For the rest, they were the typical men of the most enthralling age in history--each with his human story as well as his public purpose, and his part to play on the glittering stage of the social life of old France, as well as in the great events which moulded her destiny and affected the fate of Europe. * * * * * Foremost among them was d’Alembert. Often talked about but little known, or vaguely remembered only as the patient lover of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, Jean Lerond d’Alembert, the successor of Newton, the author of the Preface of the Encyclopædia, deserves an enduring fame. On a November evening in the year 1717, one hundred and eighty-nine years ago, a _gendarme_, going his round in Paris, discovered on the steps of the church of Saint-Jean Lerond, once the baptistery of Notre-Dame, a child of a few hours old. The story runs that the baby was richly clad, and had on his small person marks which would lead to his identification. But the fact remains that he was abandoned in mid-winter, left without food or shelter to take his feeble chance of life and of the cold charity of some such institution as the Enfants Trouvés. It was no thanks to the mother who bore him that the _gendarme_ who found him had compassion on his helpless infancy. The man had the baby hurriedly christened after his first cradle, Jean Baptiste Lerond, took him to a working woman whom he could trust, and who nursed him--for six weeks say some authorities, for a few days say others--in the little village of Crémery near Montdidier. At the end of the time there returned to Paris a certain gallant General Destouches, who had been abroad in the execution of his military duties. He went to visit Madame de Tencin, and from her learnt of the birth and the abandonment of their son. No study of the eighteenth century can be complete without mention of the extraordinary women who were born with that marvellous age, and fortunately died with it. Cold, calculating, and corrupt, with the devilish cleverness of a Machiavelli, with the natural instinct of love used for gain and for trickery, and with the natural instinct of maternity wholly absent, d’Alembert’s mother was the most perfect type of this monstrous class. Small, keen, alert, with a little sharp face like a bird’s, brilliantly eloquent, bold, subtle, tireless, a great minister of intrigue, and insatiably ambitious--such was Madame de Tencin. It was she who assisted at the meetings of statesmen, and gave Marshal Richelieu a plan and a line of conduct. It was she who managed the affairs of her brother Cardinal de Tencin, and, through him, tried to effect peace between France and Frederick in the midst of the Seven Years’ War. It was she who fought the hideous incompetence of Maurepas, the Naval Minister; and it was she who summed herself up to Fontenelle when she laid her hand on her heart, saying, ‘Here is nothing but brain.’