22 - CRÉQUY Renée-Caroline-Victoire de Froullay, Marquise de [, 1714 – , 1803]. She hosted a salon frequented by the Philosophes and wrote her memoirs.

CRÉQUY Renée-Caroline-Victoire de Froullay, Marquise de [, 1714 – , 1803]. She hosted a salon frequented by the Philosophes and wrote her memoirs. Signed autograph letter addressed to Monsieur Guÿs, secretary to the King at the Academy of Marseille. Paris, March 11, 1776; 2 pages in-4° mounted on a folio-sized sheet. A curious letter in which she thanks her correspondent for sending her *Éloge de Madame de Sévigné* and offers this pointed assessment of the great letter-writer: “Madame de Sévigné had a lovely pen, but a small mind; a bourgeois woman of distinction, flattering herself with a glance that Caesar had happened to cast her way. No philosophy, and consequently no sound judgment; consumed by the desire for prestige and a woman of the moment, for she was, after all, gentle and subservient to public opinion. These flaws stem from the desire to take precedence in the eyes of others, and the ungrateful public has no idea of the misery it causes.”