Mme. de Tencin, to whose salon of the rue Saint-Honore Marivaux was likewise welcomed, was as different a character from the kindly, serious, upright, and judicious Mme. de Lambert as can well be imagined, and it was only after the death of the latter, in 1733, that her salon was particularly brilliant. Her youth had been most disorderly. At an early age she had assumed the veil, but, through the efforts of her brother, the abbe de Tencin, and later cardinal, who, doubtless, saw in her a powerful factor for his own promotion, she obtained her secularization. Coming to Paris a short time before the death of Louis XIV, she was ready to welcome the gross immorality of the Regency, and, for personal advancement, entered into a series of liaisons with Prior, the friend of Lord Bolingbroke, Rene d'Argenson, the Regent himself, Dubois, and the Chevalier Destouches. The latter was the father of her son, whom she abandoned on the steps of the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond, and who, reared by a glazier's wife, became the celebrated d'Alembert. Another lover, Lafresnaye, whom she had induced to put all of his property in her name, shot himself, or was shot, at her house. Although imprisoned on suspicion at the Chatelet, and later at the Bastille, she soon gained her liberty by the intervention of powerful friends. That she could maintain her position in society as she did is a striking proof of its terribly corrupt condition. In her declining years she sought to veil the disorders of her youth by more serious pursuits, and gathered about her a number of literary spirits of whom she spoke as her _betes_ or her _menagerie_. Marmontel gives the following description of the habitues of her salon and of the desire that pervaded all to show their wit: "L'auditoire etait respectable. J'y vis rassembles Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Mairan, Marivaux, le jeune Helvetius, Astruc, je ne sais qui encore, tous gens de lettres ou savants, et au milieu d'eux une femme d'un esprit et d'un sens profonds, mais qui, enveloppee dans son exterieur de bonhomie et de simplicite, avait plutot l'air de la menagere que de la maitresse de la maison: c'etait la Mme. de Tencin ... je m'apercus bientot qu'on y arrivait prepare a jouer son role, et que l'envie d'entrer en scene n'y laissait pas toujours a la conversation la liberte de suivre son cours facile et naturel. C'etait a qui saisirait le plus vite, et comme a la volee, le moment de placer son mot, son conte, son anecdote, sa maxime ou son trait leger et piquant; et, pour amener l'a-propos, on le tirait quelquefois d'un peu loin. Dans Marivaux, l'impatience de faire preuve de finesse et de sagacite percait visiblement."[21]