Galiani, St. Lambert, and Diderot. They all flattered her outrageously to her face, while some of them, Marmontel especially, sneered at her behind her back. All made love to her, and, misled by the studied warmth of pompous eloquence with which she proclaimed her delight in their society, they not rarely persuaded themselves that they had added her to the list of their conquests, and were chagrined and not a little disgusted later to discover that the only man she cared for was her husband. Indeed, she bored everybody with praise of M. Necker, composing and reading aloud in her own salon a preposterous portrait of him, in which she compared him to most things in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth, from an angel to a polypus. Her rigidity, her self-consciousness, her want of charm, and absence of humour, were a fruitful theme of ridicule to the witty and heartless parasites who crowded her drawing-rooms and made raids on her husband's purse. And yet such was the native force of goodness in her that, sooner or later, in every instance, detraction turned to praise. The bitter Madame de Genlis, who detested the Neckers, and ridiculed them unsparingly, admits that the wife was a model of virtue; and Diderot paid her the greatest compliment which she, perhaps, ever received, when declaring that had he known her sooner, much that he had written would never have seen the light.
Grimm was another frequenter of the Necker salons; and the mistress of the house being no less prodigal of gracious encouragement towards him than towards everybody else, he also eventually declared his sentiments of friendship and admiration, with as much warmth as his manners allowed of. Like Voltaire,
