mere presence may have had some effect upon him at the last.
On the brink of the irrevocable, even the pride of controversy may come to be a little thing; and Buffon's wearied spirit perhaps recoiled from further speculation on the eternal problem of futurity. And to be at one, in that supreme moment, with the pitying woman who had come to solace his final agony, may have weighed with him above the praise and blame over which the grave was to triumph for ever.
Madame Necker delighted in making herself miserable, and the melancholia natural to him probably caused Thomas to be the most thoroughly congenial to her of all her friends. The author of the Petréide and the foe of the Encyclopædists, he enjoyed during his life a celebrity which posterity has not confirmed. He was the originator of the unhappy style of writing in which Madame Necker so delighted that she modelled her own upon it. For the rest, he was a man of extremely austere and simple life, as well as of very honest character. Passion was unknown to him, unless, indeed, the profound and sentimental esteem which he felt for Madame Necker was of a nature under more favourable treatment to have developed into love. If so, she found the way in his case, as in all, to restrain his feelings within platonic bounds, and indulged him chiefly with affecting promises not to forget him when she should be translated to heaven.
Madame Necker may be said to have touched the zenith of social distinction the day on which the Maréchale de Luxembourg entered her salon. This charming old lady and exquisite grande dame, the
