D'ALEMBERT. 399 



quainted with the good woman's respectability. In a 

 few days the father, M. Destouches, commissary of artil- 

 lery, came forward to own the child, and made provision 

 for its support. The general belief is, that the exposi- 

 tion had been concerted with the police. But if so, a 

 very needless risk was unaccountably incurred by ex- 

 posing so tender an infant in a winter's night, when the 

 parties might have sent it at once to the place where it 

 was destined to be brought up. It is more likely that 

 the mother, afraid of the discovery, if not of the burthen 

 to be thrown upon her, caused the exposure before the 

 father was apprized of the birth having happened, and 

 that as soon as he knew of what had been done, he 

 hastened to send after the person who had been entrusted 

 with the charge. The mother was an unmarried lady, 

 sister to Cardinal Tencin, Archbishop of Lyons, and she 

 was afterwards well known in the circles of Paris as a 

 person of rare talents and accomplishments. Marmontel, 

 in his Memoirs, calls her Madame de Tencin, she having 

 probably in her old age passed by that name; and he 

 relates some of her sayings, of which one is singular in 

 relation to the life of her celebrated son. " Woe to him," 

 she said, "who depends for his subsistence on his pen! 

 The shoemaker is secure of his wages ; the bookmaker is 

 not secure of anything/' She was wont also to give the 

 result of her experience of men, by recommending per- 

 sons who lacked friends to prefer choosing them among 

 women, as they are far more zealous to serve those they 

 wish well to ; but then, she added, " You must be their 

 friend, and not their lover/' She was the author of a 

 novel, ' Les Memoires du Comte de Cominges/ of which 

 a good judge, Baron Grimm, says, "II est en possession 



