Note 117 — Chapter III

M. Charles de Brosses, in his Lettres Familières écrites de l'Italie en 1739 et 1740, speaks of Agnesi in terms that recall the marvelous stories which are related of Admirable Crichton and Pico della Mirandola. "She appeared to me," he tells us, "something more stupendous—una cosa piu stupenda—than the Duomo of Milan." Having been invited to a conversazione for the purpose of meeting this wonderful woman, the learned Frenchman found her to be a "young lady of about eighteen or twenty." She was surrounded by "about thirty people ... many of them from different parts of Europe." The discussion turned on various questions of mathematics and natural philosophy.

"She spoke," writes de Brosses, "wonderfully well on these subjects, though she could not have been prepared beforehand any more than we were. She is much attached to the philosophy of Newton; and, it is marvelous to see a person of her age so conversant with such abstruse subjects. Yet, however much I was surprised at the extent and depth of her knowledge, I was still more amazed to hear her speak Latin ... with such purity, ease and accuracy, that I do not recollect any book in modern Latin written in so classical a style as that in which she pronounced these discourses.... The conversation afterwards became general, everyone speaking in the language of his own country, and she answering in the same language; for, her knowledge of languages is prodigious."