The «ignorant worldly» - as she ironized about herself in her fluent correspondence with

Voltaire

-

Madame du Deffand

, whose Parisian salon was a point of rendezvous and enjoyment for encyclopedists, wrote, not without retreat and causticity, but with enormous skill: «Usually we are surrounded by weapons and enemies, and those we call friends are those who are not afraid of being killed, but who would let the murderers do.

This woman of letters, key to understanding the spirit of the 18th century fran

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