The Women of the French Salons (Paperback)

Excerpt: ... preached la belle galanterie to some who went a little beyond it. I was of the two parties; I dogmatized in the morning and sang in the evening." The two eminent Greek Scholars, La Motte and Mme. Dacier, held spirited discussions on the merits of Homer, which came near ending in permanent ill-feeling, but the amiable hostess gave a dinner for them, "they drank to the health of the poet, and all was forgotten." The war between the partizans of the old and the new was as lively then as it is today. "La Motte and Fontenelle prefer the moderns," said the caustic Mme. du Deffand; "but the ancients are dead, and the moderns are themselves." The names of Sainte-Aulaire, de Sacy, Mairan, President Henault, and others equally scholarly and witty, suffice to indicate the quality of the conversation, which treated lightly and gracefully of the most serious things. The Duchesse du Maine and her clever companion, Mlle. de Launay were often among the guests; also the beautiful and brilliant Mme. de Caylus, a niece of Mme. de Maintenon, whom some poetical critic has styled "the last flower of the seventeenth century." Sainte-Aulaire, tired of the perpetual excitement at Sceaux, characterized this salon by a witty quatrain: Je suis las de l'esprit, il me met en courroux, Il me renverse la cervelle; Lambert, je viens chercher un asile chez vous, Entre La Motte et Fontenelle. The wits of the day launched many a shaft of satire against it, as they had against the Hotel de Rambouillet a century earlier; but it was an intellectual center of great influence, and was regarded as the sanctuary of old manners as well as the asylum of new liberties. Its decorous character gave it the epithet of "very respectable;" but this eminently respectable company, which represented the purest taste of the time, often included Adrienne Lecouvreur, who was much more remarkable for talent than for respectability. We have a direct glimpse of it through the pen of d'Artenson: "I have just...