On the brink of the irrevocable, even the pride of controversy may come to be a little thing; and Buffon’s wearied spirit perhaps recoiled from further speculation on the eternal problem of futurity. And to be at one, in that supreme moment, with the pitying woman who had come to solace his final agony, may have weighed with him above the praise and blame over which the grave was to triumph forever.
Madame Necker delighted in making herself miserable, and the melancholia natural to him probably caused Thomas to be the most thoroughly congenial to her of all her friends. The author of the Petréide and the foe of the Encyclopædists, he enjoyed during his life a celebrity which posterity has not confirmed. He was the originator of the unhappy style of writing in which Madame Necker so delighted that she modelled her own upon it. For the rest, he was a man of extremely austere and simple life, as well as of very honest character. Passion was unknown to him, unless, indeed, the profound and sentimental esteem which he felt for Madame Necker was of a nature under more favorable treatment to have developed into love. If so, she found the way in his case, as in all, to restrain his feelings within platonic bounds, and indulged him chiefly with affecting promises not to forget him when she should be translated to heaven.
Madame Necker may be said to have touched the zenith of social distinction the day on which the Maréchale de Luxembourg entered her salon. This charming old lady and exquisite grande dame, the arbiter of politeness and fine manners, was felicitously and untranslatably described by Madame du Deffand, in one delightful phrase, as “Chatte Rose!” Upon all those who met her at this period (when she was already nearly seventy), she seems to have produced the same impression of softness and elegance, of fine malice and caressing, irresistible ways.
Madame de Souza—that sweet little woman round whose name the perfume of her own roses still seems to cling—drew a portrait of the Maréchale in her novel Eugénie de Rothelin, under the name of the Maréchale de’Estouteville; nor did she, as Ste. Beuve tells us, forget to introduce, by way of contrast, in the person of Madame de Rieny, the pretty and winning Duchess de Lauzun, grand-niece of the Maréchale, and another flower of Madame Necker’s salon.
This little Duchess, “joli petit oiseau à l’air effarouché” (to quote Madame du Deffand once again), was so devoted an admirer of M. Necker, that, hearing somebody in the Tuileries Gardens blame him, she slapped the speaker’s face. Apart from this one outburst, which saves her from seeming too meek, she flits shadowy, sweet and pathetic, across the pages of her contemporaries. The record of her life, as we know it, is brief and touching. She kept herself unspotted from a most depraved world; loved a very unworthy husband and died, during the Terror, on the scaffold.
Another friend, and apparently a very sincere one, of Madame Necker, was Madame d’Houdetôt. Madame Necker seems to have accepted that interesting woman just as she was, including her relations with St. Lambert, whom the letters exchanged between the two ladies mention quite naturally. The affection which she felt for the mother was extended by Madame D’Houdetôt to the little daughter, and there are letters of hers extant describing visits which she had paid to Germaine, while Madame Necker was at Spa or Mont Doré for her health.
They were written to relieve the natural pain of absence on the parents’ part, and are full of praises of the child, of her engaging ways, her air of health, and her magnificent eyes.