456 D'ALEMBERT. 



told him he had no need of any introduction but his own 

 merits, and in a 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. Marmontel, 

 whose tender friendship endeavoured to soothe his afflic- 

 tion, describes it as excessive : " He seemed, in return- 

 ing home to his apartment in the Louvre, as if he was 

 burying himself in a toinb." But nothing better paints 

 his affectionate nature, and the depth of his sorrow, than 

 his own simple and touching expressions. Speaking, in 

 a letter to Diderot, of the loss he had sustained already, 

 and the impending one of Madame Geoffrin, he says, 

 "Je passois toutes mes soirees chez ramie que j 'avals 

 perdue, et toutes rues matinees avec celle qui me reste 

 encore. Je ne 1'ai plus et il n'y a plus pour inoi, ni soir 

 ni matin." (Cor., GEuv., 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 consolation ; 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 apparent 

 obscurity, and delivered over to the scorn of all good 

 men, all charitable Christians. Madame de la Ferte- 

 Imbaut thought fit to write him an insolent and intoler- 

 ant 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 



