who accepted it ? How came it to end in an open rupture which had all the importance of an event, and actually divided, almost into two camps, the society of that day ? Evidently there were faults on both sides : Mme. du Deffand abusing the superiority which her rank and her role as protectress gave her over Mile, de Lespinasse ; and the latter allowing, little by little, indifference and coldness to take the place of her early interest and zeal. But the true determining cause of the rupture was the rivalry, the jealousy perhaps, which grew up between the two women. We recall Mme. du Def- fand's words in the foregoing letter : " There is a point on
