A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux

aste in this way. Here we find him admitted to the salon of Mme. de Lambert, held in her famous apartments, situated at the corner of the rue Richelieu and the rue Colbert, and now replaced by a portion of the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was a rendezvous of select society on Wednesdays, and particularly of the literary set on Tuesdays, and among its habitués may be mentioned such men as Fontenelle, d'Argenson, Sainte- Aulaire, La Motte, and President Hénault. "It was," says Fontenelle, "with few exceptions, the only house which had preserved itself from the epidemic disease of gambling, the only one in which one met to converse reasonably and even with esprit upon occasion."[18] Its influence was inestimable upon literary questions of the time, and it might be considered almost as the antechamber of the French Academy. The envious dubbed it un bureau d'esprit, and its form of préciosité, lambertinage.

That Mme. de Lambert had a great