The celebrated Abbé de Châteauneuf, in his "Dialogues on Ancient
Music," refers to Mademoiselle de l'Enclos under the name of
"Leontium," a name given her by le Maréchal de Saint-Evremond, and in
his eulogy upon her character, lays great stress on the genius
displayed in her epistolary style. After censuring the affectation to
be found in the letters of Balzac and Voiture, the learned Abbé says:

"The letters of Leontium, although novel in their form of expression,
although replete with philosophy, and sparkling with wit and
intelligence contain nothing stilted, or overdrawn.

"Inasmuch as the moral to be drawn from them is always seasoned with
sprightliness, and the spirit manifested in them, displays the
characteristics of a liberal and natural imagination, they differ in
nothing from personal conversation with her choice circle of friends.

"The impression conveyed to the mind of their readers is, that she is
actually conversing with them personally."

Mademoiselle de l'Enclos writes about the heart, love, and women.
Strange subjects, but no woman ever lived who was better able to do
justice to them. In her frame of mind, she could not see men without
studying their dispositions, and she knew them thoroughly, her
experience extending over a period of seventy-five years of intimate
association with men of every stamp, from the Royal prince to the
Marquis de Sévigné, the latter wearying her to such an extent that she
designated him as "a man beyond definition; with a soul of pulp, a
body of wet paper, and a heart of pumpkin fricasseed in snow," his own
mother, the renowned Madame de Sévigné, admitting that he was "a heart