together a little stock, if I can.”  Wit and knowledge thus painfully achieved are usually devoid of grace and charm.  Madame du Deffand made this a reproach against M. Necker as well as his wife “He wants one quality, that which is most conducive to agreeability, a certain readiness which, as it were, provides wits for those with whom one talks; he doesn’t help to bring out what one thinks, and one is more stupid with him than one is all alone or with other folks.”  People of talent, nevertheless, thronged about M. and Madame Necker.  Diderot often went to see them; Galiani, Raynal, Abbe Morellet, M. Suard, quite young yet, were frequenters of the house; Condorcet did not set foot in it, passionately enlisted as he was amongst the disciples of M. Turgot, who were hostile to his successor; Bernardin de St. Pierre never went thither again from the day when the reading of Paul and Virginia had sent the company to sleep.  “At first everybody listens in silence,” says M. Aime Martin; “by degrees attention flags, people whisper, people yawn, nobody listens any more; M. de Buffon looks at his watch and asks for his carriage; the nearest to the door slips out, Thomas falls asleep, M. Necker smiles to see the ladies crying, and the ladies ashamed of their tears dare not acknowledge that they have been interested.”

[Illustration:  The Reading of “Paul and Virginia.”——­427]

The persistent admiration of the general public, and fifty imitations of Paul and Virginia published in a single year, were soon to avenge Bernardin de St. Pierre for the disdainful yawns of the philosophers.  It is pretty certain that Madame Necker’s daughter, little Germaine, if she were present at the reading, did not fall asleep as M. Thomas did, and that she was not ashamed of her tears.

Next to M. Buffon, to whom Madame had vowed a sort of cult, and who was still writing to this faithful friend when he was near his last gasp, M. Thomas had more right than anybody to fall asleep at her house if he thought fit.  Marmontel alone shared with him the really intimate friendship of M. and Madame Necker; the former had given up tragedies and moral tales; a pupil of Voltaire, without the splendor and inexhaustible vigor of his master, he was less prone to license, and his feelings were more serious; he was at that time correcting his Elements de Litterature, but lately published in the Encyclopaedie, and commencing the Memoires d’un pere, pour servir d l’instruction de ses enfants.  Thomas was editing his Eloges, sometimes full of eloquence, often subtle and delicate, always long, unexceptionable, and wearisome.  His noble character had won him the sincere esteem and affection of Madame Necker.  She, laboriously anxious about the duties politeness requires from the mistress of a house, went so far as to write down in her tablets “To recompliment M. Thomas more strongly on the song of France in his poem of Pierre le Grand.”  She paid him