“The greatest of all the regrets expressed by the prince is for the art of conversation, ‘_l’art de causer_,’ which, he declares, never flourished in any country save France, and has been lost even there ever since the revolution. He himself is perhaps the only individual left to tell us in what that ‘art’ consisted. Like every gift of the Muses, it seemed to shun the circles of the great, and to flourish best where reigned equality. The réunions of Madame Necker in Paris, when her husband was minister, were always stiff and embarrassed; her charming _déjeuners_ at St. Ouen, where all state and ceremony were laid aside, will be for ever celebrated in the annals of letters. The proper cultivation of the ‘art of conversation’ was dependent on the union of many circumstances, and success could not be relied on even by those who appeared in every way best qualified for the attempt. None could tell why it was that some succeeded thus while others failed—why the same wit which shone so brightly in one _salon_ was dull and frigid in another. D’Alembert declared that _he_ could find conversation but in one single _salon_ in Paris, that of Madame Suard, the wife of the celebrated translator and commentator of Hume and Robertson, of whom Boufflers said to M. de Talleyrand one day, ‘_She is the only pretty woman of my acquaintance with whom I have never been in love; and yet she is the woman I love best on earth_.’ A more delicate compliment to virtue than this was, perhaps, never paid. Diderot was most animated in the house of Madame Helvetius, and nursed his powers for her reception-days. “Madame Geoffrin herself presided over her own _salon_ after the death of Fontenelle, who, for many years, deaf, purblind, and almost centenary, had thrown such lustre on her meetings, that foreigners of rank, and wealth, and talent, had crowded to Paris merely to be presented there; and such was the charm of the society into which they found themselves ushered, that many of them renounced their country to enjoy it without molestation. Buffon, who in ordinary intercourse was vulgar in the extreme (so at least says M. de Talleyrand, who knew him well), became sublime at Moulin-Joli, where Watelet the painter had the good luck to assemble all the wit and talent of the capital. Here it was that Buffon one day grew inspired, and recited whole chapters of his work without missing a single word, much to the astonishment of many of the strangers there, who thought that it was all improvisation. These intellectual _soirées_ of the _roture_ had succeeded in the guidance and government of ‘conversation’ to the _petits soupers_ of the _ancien régime_, but differed from them, inasmuch as the intellect alone was fed. The principle of equality had gone so far, that it was agreed among the _literati_ to avoid the tables of the rich, lest he who gave a good dinner should feel a right to direct the conversation.