Nothing, perhaps, could have so wounded Marivaux as this imputation, for few writers have been actuated by purer and more noble motives, and it was with difficulty that he restrained his impulse to call upon the assembled company for justification.[161] This is but another instance of his extreme sensibility, for, despite the criticism more or less just, the spirit of the discourse was both kindly and complimentary, as may be seen from these closing words:  “J’ai rendu justice, monsieur, a la beaute de votre genie, a sa fecondite, a ses agrements:  rendez-la, je vous prie, de votre part, au ministere saint dont je suis charge; et en sa faveur, pardonnez-moi une critique qui ne deroge point, ni a ce qui est du d’estime a votre aimable caractere, ni a ce qui est du d’eloge a la multitude, a la variete, a la gentillesse de vos ouvrages."[162]

No sooner was Marivaux a member of the French Academy than epigrams, such as this, began to be showered upon him:  “Il eut ete mieux place a l’Academie des Sciences, comme inventeur d’un idiome nouveau, qu’a l’Academie Francaise, dont assurement il ne connaissait pas la langue."[163]

From the time of his admission to the French Academy until his death he wrote little of value.  A Lettre a une dame sur la perte d’un perroquet, in verse, may serve to represent the decline of his genius.  His popularity waned and was eclipsed by that of the vigorous writers and philosophical thinkers that followed him.  His graceful sketches were soon to be forgotten in those terrible scenes that closed the century, which the most morbid and foreboding mind could scarcely have foreseen or pictured in the lurid colourings that history has painted them.  His closing years were embittered by a knowledge of his failing powers and a growing suspiciousness of those about him, and his increasing poverty would have made his sufferings more keen, had it not been for the generous devotion of a friend, Mlle. de Saint-Jean, with whom he lived for the last few years of his life, in her apartments, rue de Richelieu, and whose modest fortune he shared.  He died on February 12,[164] “after a rather long illness,"[165] which he bore with fortitude, and “with all the tranquillity of a Christian philosopher"[166] saw the inevitable end approach.  His death passed almost unnoticed by his contemporaries.

Although at the time of his death he was seventy-five years of age, as Colle records in his journal, “he did not seem to be fifty-eight."[167] He had that gift, which none but his own light-hearted time has known, of warding off, if not old age itself, at least the appearance of it.  And from that first half of the eighteenth century, that period of perennial youth, have come down to us those ever fresh and rose-hued creations, which are our charm to-day, recalling, as they do, a society long past, a brilliancy of wit, of conversation well-nigh forgotten, a gayety, a thoughtlessness, which we of the money-loving, practical, and scientific twentieth century may long for, but not know.