Note 42 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Duvernet, ch. ii. The free-hearted Ninon de l’Enclos, brightest of old ladies, is to be numbered among the pre-Voltairean freethinkers, and to be remembered as leaving young Voltaire a legacy to buy books. She refused to “sell her soul” by turning dévote on the invitation of her old friend Madame de Maintenon. Madame D’Épinay, Voltaire’s “belle philosophe et aimable Habacuc,” Madame du Deffand, and Madame Geoffrin were among the later freethinking grandes dames of the Voltairean period; and so, presumably, was the Madame de Créquí, quoted by Rivarol, who remarked that “Providence” is “the baptismal name of Chance.” As to Madame Geoffrin see the Œuvres Posthumes de D’Alembert, 1799, i, 240, 271; and the Mémoires de Marmontel, 1804, ii, 102 sq. If Marmontel is accurate, she went secretly at times to mass (p. 104). ↑