90 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



the court, as well as foreign countries, had their most dis- 

 tinguished representatives in her salon. 



Here she received and entertained her friends every 

 evening from five until nine o 'clock. ' ' It was, ' ' writes La 

 Harpe, "almost a title to consideration to be received into 

 this society. " So great was the influence exerted by Mile, 

 de Lespinasse that she bent savants to her will by the sheer 

 force of genius. Her salon became known as "the ante- 

 chamber of the French Academy ' ' ; for it was asserted that 

 half the academicians of her time owed their fauteuils to 

 her active canvass in their behalf. And so successful was 

 she in opening the lips and minds of her habitues, whether 

 an historian like Hume, a philosopher like Condillac, a 

 statesman like Turgot, a mathematician like d'Alembert, a 

 litterateur like Marmontel or an encyclopedist like Con- 

 dorcet, that it was said of her that she made "marble feel 

 and matter think." 



She was a veritable enchantress of the great and the 

 learned of her time. She did not, however, wield her 

 magic wand through her learning, or the accident of birth, 

 or the physical attractions of person, but solely by reason 

 of her wonderful vivacity, charm of mind, and exquisite 

 tact, which consisted, as those who knew her well tell us, 

 "in the art of saying to each that which suits him," and 

 in "making the best of the minds of others, of interesting 

 them, and of bringing them into play without any appear- 

 ance of constraint or effort." This rare faculty it was 

 which secured for her a supremacy in the world of thought 

 and action that has been accorded to but few women in 

 the world 's history. Vibrant with emotion and passion, she 

 reminds one of the gifted but hapless Heloise. Marmontel, 

 who had such a high opinion of her judgment that he sub- 

 mitted his works for her criticism, as Moliere had sub- 

 mitted his to Ninon de Lenclos, describes her as "the 

 keenest intelligence, the most ardent soul, the most inflam- 

 mable imagination that has existed since Sappho." 



