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The eighteenth century was in France the age of the “monstrous regiment of women.” The divine right of kings, as it had done in England half a century before, resolved itself into the divine right of mistresses. One legacy bequeathed by them was the French Revolution; modern conversation was the other. In England conversation remained among men, and produced clubs; in France women invaded it, and the salon was the result: the heyday past, the Regent’s mistress, the minister’s mistress, opened a salon, where Montesquieu and all celebrities might meet to talk. Claudine Guérin de Tencin, saddened by the suicide of a lover and the arrival of her forty-fifth year; Madame Geoffrin, “whimsical and cross-grained,” citizen’s daughter, millionaire’s widow, who had the excellent talent of drawing every one out in his own subject, and called her salon “a shop;” Marie de Vichy, Marquise du Deffand, whom Massillon could not convert, who was interested in nothing, and had neither temperament nor romance; and the Duchess de Chaulnes, the “intimate enemy” of Madame du Deffand, “a typical woman of the eighteenth century,” delighting only in wit, bons-mots, and gallantry, and made piercingly sagacious by her wicked life: these and others like them kept salons, primarily for their own amusement. Earnest talk on momentous matters was the one thing forbidden. Clear analysis of questions of finance, of morality, of legislation, clear mockery of the problems of human destiny, the facile, brilliant, and winged talk, “on everything à propos of nothing,” was the order of the day.

Madame du Deffand was Montesquieu’s favourite among these. She gathered about her in her own phrase “les trompeurs, le trompés, et les trompettes”—everybody connected with diplomacy, in fact. In her salon the author of “L’Esprit des Lois” learned much. “I like that woman,” he said, “with all my heart; she pleases me, amuses me; it is impossible to weary in her company.” It was in this society that Montesquieu “talked out” his books; and the reader should remember that it was for this society they were written.

Montesquieu was often glad to retire from the “official centers of conversation” to quieter houses, where he could be more at home, and where he could meet such marvels of the age as the two sisters of Madame de Rochefort, “the Marquise de Boufflers, who was faithful to her lover, and the Duchesse de Mirepoix, who was faithful to her husband.” But of all salons he preferred that the Duchesse d’Aiguillon. There he met the most interesting men of the day of all nationalities, attracted by the impartiality of the duchess, her abundant and original wit, her refined talk, her obligating manners, and her ability to speak four languages. Gustavus III. called her the “living journal of the Academy.” But she had judgment also; and authors consulted her about their works. Montesquieu liked her for herself and also because in her house he could meet Madame Dupré de Saint-Maur, wife of the Intendant of Bordeaux, who was “equally charming as mistress, as wife, and as friend.” It was in the arms of Madame Dupré de Saint-Maur that Montesquieu died on the 10th of February, 1755, in his sixty-sixth year.