The circle was formed of people who were not linked together. She had taken them from here and there, but chosen so well that when they were together they harmonized like the strings of an instrument tuned by a cunning hand…She played on this instrument with an art that was almost genius. Nowhere was conversation livelier, or more brilliant, or better controlled…The minds she worked upon were neither shallow or weak…Her gift for throwing out an idea, and giving it to men of this type to discuss; her gift for discussing it herself, like them, with precision, and sometimes with eloquence; are not those of an ordinary woman. - Memoirs of Marmontel