Voltaire was so overwhelmed by this loss, that he set off for Paris immediately _pour se dissiper_. Marmontel has given us a most ludicrous account of a visit of condolence he paid him on this occasion. He found Voltaire absolutely drowned in tears, and at every fresh burst of sorrow, he called on Marmontel to sympathise with him. "Helas! j'ai perdu mon illustre amie! Ah! ah! je suis au desespoir!"--Then exclaiming against Saint-Lambert, whom he accused as the cause of the catastrophe--"Ah! mon ami! il me l'a tuee, le brutal!" while Marmontel, who had often heard him abuse his "_sublime_ Emilie" in no measured terms, as "une furie, attachee a ses pas," hid his face with his handkerchief in pretended sympathy, but in reality to conceal his irrepressible smiles. In the midst of this scene of despair, some ridiculous idea or story striking Voltaire's vivid fancy, threw him into fits of laughter, and some time elapsed before he recollected that he was inconsolable. The death of Madame du Chatelet, the circumstances which attended it, and the celebrity of herself and her lover, combined to cause a great _sensation_. No elegies indeed appeared on the occasion,--"no tears eternal that embalm the dead;" but a shower of epigrams and _bon mots_--some exquisitely witty and malicious. The story of her ring, in which Voltaire and her husband each expected to find his own portrait, and which on being opened, was found, to the utter discomfiture of both, to contain that of Saint-Lambert, is well known. If we may judge from her picture, Madame du Chatelet must have been extremely pretty. Her eyes were fine and piercing; her features delicate, with a good deal of _finesse_ and intelligence in their expression. But her countenance, like her character, was devoid of interest. She had great power of mental abstraction; and on one occasion she went through a most complicated calculation of figures in her head, while she played and won a game at piquet. She _could_ be graceful and fascinating, but her manners were, in general, extremely disagreeable; and her parade of learning, her affectation, her egotism, her utter disregard of the comforts, feelings, and opinions of others, are well pourtrayed in two or three brilliant strokes of sarcasm from the pen of Madame de Stael.[145] She even turns her philosophy into ridicule. "Elle fait actuellement la revue de ses Principes;[146] c'est un exercise qu'elle reitere chaque annee, sans quoi ils pourroient s'echapper; et peut-etre s'en aller si loin qu'elle n'en retrouverait pas un seul. Je crois bien que sa tete est pour eux une maison de force, et non pas le lieu de leur naissance."[147]