overt tampering with the allegiance of the followers; and the subordinate was driven forth with contumely.
It is not easy to decide which party, if either, was in the right; though the memoir writers in general take the part of Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse. Far from being made a homeless wanderer by the dismissal, she was immediately supplied with a house and furniture by her friends, who obtained for her a pension from the crown. On these means she founded a rival establishment of her own; and surrounded herself with an intellectual circle, which seems to have more than rivalled in brilliancy that from which she was dismissed. D'Alembert was told that if he countenanced the new idol, he must bid farewell to his former patroness. He at once joined the party of the young aspirant. He became dangerously ill, and Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse nursed him with the untiring affection of a wife or a daughter. The philosopher, whose humble dwelling was found to be on too sordid a scale to be consistent with health, thenceforth took up his abode with his young friend. Hume must have witnessed the rise of this new connexion, for it was during his residence in Paris that D'Alembert's illness took place, and it is the object of occasional anxious allusion by his Parisian acquaintance.[216:1]
Though the circumstances in which he passed his
earlier days were not likely to nourish such a taste, no man seems to have been more dependant on the presence of an educated and intellectual female than the secretary of the Academy. There is little doubt that the new attachment was of a Platonic character; but it boded evil to both parties. The lady, if she had some portion of the purer affections of the soul to bestow upon the sage, had
warmer feelings for likelier objects; and her frame sunk before the consuming fires of more than one passion.[218:1] She was carried to an early grave, and the mortifications, caused by her alienation, followed by grief for her death, broke the spirit, and imbittered and enfeebled the latter days of the philosopher. Hume seems to have established a closer friendship with D'Alembert than with any of his other contemporaries in France; and he left a memorial of his regard for
the encyclopediast in his will. Unlike, in many respects, they had some features in common. D'Alembert's personal character, and the habits of his life, had, like his philosophy, the dignity of simplicity. His figure, and still more his voice, were the objects of much malicious sarcasm; but cruel jests could not make his fragile body less the tenement of a noble spirit; or his shrill puny voice less the instrument of great and bold thoughts. His mind stands forth in strong relief from the frippery of that age; while his writings contain no marks of that reckless infidelity which distinguishes the productions of his fellow labourers. In some of those follies, so prevalent that a man utterly free of them, must have courted the charge of eccentricity, if not of insanity, he partook; but moderately and reluctantly, as one suited for a better time and a nobler sphere of exertion. In the quarrel with Rousseau, he adopted the cause of Hume with honest zeal. He wrote many letters to Hume, which are still preserved. They perhaps, in some measure, exhibit the least amiable feature of his character—his bitterness, it might be almost termed hatred, towards Madame du Deffand, on account of her conduct to his own friend.
It is unnecessary to discourse, at any length, on the distinguished men—including the names of Buffon, Malesherbes, Diderot, Crébillon, Morellet, Helvétius, Holbach, Hénault, Raynal, Suard, La Condamine, and De Brosses, who courted Hume's company in France. Next to D'Alembert, his closest friendship seems to have been with the honest and thoughtful statesman, Turgot; who, in the midst of that reckless whirl of vanity, was already looking far into the future, and predicting, from the disorganized and menacing condition of the elements of French society,
the storm that was to come. He wrote many letters to Hume, containing remarks on matters of statesmanship and political economy, which are of great interest in a historical and economical view, especially in one instance, where he notices the want of any common principle of sympathies and interests connecting the aristocracy with the people, and reflects on the dangerous consequences of such a state of matters to the peace of Europe.
There are many circumstances showing that much as he loved the social ease, combined with learning and wit, for which his Parisian circle was conspicuous, he disliked one prominent feature of that social system—the scornful infidelity, the almost intolerance of any thing like earnest belief, so often exhibited, both in speech and conduct. Sir Samuel Romilly has preserved the following curious statement by Diderot:—"He spoke of his acquaintance with Hume. 'Je vous dirai un trait de lui, mais il vous sera un peu scandaleux peut-être, car vous Anglais vous croyez un peu en Dieu; pour nous autres nous n'y croyons guères. Hume dîna avec une grande compagnie chez le Baron D'Holbach. Il était assis à côté du Baron; on parla de la religion naturelle: 'Pour les Athées,' disait Hume, 'je ne crois pas qu'il en existe; je n'en ai jamais vu.' 'Vous avez été un peu malheureux,' répondit l'autre, 'vous voici à table avec dix-sept pour la première fois.'"[220:1]
The secretary's residence in the metropolis was occasionally varied by official sojourns to Fontainbleau, or Compiègne, a visit to the Duchesse de Barbantane at Villers Cotterets, or an excursion with Madame de Boufflers and the Prince of Conti to