also the honours of literature ? . . . M. Dorat, who thinks
he has reason to complain of her, has allowed himself to
take vengeance in a play called *Les PrSneurs.' Several
persons who have heard it read think it has more invention
and more gaiety than M. Dorat has put into his other come-
dies. The play turns on a young man whom they want to
initiate into the mysteries of the modern philosophy, and to
whom, in consequence, they teach the methods of acquiring
celebrity in the quickest manner. M. d'Alembert and Mile,
de Lespinasse play the chief roles. The story is told that
one of their most zealous admirers, an old courtier who is
very hard of hearing, when the plot of the new play was
read before him, seeing every one about him ecstatic, cried
out, louder than any of them, 'There now! that is good
comedy.' "
We now know the friends who occupied the mind of Mile, de Lespiuasse ; we have next to speak of those who filled her heart. . . .
But here we must turn to the sketch of M. de Mora and M. de Guibert, and to the picture of the love, the passion, the remorse that consumed her life contained in Sainte- Beuve's essay which precedes these Notes. All further analysis would be superfluous, for what can be needed after the sympathetic but judicial insight of that true discerner of men and women ?
Nevertheless, for a clear understanding of the following letters, which are full of allusions that need a clue, it is well to refer once more to the particular fact that imderlies them, namely : the struggle in her soul between her love for M. de Mora and her passion for M. de Guibert. All the letters up to the time of M. de Mora's death have this struggle for their key-note, — a struggle naturally full of inconsistencies. After his death her remorse begins, and, embittered by M, de
