All critics are at a loss for the explanation of such a love in a woman of seventy.  Was it the result of the lifetime of disappointment of a woman who had constantly sought love but had never found it?  Was it, thus, the hallucination of the childish old age of the woman who was physically consumed by incessant social functions and all-night reading?  Mme. du Deffand sees in Walpole her ideal, and she gives expression to her feelings, regardless of propriety; for she is childish and irresponsible.  To a certain extent, the same was true of Mme. de Stael, but she was still physically healthy and young enough to enjoy life and the realization of that which she had so long desired—­an ideal affection.  In the case of Mme. du Deffand, the soul was willing, but the body failed.  Her emotion can scarcely be termed love, but is rather to be designated as a mental hallucination, an exaggerated intellectual affection bordering upon sentimentality—­the outgrowth of that morbid imagination developed from her long suffering from ennui.

She was a woman destined to pass by the side of happiness without ever reaching it.  She hardly had enjoyed what may be called friendship; she was always either suspicious of it and of her friends’ sentiments, or she herself broke off relations for some trivial reason.  This woman, however, always longed to believe her friends sincere, but never succeeded.  “Her friends either leave her, they die, or they are far away; or, if present, faithful and attached to her, she cannot believe in their affection; her cursed scepticism deceived her heart.”

Mme. du Deffand was one of the few women of the eighteenth century who saw reality and nothing but reality, and admitted what she saw; she was gifted with such quick penetration and such mental facility that she stands out prominently as one of the brightest and most intellectual of the spiritual women of her time.  This quickness of perception and tendency to follow a mere impression made it difficult for her to examine closely, to be patient of details; too sure of herself, too emotional, too passionate, she displayed injustice, vehemence, over-enthusiasm; easily bored and disgusted, she was, at the same time, susceptible to infatuation.  Scherer said:  “She is a superior man in a body of a nervous and weak woman.”

She was a woman dominated by her reason—­a characteristic which led to an incurable ennui, thus causing her terrible suffering, but equipping her with a penetration which saw through the world and knew man, whom she divided into three classes:  les trompeurs, les trompes, les trompettes.  According to her judgment, man is either fatiguing or, if brilliantly endowed, usually false or jealous; but she realized, also, her own shortcomings, the incompleteness of her faculties.  “The force of her thought does not reach talent; her intelligence is active and responsive, but fails to respond.