The salon and English letters

by Chauncey Brewster Tinker

Qui n’a sur les os que la peau,

Qui jamais ne jeûna Vigile,

Qui rarement lit l’Évangile

Dans son tonneau.

—From G. Maugras, La Marquise de Boufflers, p. 101.

[100] ‘Madame du Deffand ... is delicious; that is, as often as I can get her fifty years back, but she is as eager about what happens every day as I am about the last century.’ Walpole, Letters 6. 367; 2 December 1765.

[101] D’Alembert called her ‘The Viper,’ and told Hume that she hated everybody, especially great men. Letters to Hume, p. 201.

[102] ‘Ceux par qui on n’a pas craindre d’être assassiné, mais qui laisseraient faire les assassins.’ Montesquieu, Œuvres (1879) 7. 379.

[103] Necker, Nouveaux Mélanges 1. 79: ‘Madame du Défan [sic] accusait tous les penseurs d’affectation.’

[104] Lettres à Walpole 3. 319, et passim.