440 D'ALEMBERT. 



week obtained for him a professorship in the Ecole 

 Militaire. 



We have seen the warmth of his attachment to the 

 object of his love. It remains to note the dreadful 

 grief in which he was plunged by her death. Mar- 

 montel, whose tender friendship endeavoured to soothe 

 his affliction, describes it as excessive : " He seemed, 

 in returning home to his apartment in the Louvre, as 

 if he was burying himself in a tomb." But nothing 

 better paints his affectionate nature, and the depth of 

 his sorrow, than his own simple and touching expres- 

 sions. Speaking, in a letter to Diderot, of the loss he 

 had sustained already, and the impending one of Ma- 

 dame Geoffrin, he says, " Je passois toutes mes soi- 

 rees chez 1'amie que j'avais perdue, et toutes mes 

 matinees avec celle qui me reste encore. Je ne 1'ai 

 plus et il n'y a plus pour moi, ni soir ni matin." (Cor., 

 (Euv., XIV. 250.) Madame Geoffrin was then on her 

 death-bed, having for some months been given over. 

 It was a great addition to his grief for Mademoiselle 

 de TEspinasse, that he was prevented from ever seeing 

 the only person who could have offered him any con- 

 solation ; but during the year that she lingered, her 

 doors were barred against him by the cruel fanaticism 

 of her daughter, whose name deserves to be recorded 

 in order that her memory may be rescued from its ap- 

 parent obscurity, and delivered over to the scorn of all 

 food men, all charitable Christians. Madame de la 

 erte-Imbaut thought fit to write him an insolent and 

 intolerant letter, filled with abuse, and announcing that 

 she took upon herself to deprive her dying parent of 

 what must have proved a great comfort the society 

 of the man she most esteemed. The ground taken by 

 this furious bigot was the known scepticism of the 

 philosopher's opinions, though every one is aware that 

 he never obtruded them on any society, and never 

 gave to the world a single line in which religion and 

 its institutions were treated with disrespect. 



