She, laboriously anxious about the duties politeness requires from the mistress of a house, went so far as to write down in her tablets "To recompliment M.Thomas more strongly on the song of France in his poem of Pierre le Grand." She paid him more precious homage when she wrote to him: "We were united in our youth in every honorable way; let us be more than ever united now when ripe age, which diminishes the vivacity of impressions, augments the force of habit, and let us be more than ever necessary to one another when we live no longer save in the past and in the future, for, as regards myself, I, in anticipation, lay no store by the approbation of the circles which will surround us in our old age, and I desire nothing among posterity but a tomb to which I may precede M.
Necker, and on which you will write the epitaph.

Such resting-place will be dearer to me than that among the poplars which cover the ashes of Rousseau." It was desirable to show what sort of society, cultivated and virtuous, lively and serious, all in one, the new minister whom Louis XVI.

had just called to his side had managed to get about him.

Though friendly with the philosophers, he did not belong to them, and his wife's piety frequently irked them.

"The conversation was a little constrained through the strictness of Madame Necker," says Abbe Morellet; "many subjects could not be touched upon in her presence, and she was particularly hurt by freedom in religious opinions." Practical acquaintance with business had put M.Necker on his guard against the chimerical theories of the economists.