400 D'ALEMBERT. 



de faire pleurer." After giving an account of the plot, 

 he adds, "II a toujours conserve beaucoup de reputa- 

 tion ;" and he adds, " II est de feu Mme. Tencin, soeur du 

 Cardinal de ce nom ; cette femme celebre de plus d'une 

 maniere."* This celebrated person was the centre of 

 a distinguished circle of society remarkable for wit, 

 talents, and accomplishments, and after her death Mme. 

 Geoffrin succeeded to her post. 



The young D'Alembert, who probably took his name 

 from his nurse, was sent at the age of twelve to the 

 college of the Quatre Nations, where the professors, at 

 that time of warm controversy, belonged to the Jansenist 

 party ; and observing the early appearance of genius in 

 their young pupil, they took pains to imbue him with a 

 taste for polemical subjects. In the first year of his 

 studies in philosophy he had written an able and learned 

 commentary of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and as 

 he showed a general capacity for science, the worthy 

 enemies of the Jesuits, delighted to find that all profound 

 learning was not engrossed by that body, cherished a 

 hope that a new Pascal had been given to them for 

 renewing their victories over their learned and subtle 

 adversaries. It was with this view that they made him 

 betimes study the mathematics, in which Pascal had so 

 greatly and so early excelled; but they had to deal with 

 a less docile subject than the Port-Royal had formerly 

 found in young Blaise, for they soon perceived that it 

 was in vain to make him quit his figures and his calcula- 

 tions and take to the divinity of the schools; and all 

 their descriptions of the tendency which such studies had 



* Corr. ? iv. 276. 



