This new circle was the point of union for all the philosophical reformers.  Here D’Alembert and Diderot led the conversation; and the renowned head of the political economists, Tuergot, who was afterward minister of state, was a member of this bolder circle of men who became celebrated and ill-renowned under the name of Encyclopaedists.  We shall enter upon a fuller consideration of the tone and taste which reigned in this assembly, as well as in the society which met in the house of Holbach, and of the history of the Encyclopaedia, in the following period, and shall only now mention at the conclusion of the present, and that very slightly, some of the other clever societies of Parisians who were all in their day celebrated in Europe.  It is scarcely possible for us to judge of the charm which these societies possessed in the great world.  This may be best learned from their own writings and conversation, a specimen of which may be found in Marmontel’s ‘Memoirs,’ and formed the subject of a conversation between him and the Duke of Brunswick (who fell at Jena in 1806) and his duchess.

The society of beaux esprits which met at the house of Madame de Popliniere, in the time of Madame de Tencin, was only short-lived, like the good fortune of the lady herself.  In her house there assembled members of the great world who were addicted to carousing and debauchery, and learned men who sought to obtain their favor and approbation.  The same sort of society was afterward kept up in the house of Holbach.  A smaller society, which frequented the house of the farmer-general Pelletier, consisted of unmarried people, who were known as persons who indulged in malicious and licentious conversation.  Colle, the younger Crebillon and Bernard, who, notwithstanding his helplessness, was called le gentil, played the chief characters in this reunion, and the Gascon nature of Marmontel, which was always forward and intrusive, helped him into this society also.  Baron Holbach, who was a native of the Palatinate, and the able Helvetius who was wanton merely from vanity, brought together expressly and intentionally at a later period, around their well-spread table, all those who declared open war against religion and morality.  We must, however, return to these men in the following period.

Holbach for a whole quarter of a century had regular dinner-parties on Sundays, which are celebrated in the history of atheism.  All those were invited, who were too bold and too out-spoken for Geoffrin; and even D’Alembert also at a later period withdrew from their society.

Grimm, whose copious correspondence has also been published in the nineteenth century, gives minutes and notices of all the memorable sayings and doings that served to entertain and occupy the polite world in Europe.  Grimm also entertained and feasted these distinguished gentlemen.  He was not at that time consul for Gotha, or employed and paid by that court or the Empress Catherine to collect Parisian anecdotes, neither had he then been made a baron, but was merely civil secretary of Count von Friese.  Both J.J.  Rousseau and Buffon belonged at first to these societies; but the former, in great alarm, broke off all intercourse with the people who then played the first parts in Paris, and the other quietly retired.