The celebrated d’Alembert was the fruit of one of her amours; the father was the Chevalier Destouches. The infant was, in the first instance, deserted by its parents; it was left on the steps of the church of St. John de la Ronde, where it was found in such a state of weakness that, instead of sending it to the Foundling Hospital, the commissary of police humanely gave it to the wife of a poor glazier to be nursed. Such a want of maternal feeling, had it not been in some measure atoned for, would have justified a sarcasm of the Abbé Trublet, who, on some one praising to him the mild disposition of Madame de Tencin, replied, “Oh, yes! if she had an interest in poisoning you, she would choose the mildest poison for the purpose.” The parents are, however, said to have relented in the course of a few days; the father settled on him a pension of 1200 livres. It was the fatal result of another of her amours that gave her a place in the Bastile. In 1726, La Fresnaye, one of the members of the Great Council, shot himself through the head at her house. A paper in his handwriting was found, in which he declared that, if ever he died a violent death, she would be the cause of it. From this paper, which certainly bears on the face of it a very different meaning, it was hastily and harshly concluded, that she had a hand in his murder. She was consequently committed to the Concièrgerie, whence she was removed to the Bastile; but she was not long a prisoner. In her later years, the conduct of Madame de Tencin underwent a complete reformation; the catastrophe of La Fresnaye perhaps contributed to the change. She kept up a correspondence with Cardinal Lambertini, which was not discontinued when he became Pope Benedict XIV., and her house was the resort of all the wit and talent of Paris, with Fontenelle and Montesquieu at their head. Her assemblage of literary men she used jocosely to call her menagerie, and her animals, and it was her custom, on New-year’s-day, to present each individual with two ells of velvet, for a pair of breeches. It is not easy to suppress a smile at the ludicrous idea of such a present. Madame de Tencin died in 1749. Her three romances, the Count de Comminge, the Siege of Calais, and the Misfortunes of Love, still deservedly maintain a high rank among works of that class. It has been said, that she was assisted in writing them by two of her nephews; but the truth of this is at least doubtful. CHAPTER X.