There was also the salon of Mme. du Deffand, who, while more decidedly irreligious and atheistical than Mme. Geoffrin, was her superior in talent, birth, and education, and always spoke of her with the utmost disdain, as a bourgeoise without manners or instruction, who did not know how to write, pronounce, or spell correctly, and saw no reason why people should not talk of des z’haricots.
D’Alembert, one of the leading encyclopædists, like most of them, intensely vain, and about whose origin nothing was known, claimed to be the illegitimate son of the Marquise de Tencin, of scandalous reputation. Mme. de Créquy, in her “Souvenirs,” scorns the idea, saying also that much of the evil spoken of Mme. de Tencin was untrue; but it is certain that many dark and mysterious rumours clung to the hôtel Tencin, the garden of which extended over what is now the rue de la Paix. Originally intended for the cloister, Mlle. de Tencin refused to take the vows at Grenoble, and was a conspicuous figure in the wild orgies of the Regency. An intimate friend of the notorious John Law, then controller-general of finance, she succeeded, partly by his influence, in getting her brother made Cardinal and Archbishop of Embrun, and during his lifetime did the honours of his hôtel, where, during the days of his power, John Law was a leading spirit. Fortunes were lost and won there in a night, but darker secrets than those of the gambling table were whispered concerning the hôtel Tencin, its inhabitants and guests. More than ordinary scandals, even in the days of the Regent Orléans and his shameless daughters, were circulated, and even the murder of one of her lovers was so far believed that Mme. de Tencin was arrested, though shortly afterwards acquitted.
After her brother’s death she lost much of her prestige, and held her salon in the rue St. Honoré, most of her habitués, after her death, transferring themselves to the house of Mme. Geoffrin.
FOOTNOTE:
[111] An estate which carried a title with all the seigneuriaux rights.
CHAPTER II
M. de la Haie—Death of the Dauphin—M. de Saint-Aubin goes to St. Domingo—Taken prisoner by the English—Returns to France—Imprisoned for debt—His death—Difficulties and poverty—Félicité marries the Comte de Genlis—His family—The Abbesse de Montivilliers and the robbers—Life in the convent—Birth of a daughter.
