Deffand, of that poet too highly valued by her contemporaries, Mme. du Bocage, and of the actress Mlle. Quinault cadette, that form of préciosité for which his mind was suited, and which he never found again, because he had outlived the fashion.

Marmontel, in describing the society that frequented the salon of Mme. Geoffrin, mentions d'Alembert as "the gayest, the most animated, the most amusing in his gayety,"[25] and goes on to say that Marivaux, too, "would have liked to have this playful humour; but he had in his head an affair which constantly preoccupied him and gave him an anxious air. As he had acquired through his works the reputation of a keen and subtle wit, he considered himself obliged to constantly display that turn of mind, and was continually on the watch for ideas susceptible of contrast or analysis, in order to set them off against each other or to put them through a test. He would agree that such a thing was true up to a certain point or under a certain aspect; but there was always some restriction, some distinction to be made, which he alone had perceived. This labor of attention was hard for him, often painful for the others; but sometimes there resulted from it happy observations and brilliant hits. However, by the anxiety of his glances, one could see that he was uneasy about the success that he was having or might have. There never was, I think, a more delicate, more tender, and more apprehensive amour-propre; but, as he carefully considered that of others, they respected his, and merely pitied him for not being able to determine to be simple and natural."[26]

Although this characterization by Marmontel may be true, too much must not be attributed to self-conceit, for Marivaux was rather timid and suspicious of himself at heart than self-conceited, and this very lack of confidence, this desire to please and to be thought well of, which caused him, at times, to emphasize before his friends his own worth, is a key to his nature, without which it would be difficult to understand him. This timidity of his explains his fear of being duped by the ingénue of Limoges, as well as his mistrust of the man who made rough draughts of his letters, instead of writing them off-hand. That Marivaux was over- sensitive we must agree, for, although the testimony of his contemporaries may be somewhat biased by jealousy, it is too overwhelmingly unanimous to be gainsaid.[27]

We cannot conclude, however, despite the testimony of Grimm, whose caustic tongue was none too chary of his friends, that intercourse with Marivaux was "épineux et insupportable," for, were it so, he never would have been so cordially welcomed into society as he was, for which, according to the abbé de La Porte, he possessed all the qualities required, "an exact honesty, a noble disinterestedness,… a pleasing candour, a charitable soul, a modesty without affectation and without pretense, an extremely sensitive courtesy, and the most scrupulous attention to avoid whatever might offend or displease."[28]

A brilliant conversationalist, Marivaux excelled in the quality, no less rare, of being a good listener, and never gave way to "that distraction which always wounds when it does not provoke laughter."[29]

The following incident[30] will serve to illustrate the extreme sensitiveness of Marivaux. He had confided to Mme. Geoffrin a certain grievance against Marmontel. She, in turn, spoke to the latter of the fancied slight, although she assured him that, even in his complaints, Marivaux spoke only well of him, a small matter, but one that proves the nobility of our author's nature. When the occasion presented itself, Marmontel asked for an explanation of his grievance, and, with some difficulty, elicited the following reply: "Have you forgotten that at the house of Mme. du Bocage, one evening, being seated near Mme. de Villaumont, you both kept looking at me and laughing, while whispering together? Assuredly you were laughing at me, and I do not know why, for on that day I was no more ridiculous than usual." Upon an assurance from Marmontel that he was not the object of their amusement, he declared that he believed him, but it is doubtful whether he ever quite forgave him or forgot the fact.

This habit of suspiciousness grew upon Marivaux with age; but we must return to his early years at Paris and to his first literary attempts, after this long digression, which has served, I hope, to give something of an idea of the milieu in which he moved, and of the influences at work upon the formation of his talent.

He had made his début, as has been said, with le Père prudent in 1706. This was followed a few years later by three mediocre novels. The first of these, written in 1712, though not published" until 1737, appeared under the several titles of Pharsamon, les Folies romanesques, and le Don Quichotte moderne, and was, as one of the titles discloses, an attack upon the romantic novel, as exemplified in those of Mlle. de Scudéry. It must not be considered a parody, but rather a weak imitation of Cervantes' Don Quijote. He was no more successful in les Aventures de…, ou les Effets surprenants de la sympathie (1713-1714), written, in much the same style, or in la Voiture embourbée,[31] which appeared between the two publications of the former. This latter follows a familiar device: that is to say, one of the personages of the main narrative begins a story. which is continued by another when he reaches the end of his imagination, and so on. The purpose of the story was to turn to ridicule romantic love, but, following the expression of Fournier, it advanced only "cahin-caha, comme le pauvre coche dont il contait les accidents, et il finit par s'embourber avec lui."[32] He somewhat redeemed himself in 1715 with le Triomphe de Bilboquet, ou la Défaite de l'Esprit, de l'Amour et de la Raison, a fancy inspired by the game of cup and ball, so much in vogue at that period that it threatened to usurp the time and rights of conversation, and had even made its way upon the stage, in which simple matter Marivaux found occasion for moral observation.

In 1717 he allied himself with le Nouveau Mercure, a paper devoted to the interests of the Modernes as against those of the Anciens. This quarrel over the comparative merits of the ancient and modern writers, begun in the first half of the seventeenth century with the abbé de Bois- Robert, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, and later Perrault, Fontenelle, La Motte, and others ranged on the side of the latter, while Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Rollin, Mme. Dacier, and followers strenuously upheld the honor of antiquity, had dragged on through the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, until apparently the last word had been said by Mme. Dacier in her Préface à la traduction de l'Odyssée (1716). Marivaux, however, by turn of mind and training a modern, and ever the champion of his friend La Motte, and, perhaps more to avenge him for the "grosses paroles de Mme. Dacier"[33] than to depreciate le divin Homère (whom he made a point of always mentioning in that way), would not let the matter rest, and, in 1717, composed a burlesque poem entitled l'Iliade ravestie. Had he been familiar with the Greek language, he might never have committed this piece of literary impudence, but he knew Homer only through La Motte's reduction of the Iliad, which in turn was based upon Mme. Dacier's translation. If his object was to overthrow the great Greek poet, it must have been a bitter disappointment to Marivaux to see that his burlesque passed almost unnoticed by his contemporaries and was soon forgotten. The same year he wrote a Télémaque travesti, a parody on the masterpiece of Fénelon. This work was not published until 1736, when it was received with such disapprobation that he hastened to disavow its authorship.[34]