“Although I am certainly within a few weeks, dear Madame, and perhaps within a few days, of my own death, I could not forbear being struck with the death of the Prince of Conti—­so great a loss in every particular.  My reflection carried me immediately to your situation in this melancholy incident.  What a difference to you in your whole plan of life!  Pray write me some particulars, but in such terms that you need not care, in case of my decease, into whose hands your letter may fall....  My distemper is a diarrhoea or disorder in my bowels, which has been gradually undermining me for these two years, but within these six months has been visibly hastening me to my end.  I see death approach gradually, without any anxiety or regret.  I salute you with great affection and regard, for the last time.

“David Hume.”

Hume died five days after this letter was written.

The last years of her life she spent with her daughter-in-law, at Auteuil, where she lived a happy life and received the best society of Paris.  When she died or under what circumstances is not known.  During the Revolution she lived in obscurity, busying herself with charitable work; she was one of the few women of the nobility to escape the guillotine, “This woman, who had kept the intellectual world alive with her esprit and goodness, of a sudden vanishes like a star from the horizon; she lives on, unnoticed by everyone, and, in that new society, no one misses her or regrets her death.”

In order to fully appreciate the mistress of the eighteenth century, her power and influence, her rise to popularity and social standing, the general and accepted idea and nature of the sentiment called love must be explained; for it was to the peculiar development of that emotion that the mistress owed her fortune.

In the eighteenth century love became a theory, a cult; it developed a language of its own.  In the preceding age love was declared, it spoke, it was a virtue of grandeur and generosity, of courage and delicacy, exacting all proofs of decency and gallantry, patient efforts, respect, vows, discretion, and reciprocal affection.  The ideal was one of heroism, nobleness, and bravery.  In the eighteenth century this ideal became mere desire; love became voluptuousness, which was to be found in art, music, styles, fashions—­in everything.  Woman herself was nothing more than the embodiment of voluptuousness; it made her what she was, directing and fashioning her.  Every movement she made, every garment she wore, all the care she applied to her appearance—­all breathed this volupte.

In paintings it was found in impure images, coquettish immodesties, in couples embraced in the midst of flowers, in scenes of tenderness:  all these representations were hung in the rooms of young girls, above their beds.  They grew up to know volupte, and, when old enough, they longed for it.  It was useless for women to try to escape its power, and chastity naturally disappeared under these temptations.  The young girl inherited the impure instincts of the mother, and, when matured, was ready and eager for all that could enchant and gratify the senses.