Grimm was another frequenter of the Necker salons; and the mistress of the house being no less prodigal of gracious encouragement towards him than towards everybody else, he also eventually declared his sentiments of friendship and admiration, with as much warmth as his manners allowed of. Like Voltaire, he called her “Hypatie”; and testified the genuineness of his regard by scolding her about her religious opinions. Needless to say these were not infidel, but they were, in Grimm’s opinion, disastrously illogical; and, his fine taste in such matters being offended, he expressed his displeasure on one occasion in no measured terms. Madame Necker retorted, for she loved a discussion too fervently ever to be meek; but apparently Grimm was too much for her. Either his arguments were irrefragable, or his manner was irritating; the result was that Madame Necker—to the polite consternation of her numerous guests—dissolved into tears. Humiliated, on reflection, at having made such a scene, with characteristic ardor, she seized the opportunity to write Grimm a high-flown apology; and an interchange of letters followed in which the philosopher compared the lady to Venus completed by Minerva, and Madame Necker ransacked the universe for metaphors wherewith to express her admiration of the gentleman’s sensibility. As the Neckers spent their summer at St. Ouen—not the historic Château associated with Louis XVIII., but another in the neighborhood, and of the same name—the proximity to Paris enabled them to continue unbroken their series of dinners, suppers and receptions, twice a week. Many of the guests were notable personages, and most of them types which vanished forever a few years later—engulphed by the storm-wave of the Revolution. There was the Abbé Morellet, clear-headed, gravely ironical, with as much tact in concealing as in displaying the range of his knowledge and the depth of his insight; St. Lambert, a little cold, but full of exquisite politeness, supremely elegant in expression, and, without being lively himself, possessed of the delicate art of never quenching liveliness in others; D’Alembert, charming, if frigid, and destined soon to be an object of sentimental interest, because of his inconsolable grief for Mlle. L’Espinasse; the Abbé Raynal, doubtless enchanted to pour into Madame Necker’s respectful ears the floods of eloquence for which Frederick the Great laughed at him; these, with Marmontel and Thomas, were almost always present.