The simple furnishings of her apartments, which were very spacious and had been occupied by the famous Mme. de Montespan, stood out in striking contrast to the elegance of her visitors.  Here she gathered about her her two lovers, le President Henault and Pont de Veyle, besides D’Alembert, Turgot, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Necker, Walpole, the Abbes Barthelemy and Pernetty, the Chevalier de Lisle, de Formant, le Docteur Gatti, Hume, Gibbon, Baron de Gleichen, and many other celebrities, including the Princesses de Beauvau, de Poix, de Talmont, the Duchesses de Choiseul, d’Aiguillon, de Gramont, the Marechale de Luxembourg, the Marquises de Boufflers and du Chatelet, the Comtesses de Rochefort, de Broglie, de Forcalquier, Mme. Necker, Lady Pembroke, De Lauzun, and many others, all of whom were society leaders.  Whenever Mme. du Deffand had a special supper, it was said that Paris was at Mme. du Deffand’s.

Her salon, above all others, was the centre of cosmopolitanism, where all great men, foreigners and natives, found means of social intercourse, and where, more than in any other salon, were assembled the great beauties of the day, represented especially by the Countesses de Forcalquier and Choiseul-Beaupre, Duchesse de La Valliere.  Gallantry and beauty were found in the Marechale de Luxembourg and the Comtesse de Boufflers.  The philosophical movement of the Encyclopaedists and Economists was not encouraged at all.  Thus, in Mme. du Deffand’s salon, we find neither pure philosophy nor religion, nor the air of pedants and declamateurs; it was a royalist salon without illusion, hence indifferent to all questions.  It represented the perfect type of the French model of esprit de finesse,—­that is, precision,—­and its leader possessed a keen insight into human character.

This wonderful woman, who, during a period of over forty years, had held at her feet the elite of the French world, at the age of about threescore and ten, fell desperately in love with a man of fifty—­Horace Walpole.  She who had never loved with her heart, but only with her mind, then declared it better to be dead than not to love someone.  Although her actions and letters were pitiful in the extreme, her epistles are invaluable for their incomparable portraitures and keen reflections upon persons and events of the time.  She attracted Walpole by the possibilities that were opened up to him by her position in society, and by her brilliant conversation, in which she scoffed at the clergy and the philosophers, showing a profound insight into human nature and the society of the time as well as into politics.  Their correspondence shows one of the most pitiful, pathetic, and lamentable love tales in the history of society.  He looked upon her friendship as a most valuable acquisition by which he was kept in touch with all the scandals and stories of society, of which he was so fond, and she mistook that friendship for love.  He felt himself flattered in being the one preferred by such a distinguished old lady of high society.