exterior; then her fingers began to itch, and she could resist no longer—­she gave way to her besetting temptation.  It is impossible not to sympathise with Rousseau’s remark about her—­’J’aimai mieux encore m’exposer au fleau de sa haine qu’a celui de son amitie.’  There, sitting in her great Diogenes-tub of an armchair—­her ‘tonneau’ as she called it—­talking, smiling, scattering her bons mots, she went on through the night, in the remorseless secrecy of her heart, tearing off the masks from the faces that surrounded her.  Sometimes the world in which she lived displayed itself before her horrified inward vision like some intolerable and meaningless piece of clock-work mechanism: 

J’admirais hier au soir la nombreuse compagnie qui etait chez moi; hommes et femmes me paraissaient des machines a ressorts, qui allaient, venaient, parlaient, riaient, sans penser, sans reflechir, sans sentir; chacun jouait son role par habitude:  Madame la Duchesse d’Aiguillon crevait de rire, Mme. de Forcalquier dedaignait tout, Mme. de la Valliere jabotait sur tout.  Les hommes ne jouaient pas de meilleurs roles, et moi j’etais abimee dans les reflexions les plus noires; je pensai que j’avais passe ma vie dans les illusions; que je m’etais creusee tous les abimes dans lesquels j’etais tombee.

At other times she could see around her nothing but a mass of mutual hatreds, into which she was plunged herself no less than her neighbours: 

Je ramenai la Marechale de Mirepoix chez elle; j’y descendis, je causai une heure avec elle; je n’en fus pas mecontente.  Elle hait la petite Idole, elle hait la Marechale de Luxembourg; enfin, sa haine pour tous les gens qui me deplaisent me fit lui pardonner l’indifference et peut-etre la haine qu’elle a pour moi.  Convenez que voila une jolie societe, un charmant commerce.

Once or twice for several months together she thought that she had found in the Duchesse de Choiseul a true friend and a perfect companion.  But there was one fatal flaw even in Madame de Choiseul:  she was perfect!—­’Elle est parfaite; et c’est un plus grand defaut qu’on ne pense et qu’on ne saurait imaginer.’  At last one day the inevitable happened—­she went to see Madame de Choiseul, and she was bored.  ’Je rentrai chez moi a une heure, penetree, persuadee qu’on ne peut etre content de personne.’

One person, however, there was who pleased her; and it was the final irony of her fate that this very fact should have been the last drop that caused the cup of her unhappiness to overflow.  Horace Walpole had come upon her at a psychological moment.  Her quarrel with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse and the Encyclopaedists had just occurred; she was within a few years of seventy; and it must have seemed to her that, after such a break, at such an age, there was little left for her to do but to die quietly.  Then the gay, talented, fascinating Englishman appeared, and she suddenly found that, so far from her life