Her _liaison_ with Saint-Lambert continued fifty years, nor was she ever suspected of any other indiscretion. During this time he contrived to make her as wretched as a woman of her disposition could be made; and the elasticity of her spirits did not prevent her from being acutely sensible to pain, and alive to unkindness. Saint-Lambert, from being her lover, became her tyrant. He behaved with a peevish jealousy, a petulance, a bitterness, which sometimes drove her beyond the bounds of a woman's patience; and when ever this happened, the accommodating husband, M. d'Houdetot would interfere to reconcile the lovers, and plead for the recall of the offender. When Saint-Lambert's health became utterly broken, she watched over him with a patient tenderness, unwearied by all his _exigeance_, and unprovoked by his detestable temper; he had a house near her's in the valley of Montmorenci, and lived on perfectly good terms with her husband. I must add one trait, which, however absurd, and scarcely credible, it may sound in our sober, English ears, is yet true. M. and Madame d'Houdetot gave a fete at Eaubonne, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage. Sophie was then nearly _seventy_, but played her part, as the heroine of the day, with all the grace and vivacity of seventeen. On this occasion, the lover and the husband chose, for the first time in their lives, to be jealous of each other, and exhibited, to the amusement and astonishment of the guests, a _scene_, which was for some time the talk of all Paris. Saint-Lambert died in 1805. After his death, Madame d'Houdetot was seized with a sentimental _tendresse_ for M. Somariva,[149] and continued to send him bouquets and billets-doux to the end of her life. She died about 1815. To her singular power of charming, Madame d'Houdetot added talents of no common order, which, though never cultivated with any perseverance, now and then displayed, or rather _disclosed_ themselves unexpectedly, adding surprise to pleasure. She was a musician, a poetess, a wit;--but every thing, "par la grace de Dieu,"--and as if unconsciously and involuntarily. All Saint-Lambert's poetry together is not worth the little song she composed for him on his departure for the army:-- L'Amant que j'adore, Pret a me quitter, D'un instant encore Voudrait profiter: Felicite vaine! Qu'on ne peut saisir, Trop pres de la peine Pour etre un plaisir![150] It is to Madame d'Houdetot that Lord Byron alludes in a striking passage of the third canto of Childe Harold, beginning Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,[151] &c.