Stanislas, King of Poland, her protege, whom she had rescued from the debtor’s prison in Paris, and to whom she had shown many favors, upon being elected King of Poland in 1764, said to her:  Maman, votre fils est roi [Mamma, your son is king].  Two years later, when she paid him a visit, the leading members of the Polish nobility met her on the road, and the king had a special residence prepared for her.  As she passed through Vienna, Joseph II. received her, and the Empress Maria entertained her at dinner.  Upon her return to Paris, after this triumphal tour through Europe, the members of the world of literature and art, and even the ministers and the nobility, flocked to see her; this demonstration was the more remarkable from the fact that she wielded no political influence, her only desire and pleasure seeming to lie in aiding her friends.

Mme. Geoffrin was too practical and had too much good common sense to be vain.  The majority of men were influenced by and favored her, and, which seemed strange, she had few enemies among her own sex.  Mme. Necker said:  “The old age of Mme. Geoffrin is like that of old trees, whose age we know by the space they cover and the quantity of roots they spread.  She has seen all the illustrious men of the century; she has discovered, with sagacity, their peculiarities and their defects.  She judges them by their conduct, never by their talents.”

In her best years, she was intimately associated with the Encyclopaedists, to whom she paid over one hundred thousand francs for the publication of their work.  Of all the great women of that century, she was the closest friend of the philosophers and free-thinkers, being called La Fontenelle des Femmes.  She was always ready with an answer; one day a friend pointed out to her the house of the farmer-general Bouvet, and asked her:  “Have you ever seen anything as magnificent and in better taste?” She replied:  “I would have nothing to say if Bouvet were the frotteur [floor polisher] of it.”

Mme. Geoffrin, more than any other woman of the salons, possessed the three essential qualifications of a salon leader,—­good sense, tact, and intelligence.  She had also esprit, perfect simplicity, precision, and faultless taste; though a sceptic, she was a diplomat who perfectly understood the art of manoeuvring.  In short, Mme. Geoffrin was an intellectual authority, a sort of minister to society, and her salon was the great centre and rendezvous, a veritable institution of the eighteenth century.  This seems the more remarkable when we consider that she belonged to the bourgeoisie, and that by dint of her exquisite tact, her almost infallible judgment, her admirable taste in dress, and her keen intelligence, she created for herself a position which was the envy of all Europe.  Such women are rare.  During the last eighteen months of her life, though suffering from paralysis and rheumatism, which she contracted at a religious fete at Notre-Dame, she was unremitting in her attention to her friends and the poor; and up to her death, in 1777, her friends were faithful to her.