own house; it was simply a change of decorations; often enough for weeks together she had supper every night with the same half-dozen persons.  The entertainment, apart from the supper itself, hardly varied.  Occasionally there was a little music, more often there were cards and gambling.  Madame du Deffand disliked gambling, but she loathed going to bed, and, if it came to a choice between the two, she did not hesitate:  once, at the age of seventy-three, she sat up till seven o’clock in the morning playing vingt-et-un with Charles Fox.  But distractions of that kind were merely incidental to the grand business of the night—­the conversation.  In the circle that, after an eight hours’ sitting, broke up reluctantly at two or three every morning to meet again that same evening at six, talk continually flowed.  For those strange creatures it seemed to form the very substance of life itself.  It was the underlying essence, the circumambient ether, in which alone the pulsations of existence had their being; it was the one eternal reality; men might come and men might go, but talk went on for ever.  It is difficult, especially for those born under the Saturnine influence of an English sky, quite to realise the nature of such conversation.  Brilliant, charming, easy-flowing, gay and rapid it must have been; never profound, never intimate, never thrilling; but also never emphatic, never affected, never languishing, and never dull.  Madame du Deffand herself had a most vigorous flow of language.  ‘Ecoutez!  Ecoutez!’ Walpole used constantly to exclaim, trying to get in his points; but in vain; the sparkling cataract swept on unheeding.  And indeed to listen was the wiser part—­to drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one’s whole soul to the pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought.  Then at moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of radiant jewels, which one caught as one might.  Some of these have come down to us.  Her remark on Montesquieu’s great book—­’C’est de l’esprit sur les lois’—­is an almost final criticism.  Her famous ‘mot de Saint Denis,’ so dear to the heart of Voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded.  A garrulous and credulous Cardinal was describing the martyrdom of Saint Denis the Areopagite:  when his head was cut off, he took it up and carried it in his hands.  That, said the Cardinal, was well known; what was not well known was the extraordinary fact that he walked with his head under his arm all the way from Montmartre to the Church of Saint Denis—­a distance of six miles.  ‘Ah, Monseigneur!’ said Madame du Deffand, ’dans une telle situation, il n’y a que le premier pas qui coute.’  At two o’clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests began to go; the dreadful moment was approaching.  If Madame de Gramont happened to be there, there was still some hope, for Madame de Gramont abhorred going to bed almost as much as Madame du Deffand.  Or there was just a chance that the Duc de Choiseul might come in at the last moment, and stay on for a couple of hours.  But at length it was impossible to hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door.  She swept off, but it was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was ordered to drive about the Boulevards for an hour before going home.