Mlle. de Lespinasse possessed two characteristics which were prominent in a remarkable degree—­love and friendship.  She appeared to interest herself in everybody in such a way as to make him believe that he was the preferred of her heart; loving everybody sincerely and affectionately, she “lacked altogether the sentimental equilibrium.”  Especially pathetic was her love for two men—­the Count de Mora, a Spanish nobleman, and a Colonel Guibert, who was celebrated for his relations with Frederick the Great; although this wore terribly on her, consuming her physical force, she always received her friends with the same good grace, but often, after their departure, she would fall into a frightful nervous fit from which she could find relief only by the use of opium.

Her love for Guibert was known to her friends, but was a secret from her platonic lover, D’Alembert.  When, after a number of years of untold sufferings which even opium could not relieve, she died in 1776, having been cared for to the last by D’Alembert, the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, and her cousin, the Marquis d’Enlezy, it was with these words on her dying lips, addressed to Guibert:  “Adieu, my friend!  If ever I return to life, I should like to use it in loving you; but there is no longer any time.”  When D’Alembert read in her correspondence that she had been the mistress of Guibert for sixteen years, he was disconsolate, and retired to the Louvre, which was his privilege as Secretary of the Academy.  He left there only to go walking in the evening with Marmontel, who tried to console him by recalling the changeableness of humor of Mlle. de Lespinasse.  “Yes,” he would reply, “she has changed, but not I; she no longer lived for me, but I always lived for her.  Since she is no longer, I don’t know why I am living.  Ah, that I must still suffer these moments of bitterness which she knew so well how to soothe and make me forget!  Do you remember the happy evenings we used to pass?  What is there now?  Instead of her, when coming home, I find only her shadow!  This Louvre lodging is itself a tomb, which I enter only with fright.”

Mlle. de Lespinasse died of grief for a lover’s death, but she left a group of lovers to lament her loss.  In many respects she was not unlike Mlle. de Scudery; exceptionally plain, her face was much marked with smallpox, a disfigurement not uncommon in those days; her exceedingly piercing and fine eyes, beautiful hair, tall and elegant figure, excellent taste in dress, pleasing voice and a most brilliant talent for conversation, combined to make her one of the most attractive and popular women of her time.  As previously stated, she was the only female admitted to the dinners given by Mme. Geoffrin to her men of letters.