The women do not seem of the same country:  if they are less gay than they were, they are more informed, enough to make them very conversable.  I know six or seven with very superior understandings; some of them with wit, or with softness, or very good sense.

[Illustration:  THOMAS GRAY, THE POET.

From a drawing in the National Portrait Gallery by James Basire, after a sketch by Gray’s friend and biographer, the Rev. William Mason.]

Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with.  Great quickness in discovering characters, penetration in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a likeness—­seldom a favourable one.  She exacts and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility, great court and attention.  This she acquires by a thousand little arts and offices of friendship:  and by a freedom and severity, which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to her; for she insists on scolding those she inveigles to her.  She has little taste and less knowledge, but protects artisans and authors, and courts a few people to have the credit of serving her dependents.  She was bred under the famous Madame Tencin,[1] who advised her never to refuse any man; for, said her mistress, though nine in ten should not care a farthing for you, the tenth may live to be an useful friend.  She did not adopt or reject the whole plan, but fully retained the purport of the maxim.  In short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and punishments.  Her great enemy, Madame du Deffand,[2] was for a short time mistress of the Regent, is now very old and stoneblind, but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, passions, and agreeableness.  She goes to Operas, Plays, suppers, and Versailles; gives suppers twice a week; has everything new read to her; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably, and remembers every one that has been made these four-score years.  She corresponds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him, is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both at the clergy and the philosophers.  In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarce ever in the wrong:  her judgment on every subject is as just as possible; on every point of conduct as wrong as possible:  for she is all love and hatred, passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious to be loved, I don’t mean by lovers, and a vehement enemy, but openly.  As she can have no amusement but conversation, the least solitude and ennui are insupportable to her, and put her into the power of several worthless people, who eat her suppers when they can eat nobody’s of higher rank; wink to one another and laugh at her; hate her because she has forty times more parts—­and venture to hate her because she is not rich.[3] She has an old friend whom I must mention, a Monsieur Pondeveyle,