While, among the famous salon leaders of the eighteenth century, Mme. Necker stands out preëminently for her strict moral integrity and fidelity to her marriage relations, Mme. d'Epinay is unique for the constancy of her affections for the men to whom she owes her celebrity, Rousseau and Grimm. Born in 1725, the record of her life runs like that of most French women. At the age of twenty she was married to her cousin, La Live, who later took the name of d'Epinay, from an estate his father, the wealthy M. de Bellegarde, had bought--a man who was really in love with her for a whole month after their marriage, but who, tiring of the pure affections of a loving wife, soon began to lavish his time and fortune upon a _danseuse_. The poor young wife was between two fires, the extravagance and wild dissipations of her husband and the rigid discipline and orthodoxy of her mother. Never was a woman treated so outrageously and insultingly as was this woman by a man who contrived in every manner to corrupt her morals by throwing her among his dissolute companions, Mme. d'Artz, the mistress of the Prince de Conti, and Mlle. d'Ette, an intriguing woman of the time; to the latter, Mme. d'Epinay confided her troubles, and, as the result of her counsels, fell into the hands of a M. de Francueil, handsome, clever, accomplished, but as morally depraved as was her husband. When Mme. d'Epinay was finally convinced that her husband was untrue to her, she felt nothing but disdain and contempt for him, and decided to live a virtuous life; after holding for a short time to her resolution "that a woman may have the most profound and tender sentiment for a man and yet remain faithful to her duties," she lost herself under the influence of the professional seducer Francueil, and, completely carried away by that passion, she cries out, in her memoirs: _Francueil, Francueil, tu m'as perdue, et tu disais que tu m'aimais_ [You have undone me--and you said you loved me]! Such was the lot, as was seen, of most women of those days, who had noble intentions, but a woman's weakness. The century did not demand faithfulness to the marital vows; but when a woman had once abandoned herself to love, it required that the attachment be to a man of honor and standing. Marriage was simply a preliminary step to freedom; after that ceremony came the natural election of the heart and mutual tenderness of the beings who could be mated only through the freedom which married life afforded. A superior illegitimate liaison was nothing unnatural--on the contrary, it was but a natural human selection; such was the nature of the affection of Mme. d'Epinay for this débauché Francueil.