Rousseau's Dog by David Edmonds

only a qualified vote of approval: “In spite of the fame that he has acquired in his country, and the reputation that he is beginning to have in France, he does not appear to be a man of the first power.” But by 1759, he was praising Hume as “one of the best intellects of England; and as philosophers belong less to their native country than to the universe which they enlighten, this man can be included in the small number of those who by their wisdom and by their works have benefited mankind.” As for his personality, after being exposed to Hume in Paris, the shrewd, clear-sighted Grimm reached an ambivalent verdict:
    M. Hume should like France; he has received there the most distinguished and flattering welcome. … What is still more pleasing is that all the pretty women have latched on to him, and the fat Scottishphilosopher is so delighted to be in their company. This David Hume is an excellent man; he is naturally serene, he listens sensitively, he speaks sometimes with wit although he says little; but he is heavy, he has neither warmth, nor grace, nor anything suited to joining in the warbling of those charming little machines we call pretty women.
    Whatever their reservations, the
philosophes
sought Hume out. Next to d’Alembert, Turgot, then an enlightened royal administrator of the Limoges district in central France, was his closest friend. Their band included Suard (who later translated a crucial document for Hume) and the magistrate and chief censor for the French book trade, Lamoignon de Malesherbes. Early on in his stay, Hume told Hugh Blair that the men of letters there were really very agreeable: all of them men of the world; living in entire, or almost entire, harmony among themselves; and quite irreproachable in their morals.
    Ironically, the only cultural gap that Hume had difficulty in bridging was over religion. His problem was not that the
philosophes
were overly religious—quite the reverse. Hume squirmed at the disdain directed at believers. Once, dining with d’Holbach, Hume claimed he had never seen an atheist and questioned whether they really existed. But there were seventeen of them at that very table, replied d’Holbach. (Diderot, who recounted this anecdote, feared it would scandalize the English, who still believed a little in God, whereas, in his judgment, the French scarcely did at all.) It seems Hume was fated to be damned on one side of the Channel for having too little religion and on the other side for having too much.
    Mossner hazards that this—and the fact that his metaphysical skepticism was never fully embraced in Paris—contributed to an intellectual loneliness and might have been one reason why
le bon David
never returned to France. We might hazard another—that he wanted to avoid Mme de Boufflers.
    E VEN AT A distance of 250 years, it is impossible to resist the appeal of Marie-Charlotte-Hippolyte de Campet de Saujon, comtesse de Boufflers-Rouverel. Hume’s odd relationship with her reveals the constraints on his capacity for sentiment. She also acted as an essential link between him and Rousseau.
    Mme de Boufflers exemplified the adage that in England marriage took place to end a young woman’s indiscretions, while in France it began them. In 1746, she had been married to Édouard, comte de Boufflers-Rouvel; but for over twenty years she was the mistress of a prince of the blood royal, Louis-François de Bourbon, prince de Conti. In Paris, he resided at the magnificent Temple—originally a fortified monastery of the Knights Templar. Hence Mme du Deffand’s dismissive reference to Mme de Boufflers as
l’Idole du Temple.
    When in the capital, Mme de Boufflers lived in rue Notre-Damede-Nazareth in the Temple precincts. There she held her illustrious salon, serving tea
à l’anglaise
in the glittering Room of the Four Mirrors. One such séance can be seen at Versailles in Michel-Barthelémy