But Madame de Chatelet is the more frequent victim of our _persifleur_.

The learned lady would change her apartment--for it was too noisy, and it had smoke without fire--which last was her emblem.

"She is reviewing her _Principia_; an exercise she repeats every year, without which precaution they might escape from her, and get so far away that she might never find them again.
I believe that her head in respect to them is a house of imprisonment rather than the place of their birth; so that she is right to watch them closely; and she prefers the fresh air of this occupation to our amusements, and persists in her invisibility till night-time.

She has six or seven tables in her apartments, for she wants them of all sizes; immense ones to spread out her papers, solid ones to hold her instruments, lighter ones, &c.

Yet with all this she could not escape from the accident which happened to Philip II., after passing the night in writing, when a bottle of ink fell over the despatches; but the lady did not imitate the moderation of the prince; indeed, she had not written on State affairs, and what was spoilt in her room was algebra, much more difficult to copy out." Here is a pair of portraits of a great poet and a great mathematician, whose habits were discordant with the fashionable circle in which they resided--the representation is just, for it is by one of the coterie itself.
Study, meditation, and enthusiasm,--this is the progress of genius, and these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till he can only live among polished crowds; who, if he bear about him the consciousness of genius, will still be acting under their influences.