Necker's daughter, she had inspired politics from her birth.

Her mother's _salon_ had been the _coenaculum_ of the philosophy of the 18th century.

Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, D'Alembert, Diderot, Raynal, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Condorcet had played with this child, and fostered her earliest ideas.

Her cradle was that of the Revolution.

Her father's popularity had played about her lips, and left there an inextinguishable thirst for fame.