WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY 177 



Thus the petulant ennuyee, Mme. de Stael, in a letter to 

 her friend, Mme. du Deffand, writing of Mme. du Chatelet, 

 who was then her guest at Sceaux, tells us that ' ' she is now 

 passing in review her principles. This is a task she per- 

 forms every year, else they might, perhaps, make their 

 escape and run to such a distance that she would never be 

 able to recover any of them. I verily believe that they are 

 in durance vile while in her possession, as they were cer- 

 tainly not born with her. She does well to keep a strict 

 watch over them." 1 



And, in her turn, Mme. du Deffand, who was wont to 

 pose as the intimate friend of Mme. du Chatelet, did not 

 hesitate to write and circulate a pen portrait of this friend 

 and that after the unhappy woman was in her grave 

 which for bitter reviling and brutal villification has prob- 

 ably never been equalled. A witty Frenchman observed of 

 this portrait that it reminded him of an observation once 

 made by a medical acquaintance of his concerning one of 

 his patients: " 'My friend fell ill; I attended him. He 

 died; I dissected him/ " 2 



1 The Unpublished Correspondence of Madame du Deffand, Vol. I, 

 pp. 202-203, London, 1810. 



2 Mme. du Deffand J s venomous letter, somewhat abridged, reads 

 as follows: "Imagine a tall, hard and withered woman, narrow- 

 chested, with large limbs, enormous feet, a very small head, a thin 

 face, a pointed nose, two small sea-green eyes, her color dark, her 

 complexion florid, her mouth flat, her teeth set far apart and very 

 much decayed; there is the figure of the beautiful Emilie, a figure 

 with which she is so well pleased that she spares nothing for the 

 sake of setting it off. Her manner of dressing her hair, her adorn- 

 ments, her top-knots, her jewelry, all are in profusion; but, as she 

 wishes to be lovely in spite of nature, and as she wishes to appear 

 magnificent in spite of fortune, she is obliged, in order to obtain 

 superfluities, to go without necessaries such as under-garments and 

 other trifles. 



"She was born with sufficient intellect, and the desire to appear 

 as though she had a great deal made her prefer to study the most 

 abstract sciences rather than more general and pleasant branches of 



