She was first dissipated; then an _esprit fort_; then _tres devote_. In obedience to her confessor, she discarded, one after the other, her rouge, her ribbons, and the presents and billets-doux of her lovers; but no remonstrances could induce her to give up Voltaire's picture. When he returned from exile in 1778, he went to pay a visit to his old love; they had not met for fifty years, and they now gazed on each other in silent dismay. _He_ looked, I suppose, like the dried mummy of an ape: _she_, like a withered _sorciere_. The same evening she sent him back his portrait, which she had hitherto refused to part with. Nothing remained to shed illusion over the past; she had beheld, even before the last terrible proof-- What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love. And Voltaire, on his side, was not less dismayed by his visit. On returning from her, he exclaimed, with a shrug of mingled disgust and horror, "Ah, mes amis! je viens de passer a l'autre bord du Cocyte!" It was not thus that Cowper felt for his Mary, when "her auburn locks were changed to grey:" but it is almost an insult to the memory of true tenderness to mention them both in the same page. To enumerate other women who have been celebrated by Voltaire, would be to give a list of all the beautiful and distinguished women of France for half a century; from the Duchess de Richelieu and Madame de Luxembourg, down to Camargo the dancer, and Clairon and le Couvreur the actresses: but I can find no name of any _poetical_ fame or interest among them: nor can I conceive any thing more revolting than the history of French society and manners during the Regency and the whole of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth. FOOTNOTES: [137] Madame de Tencin used to call the men of letters she assembled at her house "mes betes," and her society went by the name of Madame de Tencin's menagerie. Her advice to Marmontel, when a young man, was excellent. See his Memoirs, vol. i. [138] Correspondence de Grimm, vol. ii. 421. [139] Je ris plus que personne aux marionettes; et j'avoue qu'une boite, une porcelaine, un meuble nouveau, sont pour moi une vrai jouissance.--_Oeuvres de Madame du Chatelet_--_Traite de Bonheur._ [140] The then fashionable game at cards. [141] Voltaire once said of her, "C'est une femme terrible, qui n'a point de flexibilite dans le coeur, quoiqu'elle l'ait bon." This hardness of temper, this _volonte tyrannique_, this cold determination never to yield a point, were worse than all her violence. [142] The title which Voltaire gave her. [143] "Vie privee de Voltaire et de Madame du Chatelet," in a series of letters, written by Madame de Graffigny during her stay at Cirey. The details in these letters are exceedingly amusing, but the style so diffuse, that it is scarcely possible to make extracts. [144] Epitre a Saint-Lambert. [145] Madlle. de Launay: it has become necessary to distinguish between two celebrated women bearing the same name, at least in sound.