Julie de Lespinasse

Born the November 9th 1732 with Lyon, Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse is the illegitimate girl of the count Gaspard of Vichy, brother of Marie of Deffand and the Comtesse of Albon. His/her father married his natural sister thereafter. Julie was thus raised by her mother, remaining with it until the death of the still young latter, who again entrusts it to her father, so that it finds controlling children of its natural sister and mother-in-law, children who are also his/her half-brothers and sisters.

His/her natural aunt, Marie of Deffand, feeling her sight to decline, take it then as reader in the living room which it holds with Paris and which is already known in 1754, thus giving to his/her niece opportunity of leaving a marital status undoubtedly rather unpleasant.

As of 1747, having tied a friendship with Alembert, its living room is attended by writers and philosophers such as Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Marmontel and Marivaux. It is in this world that it introduces her niece. Julie, without being really beautiful, is intelligent and especially very skilful to direct the conversation. Its quickness of mind and its smoothness are not long in alluring the hosts of its aunt and the conversations started in the living room of this one finish in the room of Julie. Madam of Deffand having learned it judged herself betrayed and a great jealousy conceived some which will not leave it even any more after the untimely death of Julie, that it ends up returning in 1763.

Julie de Lespinasse opened then, in 1764, her own living room Rue of Bellechasse, where it also receives Condillac, Condorcet and Turgot, in addition to those which it received already before in her aunt. One could say of his living room which it was the “laboratory of the Encyclopédie ”, of which it was the egery. Many was those which underwent the charm of this young woman to the character burning and impassioned, but it is with Alembert that it bound of a deep friendship, which only seems to have been platonic. Illegitimate child like him, they have common points which bring them closer. Patient, it collects it at it and looks after it. They will not be left any more.

Julie éprend however deeply of the marquis de Mora, wire of the ambassador of Spain in 1766, quite as enthusiast of it. They consider the marriage, but the family of Mora will make the impossible one to thwart it and will succeed there.

Returned to Spain, it falls ill and remains there to be neat. Their correspondence reflects already these impassioned loves which will flower in the romantic literature. To forget the anguishes which the distance of his/her lover causes him, she attends to change the ideas the country houses of her many friends and meets, with Mill-Pretty Bezons, the colonel of Guibert in 1772. She is caught for this last of an irresistible passion which she will test until her death, in spite of the apparent indifference that he testifies to him.

During long months, it nourishes feelings of guilt, divided between her two lovers, not being able to forget one but wishing the other. Mora, patient, returned to France to join it, die in Bordeaux in 1776. It is at this time that Julie and Guibert become lovers. When Julie has suddenly learned this coincidence, despair seizes it, sorrow and the remorses shake its health. She thinks of the suicide: “ I suffered, I have haï the life, I called upon death, ” she will write, “ and I make oath not give him the dislike and receive it on the contrary like a libératrice ”.

“ There is only one thing which resists, it is passion and it is that of the love, because all the others would remain without répliques ”. “ There are only the love-passion and the benevolence which appear me to be worth the sorrow of vivre. ” In these some lines could summarize the personality of Julie.

She will not survive the marriage of Guibert ; despaired by the failure of its two connections, she dies in forty-four years, the May 23rd 1776. Its correspondence with Guibert will be published in 1809 by the widow of this one. Like that of his/her aunt of Deffand, this correspondence constitutes a psychological and historical document of reference.

Diderot made of it, with the doctor Bordeu, a character of sound dream of Alembert.

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