Mme. du Deffand’s friend, le President Henault, left the following portrait of Mlle. de Lespinasse:  “You are cosmopolitan—­you are suitable to all occasions.  You like company—­you like solitude.  Pleasures amuse, but do not seduce you.  You have very strong passions, and of the best kind, for they do not return often.  Nature, in endowing you with an ordinary state, gave you something with which to rise above it.  You are distinguished, and, without being beautiful, you attract attention.  There is something piquant in you; one might obstinately endeavor to turn your head, but it would be at one’s own expense.  Your will must be awaited, because you cannot be made to come.  Your cheerfulness embellishes you, and relaxes your nerves, which are too highly strung.  You have your own opinion, and you leave others their own.  You are extremely polite.  You have divined le monde.  In vain one would transplant you—­you would take root anywhere.  In short, you are not an ordinary person.”

The salon of Mlle. de Lespinasse was unique.  Everyone was at perfect liberty to express and sustain his own opinions upon any subject, without danger of offending the hostess, which, as has been seen, was not the case in the salon of Mme. Geoffrin.  Her high and sane intellectual culture permitted her to listen to all discussions and to take part in all.  She had no strong prejudices, having read—­for Mme. du Deffand—­nearly everything that was read at that time; also, she had the talent of preserving harmony among her members by drawing from each one his best qualities.

A woman who played a prominent part in society during the Regency, but who had no salon in the proper sense of that word, was Mme. du Chatelet, commonly called Voltaire’s Emilie.  She was especially interested in sciences, mathematics, geometry, and astronomy, and did more than any other woman of that time to encourage nature study.  It was at her Chateau de Cirey that Voltaire found protection when threatened with a second visit to the Bastille; and there, from time to time for sixteen years, he did some of the best work of his life.  It was Mme. du Chatelet who encouraged him, sympathized with him, and appreciated his mobile humor as well as his talent.  During these years, while he was under the influence of madame, appeared Merope, Alzire, the Siecle de Louis XIV, etc.

Mme. du Chatelet was the one great femme savante of that century.  In the preface to her Traduction des Principes Mathematiques de Newton, Voltaire wrote:  “Never was a woman so savante as she, and never did a woman merit less the saying, she is a femme savante.  She did not select her friends from those circles where there was a war of esprit, where a sort of tribunal was established, where they judged their century, by which, in recompense, they were severely judged.  She lived for a long time in societies which were ignorant of what she was, and she took no notice of this ignorance.  The words precision, justness, and force are those which correctly describe her elegance.  She would have written as Pascal and Nicole did rather than like Mme. de Sevigne; but this severe firmness and this tendency of her esprit did not make her inaccessible to the beauties of sentiment.”