LETTERS OF MLLE. DE LESPINASSE.
Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse, with Notes on her Life and Character. Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. (W. Heinemann. 6s.)—The Anglo-Saxon mind can scarcely share the enthusiasm of the French with regard to these letters. There is a monotony and a want of reticence in them that weary the reader in spite of the passion which burns in every word of the appeals to the lover whose coldness and inconstancy broke the heart of the writer. We should pity Mlle. de Lespinasse more if she had not inflicted equal suffering on d'Alembert—the dis- tinguished man who devoted to her his life and counted it worth- less after her death. He bore with resignation her affection for M. de Mora, the young romantic Spaniard who died of con- sumption while returning to France for her sake, happily not knowing that he had been already supplanted by M. de Guibert. The latter seems to have been a vain coxcomb and charlatan, yet her love survived even the knowledge that she wearied him, and subsequently even his marriage. She had great excuses for her inconstancy in the license and falseness of the time, and in the miserable consequences of her illegitimate birth. Treated with contempt and harshness in the chateau of her nearest but un- acknowledged relations, it was here that Madame du Deffand met her and at once perceived the attraction the young lady would prove to her salon. For twelve years they lived together. Although Mlle. de Lespinasse had neither rank, wealth, nor beauty, the most distinguished society in Paris was at her feet, for she possessed the indescribable gift of charm ; and when her protectress quarrelled with her and turned her out of doors, her friends found an apartment for her, and continued the delightful causeries from five to nine which had excited (very naturally, as they were kept secret) the anger of Madame du Deffand. Mlle. de Lespinasse died in 1776, at the age of forty- nine, worn out by her violent and uncontrolled passions, leaving d'Alembert inconsolable, and regretted by the master-spirits of the day. Frederick the Great, Voltaire, Grimm, Marmontel, and many others wrote memorials of her, so strong was the im- pression she produced on them. She had thrown the history of her love for M. de Mora into the form of a romance, which she left rather cruelly to d'Alembert, who never before had under- stood the nature of her affection for the hero. The present volume contains her letters to M. de Guibert, her relations with whom wero unknown to the world until they were published years afterwards by his widow.
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