[120] M. Rebière, in his Les Femmes dans la Science, p. 13, Paris, 1897, writes, "Ne pourrait-on aller plus loin et canonizer notre Agnesi? J'estime, moi profane, que ce serait une sainte qui en vaudrait bien d'autres."
[121] An Eighteenth Century Marquise, a Study of Émilie du Châtelet, p. 5, by F. Hamel, New York, 1911.
[122] Preface to Mme. du Châtelet's translation of the Principia of Newton, Paris, 1740.
[123] Voltaire's last tribute, "The Divine Émilie," or, as Frederick II was wont to call her, "Venus-Newton," concluded with the following verses:
"L'Univers a perdu la sublime Émilie;
Elle aimait les plaisirs, les arts, la veritè;
Les dieux, en lui donnant leur âme et génie,
N'avaient gardé pour eux que l'immortalité."
The universe has lost the sublime Émilie; she loved pleasure, the arts, truth; the gods, in giving her their soul and genius, retained for themselves only immortality.
For further information of this extraordinary woman, see Lettres de la Mme. du Châtelet, Reunies pour la première fois, par Eugène Asse, Paris, 1882.
[124] At the beginning of her correspondence with Gauss, Legendre and Lagrange Mlle. Germain concealed her sex under a pseudonym, "in order," as she declared, "to escape the ridicule attached to a woman devoted to science"—craignant le ridicule attaché au titre de femme savante. She, too, suffered from the widespread effects of Molière's Les Femmes Savantes, as had many a gifted woman before her time and as have many others of a much later date.
[125] This celebrated mathematician, as is well-known, was a collaborator with Mme. du Châtelet in her translation of Newton's Principia.
[126] For further information respecting this remarkable woman the reader is referred to Œuvres Philosophiques de Sophie Germain Suivies de Pensées et de Lettres Inédites et Précédées d'une Étude sur sa Vie et ses Œuvres, par. H. Stupy, Paris, 1896. One may also consult Todhunter's History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials, Vol. I, pp. 147-160, Cambridge, 1886, in which is given a careful résumé of Mlle. Germain's mathematical memoirs on elastic surfaces.