II- 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 COLLEGE 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mrs. H. C. Chatfield-Taylor
 
 Classks f0r 
 
 . EDITED BY 
 
 MRS OLIPHA^T
 
 The Volumes published of this Series contain 
 
 / DANTE, . By the EDITOR. 
 
 ' VOLTAIRE, By Major-General Sir E. B. HAMLEY, K.C.M.G. 
 
 PASCAL, By Principal TULLOCH. 
 
 PETRARCH, By HENRY REEVE, C.B. 
 
 GOETHE, By A. HAYWARD, Q.C. 
 
 MOLIERE, ... By Mrs OLIPHANT and F. TARVER, M.A. 
 
 MONTAIGNE, ... By Rev. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 RABELAIS, By WALTER BESANT. 
 
 CALDERON, By E. J. HASELL. 
 
 SAINT SIMON, ... By CLIFTON W. COLLINS, M.A. 
 - CERVANTES By the EDITOR. 
 
 CORNEILLE AND RACINE, . . By HENRY M. TROLLOPE. 
 
 MADAME DE SEVIGNE, . By Miss THACKERAY 
 
 (Mrs RICHMOND RITCHIE). 
 LA FONTAINE, AND OTHER ) 
 FRENCH FABUIJSTS, / B ^ Rev " W " LuCAS COLLINS ' M " A - 
 
 SCHFLLER I ^ J AMES SIME, M.A., Author of 'Lessing: 
 
 I his Life and Writings.' 
 
 In preparation 
 ROUSSEAU, By HENRY GRAHAM.
 
 MADAME DE ISETIGNE 
 
 BY 
 
 MISS THACKERAY 
 
 (MRS RICHMOND RITCHIE) 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 1881 REPRINT, 1882 
 
 All Rights reserved
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 I 9 Z ~ 8ANTA BARBARA COLLEG 
 
 72145 
 
 TO 
 
 EESTEK AND WILLIAM DENIS KITCHIE 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED 
 BY THEIR MOTHER 
 
 KENSINGTON, March 18, 1881.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 THERE are several well-known editions of Madame de 
 Se'vigne's Letters. Chief among them are M. de Mon- 
 merque's comprehensive and admirably edited volumes. 
 Besides, there are selections for the use of schools, of 
 which Madame Tastu's is, I believe, the standard. An 
 excellent edition, published by Messrs Firmin Didot, 
 has been chiefly used in the compilation of this little 
 handbook. It is preceded by a short memoir by M. 
 Jacquinet, in which it is stated that Madame de 
 Sevigne's Letters had always been admired, and were 
 constantly handed about and copied by her friends, but 
 that it was not till 1726 that the first edition was 
 printed by the Abbe de Bussy, to whom " Pauline " 
 Madame de Simiane had given transcripts of many 
 of the originals. The Abbe must also have inherited 
 from his father, Bussy de Eabutin, papers containing the 
 original correspondence between the two cousins. 
 
 In 1754 Madame de Simiane commissioned the
 
 Vlll NOTE. 
 
 Chevalier Perrin, an intimate friend, to bring out an 
 edition authorised by the family, on condition that he 
 omitted any passages reflecting on Madame de Grignan. 
 He was also to leave out any private names and details 
 likely to wound any of the survivors of those people 
 mentioned in the original correspondence. M. de Perrin, 
 in accordance with these directions, snipped and changed, 
 and interpolated to his own fancy, and not a little 
 to the indignation of subsequent critics (Sainte-Beuve 
 being not the least among them). M. de Monmerque 
 has, by great labour and patience, been able to restore 
 the original text, and much of the matter which 
 Madame de Simiane (with a feeling which cannot be 
 blamed) is supposed to have done her best to suppress. 
 Of the letters here quoted, the Vatel letter and the 
 story of Picard are translated by Miss Ritchie; and 
 some other translations are by Mrs Cracroft. I have 
 also to acknowledge Mr Cracroft's kind help in giving 
 me the notes and books he collected for his own inter- 
 esting account of Madame de Sevigne", and that of Mon- 
 sieur Jules Andrieu, whose great knowledge and famili- 
 arity with French literature are well known. I have 
 put his initials to some notes which he has given me. 
 Among the best commentaries upon Madame de Sevigne"'s 
 text are the pictures which naturally belong to it. 
 Petitot's portraits give a whole gallery of her historic 
 characters. Madame de Sevigne herself is there in 
 mid-age, as well as young and brightly beautiful; Ma-
 
 NOTE. IX 
 
 dame de Grignan, with regular features, prim and coldly 
 chiselled ; Maintenon in her youth, more lovely than 
 the lovely Marie de Sevigne herself ; Ninon, with her 
 strongly marked countenance. There, too, is the stately 
 Grignan; La Eochefoucauld, magnificent and portly; 
 the majesty of the King in its periwigged apotheosis ; the 
 romantic Mademoiselle, with her big features ; and poor 
 young Madame, with a likeness to her father, Charles 
 I. Of all the pictures I have ever seen of Madame 
 de Sevigne, the most interesting is one at Wykehurst 
 belonging to my friend Mrs Huth. The grandmother 
 is painted smiling and debonnaire, and holding up an 
 oval portrait of her daughter, who looks white and red, 
 and brown-haired, and conscious; while little Pauline, 
 of the square nose, is staring up with her dark eyes. 
 The celebrated pearl necklace is there, which is so often 
 mentioned in the Letters. 
 
 Mr Hamilton Aide tells me of two charming minia- 
 tures. He has also, by the kindness of Lady "Waterford, 
 the possessor of the original picture at Beckett, given 
 me a photograph of a portrait of Madame de Sevigne 
 holding her baby-daughter on her knee : the child half 
 turns with a childlike action, glancing as she turns 
 aside. The mother sits bright, beautiful, and stately, 
 with an air of lovely youthful domination and hap- 
 piness.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION, ..... 1 
 
 II. GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER, . . 5 
 
 III. THE GUARDIAN AT LIVRY, . . . 13 
 
 IV. M. LE MARQUIS AND MADAME LA MARQUISE, 20 
 
 V. MADAME DE SEVIGNE's COUSIN, . . 26 
 
 VI. WIDOWS* WEEDS, ..... 34 
 
 VII. LIBATIONS, . . . . . . 38 
 
 VIII. PEN AND INK, ..... 42 
 
 IX. RABUTINAGE, ...... 51 
 
 X. THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN FRANCE, . . 57 
 XI. A ROMANTIC PRINCESS, .... 68 
 
 XII. THE TRAGEDY OF VATEL, . . . . " 77 
 
 XIII. FROM THE ROCHERS, .... 84 
 
 XIV. SYLLABUBS, DUCHESSES, AND HAYMAKERS, 91 
 XV. TORCHES AND BEACONS, .... 99
 
 Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 XVI. LB REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE, . . . 106 
 
 XVII. AN UNCOMFORTABLE CHAPTER, . . 114 
 
 XVIII. THE GREAT GENERAL, .... 118 
 
 XIX. BASSETTE AND HOCA, .... 124 
 
 XX FIDELE AND OTHER FRIENDS, . . .131 
 
 XXI. ILLNESS, ...... 135 
 
 XXII. AT COURT AND ELSEWHERE, . . .141 
 
 xxiii. FAMILY' DISCUSSIONS, . . . .148 
 
 XXIV. MADAME DE LA FAYETTE AND OTHERS, . 156 
 
 XXV. OLD AND NEW GENERATIONS, . . .163 
 
 XXVI. NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY, . . 169 
 
 XXVII. THE LAST, 173
 
 MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 MADAME DE SEVIGNE, in a fit of enthusiasm for the 
 works of one of her favourite moralists, once exclaimed, 
 " Would that all Nicole's writings could be boiled down 
 into a broth, and swallowed in one gulp ! " Some such 
 wish must often occur to the admirers of the incompar- 
 able Marquise as they read her famous letters, written 
 from the little darkroom, with its polished floors and 
 lofty shadows, in the old hotel at Paris, to the two whole 
 centuries of people who have come after the original 
 recipient. The Hotel de Carnavalet is still standing, 
 as white and handsome and young-looking, for its age, as 
 was its celebrated mistress. It is in a labyrinth of his- 
 toric streets, of which the very names tell the story of the 
 people who piled the long walls and gables, who made 
 the archways, and stabbed each other in the postern- 
 gates, or worshipped at the little shrines. Their de- 
 F.C. XIH. A
 
 2 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE*. 
 
 scendants have long since pressed beyond the narrow 
 island which was once Paris, and have crossed the Seine, 
 and are busy rearing commonplace new palaces in the 
 place of those they destroy. The Hotel de Sevigne, as 
 it is now called, has fortunately escaped many revolu- 
 tions and changes of dynasty, and still encloses its sunny 
 courtyard in all the dignity and stately inconvenience of 
 the royal times to which it belongs. Truly the sight of 
 the old place must conjure up for all of us many ghosts 
 with familiar names and faces, and among them that 
 charming figure, graceful and tender, sincere, unreason- 
 ing and. reasonable, who seems like a friend to us all. 
 After reading her letters, and living with her in spirit 
 for a while, we can almost hear her voice sounding in 
 our ears across the two centuries of turmoil. Madame 
 de Sevigne's voice rings very true and sweet and playful 
 amidst the hideous discords of her time ; and her appari- 
 tion is indeed a gracious vision among the reckless phan- 
 toms of her age, those subjects of that Grand Monarch, 
 whose god was his belly, and whose good-breeding was 
 the admiration of Europe. While his people are starving, 
 and his mistresses stringing diamonds while his un- 
 willing armies are invading inoffensive nations, and his 
 courtiers are conniving at every mad wickedness Saint 
 Simon dwells, in an ecstasy of contemplation, upon the 
 extraordinary grace, the irresistible admixture of dignity 
 and respect, with which the king would half rise from 
 his seat at table to salute the tardy entrance of some 
 belated dame of honour, at the same time storing in his 
 memory a record of the lady's fallibility, to be resented 
 at the first convenient opportunity. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne", in her youth, was no less enthu-
 
 A LAUGHING PHILOSOPHY. 3 
 
 siastic about him than the rest ; but, as years went by, 
 her judgments became more just. Hers was a curious 
 morality. She laughed where others might have wept ; 
 she seemed to take the times as she found them ; she 
 attempted no reform, though she could see wrong plainly 
 enough where it existed. It was a sweet and happy 
 temper, a mind that played lightly even with sorrows 
 and wrong-doing; and yet this bright and apparently 
 unconcerned existence was a protest in its way against 
 the insincerity and abject selfishness of the Court. She 
 at least did her best to make those about her happy. 
 Her affection for her daughter was a sentimental enthu- 
 siasm almost passing the bounds of reason ; but her rela- 
 tions with her family, her friends, her dependants, were 
 most constant, touching, and human. There is in exist- 
 ence a legal document the will of some poor retainer, 
 who was found to have left all her worldly goods to the 
 well-beloved mistress that says more even than the fare- 
 well letter of Madame de Lafayette, who, on her death- 
 bed, wrote to her friend, " I think I have loved you 
 better than any other human being." 
 
 In a Court where lies and intrigues were as daily 
 bread where modesty was rare, and every standard of 
 right and wrong overthrown by the brilliant and witty 
 and well-dressed vices crowding in this beautiful young 
 woman, surrounded by flattery of every sort, by high 
 living and low thinking, kept her dignity intact, her 
 name pure and respected. She did not profess any spe- 
 cial virtue, nor hold her garments back lest they should 
 be soiled by contact with the petticoats of her more friv- 
 olous sisters. She was (to earnest minds perhaps) far too 
 lenient in her tolerance for others, and especially where
 
 4 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE*. 
 
 those she loved were concerned. But the whole tenor of 
 her life was just and self-respecting. She was not en- 
 tirely free from the prejudices of her caste and times; 
 she naively considered that to .be of good family must 
 needs have some influence on the decisions of Providence : 
 yet in her daily practice she Avas certainly far in advance 
 of her age in her consideration for those who were de- 
 pendent upon her, hi her love of order, in her readiness 
 to fulfil the duties and obligations of her position. 
 
 It has seemed the best and simplest plan to endeavour 
 in this little book to tell her story in her own words, so 
 far as may be possible ; but how impossible it is to trans- 
 late her words ! One might as well try to translate into 
 English the pleasant murmur of a brook on a summer 
 day, or the song of a bird in the air. 
 
 I have attempted no elaborate criticism of her style 1 
 and manner of saying the ever - new, ever - delightful 
 things which occur to her day by day; the tender, witty, 
 laughable (rather than humorous) things and fancies ; 
 or again, of the vivid and great suggestions that fill her 
 heart and mind, and ours, as we read. Her art is too 
 complete for criticism, too simple for analysis ; she has 
 almost everything to say, and she says it. 
 
 1 "La Fontaine wrote as she did intuitively, irresistibly; La 
 Bruyere is as picturesque, but more laboured; Saint Simon was 
 vivid, but more matter of fact, less flowery and harmonious." J. A.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER. 
 
 MARIE DE EABUTIN-CHANTAL was born in 1626, and was 
 the daughter of an ancient and somewhat moss-grown 
 Burgundian family, owning ruined castles, feudal rights, 
 coats-of-arms without number, all of which had been 
 upheld from time immemorial by fierce fire-eating Barons, 
 whose portraits once hung so we are told in the old 
 gallery at Bourbilly, Guys, and Ames, and Christo- 
 phers, with their ladies ; some of them contributing royal 
 blood from Denmark to the glory of the Eabutins, be- 
 sides other kingly arms in their quarterings. So long 
 as thirty years ago, their pictures were already dropping 
 from the canvasses in the old gallery at Bourbilly, with 
 one notable exception, which may be still extant for all 
 I know. Among other distinctions, the family may 
 count that of possessing a canonised saint, and it seems 
 that her portrait (which was also one of the latest 
 painted) was miraculously found to survive the others. 
 The saint was the widow of one fierce Baron killed 
 out hunting, the mother of another who died fighting 
 the English (put to death, as one chronicler relates, by 
 the hand of Oliver Cromwell himself). Madame de
 
 6 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 Chantal, the saint, passionately loved her son and hus- 
 band, and their tragic end was a titter anguish to her. 
 After her husband's death she had determined never to 
 marry again ; the religious ideas in which she had been 
 brought up took entire possession of her mind; she dis- 
 tributed her rich wardrobe among the poor, and made a 
 pious resolve to wear nothing but coarse woollen clothes. 
 She dismissed the greater number of her servants, only 
 retaining a moderate retinue to wait upon herself and 
 her four children, for she was the mother of this one 
 son and three daughters, all of tender age. 1 
 
 She then retired, it does not appear for what reason, 
 to the chateau of Monthelon, near Autun, where she 
 dwelt for some tune with a very violent, ill-conducted, 
 and arbitrary old gentleman, the father of her late hus- 
 band, who seems to have treated her with intolerable 
 insults and humiliations, all of which she bore Avith the 
 greatest patience and humility, devoting herself to the 
 care of her young children, of the neighbouring poor, 
 and of some illegitimate children of the wicked old 
 Baron also living in the castle. 
 
 In 1604, no less a person than Saint Francis de Sales, 
 Bishop of Geneva, came to preach at Dijon, where 
 Madame de Chantal's own father, President Fremyot, 
 was living ; and she obtained leave from her father-in- 
 law (not without difficulty) to go home for a short visit, 
 in order to attend these ministrations. Her biographer 
 relates that at her very first meeting with the saintly 
 
 1 ' Les deux filles de Ste Chantal, Aymee Marie de Rabutin- 
 Chantal, Baronne de Thorens, et Fran9oise de Eabutin-Chantal, Com- 
 tesse de Toulonjon,' by Madame la Comtesse de Menthon. These 
 were Madame de Sevigne's aunts.
 
 ST FRANCIS AND HIS DISCIPLE. 7 
 
 prelate she recognised him at once as a holy personage 
 who had been revealed to her in a dream not long before. 
 Saint Francis also immediately remembered a vision which 
 he had seen of Madame de Chantal at his OAVTI home, 
 the Chateau de Sales in Savoy. After several interviews, 
 during which the lady declared he did not seem to her 
 to be a man, but an angel, Saint Francis hirdself was 
 quite overcome by the faith, the ardour, and the charity 
 of his new disciple, in whose mind all this time the idea 
 of leaving her home and giving herself up entirely to a 
 religious life seems to have been steadily gaining ground. 
 Saint Francis did not entirely discourage the scheme when 
 Madame de Chantal first opened her heart to him on 
 the subject, but he imposed upon her a probation of 
 six years, during which she was to live by rule, and 
 meditate upon her vocation. So fervently did she obey 
 his commands, so ascetic was her daily life, that she 
 became the admiration of all her neighbours, and even 
 her disreputable old father-in-law yielded at last to so 
 much virtue and austerity. 
 
 After many and forced delays, Saint Francis, in order 
 to try his disciple's faith still further, proposed that she 
 should enter into one of the severest of the Orders which 
 then existed for women, and to this she enthusiastically 
 agreed. Then the Bishop of Geneva disclosed to her his 
 full mind, and announced that, if she entered into reli- 
 gion, it should be not as a neophyte, but as the foundress 
 of an entirely new Order for the relief of the poor and 
 the sick. At the same time he was not blind to the 
 many sacred ties which bound her to the world. " I 
 see a great chaos in all this," said her director, "but 
 Providence will disentangle it."
 
 8 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 President Fremyot seems to have had some presenti- 
 ment of what was impending, for about this time he 
 anxiously furthered the suit of a very rich Burgundian 
 nobleman, a widower with a family, who was desirous 
 to contract an alliance with the saintly Baroness. Need- 
 less to say that all persuasions were unavailing : to defend 
 herself against her own possible weakness, she took an 
 iron point, heated it in the fire, and with it wrote the 
 name of Christ upon her breast. " I clung to the tree 
 of the cross," she afterwards said, " for fear so many 
 charming voices should lull my heart to compliance." 
 
 A marriage which she was far more disposed to look 
 upon favourably than her own was that of her daughter, 
 Aymee Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, with the Baron de 
 Thorens, a younger brother of Saint Francis, an officer 
 in the army. Marriages took place earlier in those days 
 than they do now the bride was only twelve years 
 old. A letter of conciliation is still extant, written 
 by Saint Francis de Sales to the old Baron de Chantal. 
 It is addressed to " M. de Chantal, captain of fifty men- 
 at-arms, Knight of the Order of his Majesty," and does 
 credit to the saint's human as well as his superhuman 
 qualities. It was not without difficulty that the old 
 man's consent was obtained, for the young bride was a 
 rich heiress, and the bridegroom was only the youngest 
 of five brothers. 
 
 And now Madame de Chantal found at last courage to 
 declare her resolve to her family, and to announce her 
 definitive intention of quitting them all. Her father is 
 said to have burst into tears, exclaiming, "Let me die 
 before you leave me." But although the daughter wept, 
 the saint was not shaken in her resolution. The day
 
 A FAREWELL. 9 
 
 after the marriage, when the family was assembled at 
 the chateau of Monthelon, where the wedding had taken 
 place, Madame de Chantal had another conference with 
 her father, and her brother, the Archbishop of Bourges. 
 She expressed herself with so much decision and clear- 
 ness of purpose, and was so well upheld by Saint 
 Francis, who persuaded her relations that hers was a 
 divine inspiration, and any resistance on their part would 
 be culpable, that they reluctantly yielded to her wish. 
 The two unmarried daughters were to remain under her 
 care in the convent, from whence she was also to super- 
 intend the young Baroness in her domestic affairs, her 
 son was to be confided to his two grandfathers, and in 
 three months the final separation was to take place. 
 
 Jeanne de Chantal took a touching leave of the old 
 Baron at Bourbilly, who was then eighty-six years of age; 
 but the real parting heartbreak was when she bade 
 farewell for ever to her young son and to her aged father. 
 There is an affecting story told of the young Baron de 
 Chantal, her son, who, when the hour of her departure 
 came, flung himself across the doorway, saying, " I am not 
 strong enough, Madame, to hold you back, but if you 
 leave us, it must be by stepping over the body of your 
 only son." The mother burst into an agony of tears, 
 but nevertheless forced her way across the threshold ; and 
 then, fearing lest they should think she regretted the step 
 she had taken, she turned, smiling and radiant, announc- 
 ing that though she left them God would not abandon 
 her. 
 
 So she went her way, left her young son and her aged 
 parents, founded many religious houses, made friends, 
 converts, disciples, led a life of wide benevolence. Her
 
 10 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE". 
 
 story is well worth following. Not only Saint Francis 
 de Sales but Saint Vincent de Paul it seems to have 
 been a golden age for saints were her advisers and com- 
 panions. Her life was a curious mixture of the hearth 
 and the cloister. She seems to have kept up her influ- 
 ence over her daughters, and to have advised them under 
 every circumstance. The youngest died, the two elder 
 were married by the saint, who seems to have provided 
 the trousseaux, with frilled collars and silken bodices, 
 among other details. The story of the Baronne de 
 Thorens, who died at nineteen of grief for her young 
 husband's premature death, is one of the most pathetic 
 imaginable. 
 
 Meanwhile the young Baron, who had remained under 
 the care of the old grandfather on the Chantal side, grew 
 up handsome, reckless, accomplished, devout, fearing 
 nothing, fighting as many duels as his father had done 
 before him. In 1624 he married Marie de Coulanges, 
 a pious and gentle heiress belonging to a respectable 
 famille de role, as the French express it, and in 1626 
 was born their second and only surviving child, Marie 
 de Eabut in -Chantal, better known by her after-name 
 of Marquise de Sevigne. 
 
 It gives one a curious impression of the manners and 
 customs of the times to read how this, the last Baron de 
 Chantal, after taking the sacrament with his wife within 
 a year of his marriage, left the altar and went straight 
 away in undress and in velvet slippers to act as second 
 to his friend Boutteville, the most desperate duellist of 
 the time, who had sent a messenger post-haste into the 
 church to summon him to the Porte Saint Martin. It 
 was then usual not only for principals but for seconds to
 
 IN THE PLACE ROYALE. 11 
 
 join in the fray. Boutteville and Rabutin de Chantal 
 were obliged to fly for their lives after the encounter, for 
 the Court, exasperated by the frequency of these mur- 
 derous amusements, had passed stringent laws against 
 duellists. The offence seems to have been condoned on 
 this occasion; but in 1627 De Boutteville was taken and 
 executed for a series of subsequent encounters. Chantal, 
 who had been so intimately mixed up with his friend's 
 imbroglios, fled to the island of Re, where the Marquis de 
 Toiras was beset by the English under Buckingham, and 
 where the Baron de Chantal fell bravely in the combat, 
 pierced by twenty-seven wounds. He was only thirty- 
 one years of age, and his little daughter was scarcely 
 more than one year old. His widow, who seems to 
 have been much loved by him and by the saint, his 
 mother, in her convent, caused his heart to be buried in 
 the church of the Minimes at Paris, in the Place Royale, 
 took her child, and returned to her father's, M. de 
 Coulanges', house, which was in that same quiet 
 quarter. The beautiful old place is still extant; the 
 trees in its garden are green ; the children play there as 
 perhaps little Marie de Rabutin herself may have done 
 with her young cousin, Emmanuel de Coulanges. It is 
 said that the Marquis de Toiras, the former companion- 
 in-arms of the Baron, tried in vain to win the widow's 
 hand, but she had no thought of remarriage ; her heart 
 was buried with her husband's in the old church of the 
 Minimes : and indeed, from all one hears of him, there 
 must have been something singularly attractive in this 
 hot-headed, handsome, gallant soldier. Sainte Chantal 
 felt his death very deeply, and wrote many really beautiful 
 things to her daughter-in-law ; but when poor Marie de
 
 12 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE". 
 
 Coulanges followed her husband to the grave, so absorbed 
 was the holy lady in founding fresh convents, that, except 
 for one or two more letters, all admirably expressed, she 
 does not seem, to have taken much interest in the fate 
 of her little granddaughter. She requested her brother 
 Fremyot, Archbishop of Bourges, to see after the child, 
 who was by him given over to the care of her mother's 
 relations. 
 
 Sainte Chantal entirely approved of the arrangement. 
 Writing to the President Coulanges, she says : 
 
 " The child will be happy, if God preserves you to her, 
 you and my suffering very dear sister, to continue your 
 pious and wise tuition. It is the truth that I love that child 
 as I loved her father in all for Kighteousness. I rejoice in 
 the grace which will enable her to be confirmed at Easter. " 
 
 "When we remember how Sainte Chantal, in her enthu- 
 siasm for Eighteousness, abandoned her young son, we 
 cannot suppose that, from an earthly point of view ; she 
 can have been of much use to the little granddaughter. 
 The child's early life was fated to be a sad one, for time 
 after time death seems to have swept away the tender 
 guardians who came about her. Our little Marie was 
 orphaned a second time when her grandmother and 
 grandfather died, and were carried in their turn to the 
 church of the Minimes, where her mother was already 
 lying, and her father's heart was buried.
 
 13 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE GUARDIAN AT LIVRT. 
 
 WHEN the little orphan's fate had to be decided, a family 
 council was called, at which, for the first time, we hear 
 of Bussy de Rabutin, who afterwards played such an 
 important part in Madame de Sevigne"'s history. The 
 child was an heiress ; several relations came forward to 
 claim her ; and among them Madame de Toulonjon, her 
 father's sister, who proposed to place her in a convent 
 forthwith. Bussy gave his vote for this lady ; but hap- 
 pily for the world, which might have sustained a loss, and 
 for the child herself, who was well fitted for the world, a 
 different decision was come to. A guardian was formally 
 appointed. This was the Abb6 de Coulanges, Marie de 
 Eabutin's maternal uncle, in whom she found, indeed, a 
 lifelong friend, adviser, and protector. He was at that 
 tune but twenty-nine years of age, and she was some- 
 where about ten ; but for half a century to come, these 
 two lives were destined to run side by side in peaceful, 
 tender "affection. " Le Bienbon," she calls him ; and if 
 he was devoted to her, she, too, never failed in her 
 faithful gratitude and affection towards the good man. 
 She loved him ; she loved Livry, the home to which he
 
 14 MADAME DE SOIGNE". 
 
 took her, and where her early girlhood -was passed. It 
 was a place she returned to all her life, and always with 
 pleasure. Livry was within a drive from Paris, all but 
 enclosed "by the forest of Bondy, and haunted by night- 
 ingales. Round about the abbey were pretty shaded 
 gardens perfumed with honeysuckle. " I came here yes- 
 terday," she writes some forty years later, to her daughter, 
 " and found the place in all the triumph of the month 
 of May. The nightingale, the cuckoo, the thrush, have 
 opened the spring-time in our forest. In the evening 
 I walked there alone, and found all my sad thoiights, of 
 which I will not speak to you. I have destined a por- 
 tion of this afternoon to write to you from the garden, 
 although I am bewildered by the three or four nightin- 
 gales singing overhead." 
 
 Very little is known of Mademoiselle de Chantal's 
 girlhood, but we get a pleasant glimpse in the Memoirs 
 of Madame de la Guette, as quoted by M. Mesnard " of 
 a beauty to win all hearts, coming with Madame de Cou- 
 langes, and two other ladies of quality, to Livry every 
 summer to breathe the fresh air." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Chantal's education was not entirely 
 confined to the song of nightingales and the scent of 
 honeysuckle. The Bienbon was rather a practical than a 
 literary man, but he seems to have taken pains to select 
 the very best and most highly esteemed masters for his 
 young ward. 1 Menage and Chapelain were her tutors. 
 
 1 One of them was the well-known character Vadiua, out of the 
 ' Femmes Savantes,' the hero of the sonnet, otherwise Menage, the 
 learned man with the wonderful memory, about whom so many 
 curious stories are told. Latin and philosophy he imbibed 
 with his mother's milk ; but, notwithstanding all the efforts of his 
 teachers, he was not able to master music and dancing. He
 
 THE GREAT VADIUS. 15 
 
 They taught her literature, Italian, Spanish, and she was 
 also made to read Virgil in the original "in all the 
 majesty of the text," as she herself says. 
 
 In the very first of all the many letters contained in 
 M. de Monmerque's big volumes, Mademoiselle de 
 Sevigne, then " Chantal," as she signs herself without 
 any other preamble, shows something of the thoughtless- 
 ness of youth in a reproach which she addresses to 
 Menage. He will not come and see her. . . . She 
 entreats him to change his determination ; if he will not 
 come to-day, let it be to-morrow. Is he angry because 
 she is going away 1 It is difficult to her to understand 
 that, loving her as a friend, and regretting her, he should 
 for that very reason treat her with coldness at the mo- 
 ment of parting. "What a most extraordinary manner 
 of behaving ! says the young lady. Poor Menage ! if 
 what biographers tell us is true, he was behaving in 
 no very extraordinary manner. He adored his pupil, 
 who, in those days, seems to have indulged in some 
 
 most have been of a sentimental disposition; and we read in the 
 * Biographic Generate ' that when he attained the age of fifty he went 
 to call on all the ladies he had been in the habit of visiting, and bade 
 them farewell " His works," says M. Fournel, " show a prodigious 
 amount of reading ; an ingenions mind ; a vast if somewhat confused 
 erudition. They are full of curious details of his contemporaries, and 
 also of his own life, for he is personal in all he writes. He was a 
 protegt of Gondi, the coadjutor, afterwards the Cardinal de Retz, 
 and, like many protSges, he seems to have been in a constant state of 
 discontent and grumbling. When his patron joined the Fronde he 
 was most indignant. It cost him, he declared, 3000 livres a-year in 
 perquisites. Chapelain, a very different sort of man moderate, and 
 more used to the ways of the world tried again and again to make 
 the peace between them. One of the complaints against Menage was, 
 that notwithstanding the remonstrances of Condi's intendant, he sent 
 a servant every day for five months to dine in the coadjutor's kitchen, 
 and regularly borrowed a candle every evening for his own use.
 
 16 MADAME DE SE"VIGXE". 
 
 girlish coquetry. In vain poor Menage would get 
 angry and go his way ; his pupil used to call him back 
 to her " the friend of all friends," she writes to him. 
 There is a cruel little story of a kiss she once gave him 
 in company, " according to the fashion of the primitive 
 church," she is said to have explained to the assembled 
 guests. But this was when she was very young, before 
 the pangs and disappointments of life had any meaning 
 for her. If the young can inflict thoughtless wounds, 
 they can bind them up as the old cannot do, who know 
 the meaning of pain, and who shrink from approach- 
 ing it. 
 
 Menage was not the lovely Chantal's only adorer; there 
 are many names still extant. Among others was Saint 
 Pavin, a witty humpback, and lord of the manor at 
 Livry. Bussy, both at this time and during her subse- 
 quent widowhood, was spoken of as a pretender to her 
 hand. She is described later on as having an art which 
 Bussy himself acknowledges, that of turning her lover 
 into a faithful friend. " It was a mixture of innocent 
 coquetry, of goodness without prudery, and real kind- 
 ness of heart, that at once maddened the poor lovers 
 and disarmed their anger." Menage, notwithstanding 
 his romantic passion, always remained the confidant of 
 Madame de Sevigne. " I have been your martyr," he 
 said ; "I am now your confessor." 
 
 Many years later, Madame de SeVigne, speaking 
 of these early days, and of her granddaughter, little 
 Pauline, whose square-tipped nose was, she declared, 
 inherited from herself, modestly says, " Have I ever been 
 as pretty as she is now? People tell me so." It is true 
 that this beauty was not altogether regular; but those
 
 THE ABBAYE AT LTVEY. 17 
 
 yeux bigarres, whose inequalities seemed to heighten their 
 fascination, were blue and full of fire. She had fair 
 hair, soft and abundant, and a dazzling complexion. 
 Madame de la layette, who never flattered, writes to 
 her : " The brilliancy of your mind so radiates through 
 your features and your eyes, that not only does it reach 
 us through our hearing, but dazzles our sight as well. 
 Pleasures and diversions enhance your beauty when you 
 are surrounded by them." 
 
 Thus we find Marie de Eabutin-Chantal at eighteen 
 living in a romantic old abbaye, surrounded by woods 
 all echoing with song, with a gentle elderly priest for her 
 guardian and protector. She is an accomplished young 
 lady moreover, an heiress, beautiful, the mistress of 
 several languages ; and being une demoiselle a marier, 
 her establishment in life is now seriously discussed. As 
 we have said, Bussy was one of the possible husbands 
 thought of for her. No memoir of Madame de Sevigne 
 would be complete without a mention of Bussy de Ra- 
 butin, her cousin, a few years her senior, her friend, 
 enemy, playfellow. Their very quarrels tell the story 
 of their two characters, which seem to complete each 
 other in some curious fashion. The least lovable traits 
 in Madame de SeVigne's nature she had in common 
 with her kinsman, and must have inherited with him. 
 But what in her was occasional and transient, formed 
 in him the foundation of a hard and unscrupulous 
 nature. Her extreme goodness and unselfish sympathy 
 far more than counterbalanced any passing recklessness 
 for the feelings of others when they clashed with the in- 
 terests of those in whose life she was absorbed. With 
 Bussy, on the contrary, the groundwork of his character 
 
 F.C. XIII. B
 
 18 MADAME DE SEVIGNE". 
 
 was selfishness, added to immoderate ambition, and a 
 coarseness of fibre which seemed to prevent him from 
 realising the unworthy life he was leading. His cousin 
 was dazzled for a time. She was very proud of him 
 until she found him out, and then she still cared for 
 him. " We are nearly allied," she writes to him ; " we 
 are of the same blood, we please each other, we love each 
 other." " Un pen rustaudement" he adds; and she also 
 calls the link which binds them that mixture of com- 
 mon blood and common wit by the happy name of 
 Rabutinage. 
 
 In these early days it is certain that Marie de Chantal 
 took an interest in her cousin, whose father was anxious 
 to see him married to her ; and it is not known for 
 certain why Bussy was not chosen for her husband. 
 Perhaps the young man may have been afraid of her 
 bright wit and clear-eyed judgment. Be that as it may, 
 the Abbe de Coulanges was strangely at fault when he 
 advocated the proposals of the Marquis de SeVigne 1 , a 
 protege of Gondi, the coadjutor. 
 
 The Marquis's mother was an old friend. The young 
 man himself was the inheritor of three centuries of noble 
 blood, reckoning among his ancestors Montmorencys, 
 Clissons, and Du Guesclins. He was rich, handsome, 
 well dressed, witty, deemed agreeable by many. Per- 
 haps the worthy Abbe" may himself have been dazzled 
 by so much good looks and fine clothes; or, what is 
 far more likely, they may have made an impression on 
 Mademoiselle de Chantal herself, who influenced her 
 uncle. The Abbe willingly gave his consent to the mar- 
 riage, which was, however, delayed from early spring 
 to late summer by an encounter in the Bois de Boulogne,
 
 MARRIAGE. 19 
 
 where the Marquis, who had insulted a fellow-Breton, 
 was badly wounded by a sword -thrust from his op- 
 ponent. 
 
 The young couple were married finally on the 4th 
 August 1644, at two o'clock in the morning, at the church 
 of St Gervais and St Protais in Paris ; and notwithstand- 
 ing the inconvenient hour, there is a long list of the 
 company present on this occasion, including Gondi 
 himself.
 
 20 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 M. LE MARQUIS AXD MADAME LA MARQUISE. 
 
 FEW facts are known (except some indeed not very edify- 
 ing) concerning the early married life of the young couple. 
 Of Madame de Sevigne's tender admiration and affec- 
 tion for her husband there is no doubt. They seem 
 to have led a gay and brilliant existence between Paris 
 and their country-house in Brittany made much of, 
 feasted, entertained, in their turn liberally entertaining 
 their friends. 
 
 The world made them welcome, and the world of 
 those days was a brilliant, dazzling, and, to young and 
 prosperous people, most delightful and enjoyable place, 
 revolving smoothly, varied, polished, well fed, well 
 dressed, well amused. The SeVignes used to frequent 
 the neighbouring hotel of the Incomparable Arthenice 
 so Madame de Eambouillet's respectful adorers used to 
 translate the name of Catherine, which they considered 
 too commonplace for the mistress of such a Parnassus. 
 
 In those stately polished rooms Madame de Sevigne 
 must have met all the names that we are accustomed to 
 place in rows upon our book -shelves. Bossuet, Corneille, 
 Voiture, Balzac, Menage, and many more appear, alive,
 
 THE HOTEL RAMBOUILLET. 21 
 
 smiling, tapping their snuff-boxes, complimenting, .dis- 
 coursing agreeably, in the presence of a lovely and en- 
 thusiastic audience. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne herself is said to have made some 
 stand against the exaggerations of that agreeable but 
 highly wrought company, which, nevertheless, she seems 
 to have enjoyed and frequented. She had too much 
 natural humour to be entirely carried away by the literary 
 fervours of the beautiful ladies, although, long after- 
 wards, she writes from the Eochers, her Breton home, 
 " J'ai encore un petit reste de bel air qui me rend prc- 
 cieuse." l All the same, she detested what she called 
 "tortillonage," and the " delicat des mauvaises ruelles," 
 neither of which expressions is to be rendered by 
 " elaborate circumlocution " or " the false delicacy of 
 vulgar coteries." 
 
 There is a celebrated and delightful chapter in Walck- 
 enaer's Life of Sevigne', describing one of those well- 
 known meetings at the Hotel Rambouillet. All the 
 company are assembled in Madame de Eambouillet's 
 bedroom, to hear the reading of a new piece by Corneille. 
 A large screen partitions off a portion of the great room, 
 and partially encloses a group, which is compared to a 
 bed of flowers. It is a parterre of young and lovely 
 women, of ribbons, plumes, bright colours, suave voices, 
 and perfumes ; while abbes, courtiers, and poets stand 
 around in attendance. The Princess de Conde, the 
 Duchesses d'Aquillon, de Longueville, and de Chevreuse, 
 the Marchionesses of Sable and Sevigne, are present; so 
 are Madame de la Vergne and her young daughter, our 
 heroine's lifelong faithful friend, afterwards Countess 
 1 "Some little remains of fine manners render me still a prhieuse."
 
 22 MADAME DE SEVIGXE. 
 
 de la Fayette. There was also Madame de Fiesque, the 
 wild companion of the Grande Mademoiselle. Near the 
 bed sits Madame de Rambouillet herself; beside her 
 a young abbess and a nun, both daughters of the house, 
 who, from tune to time, leave then- holy retreats to 
 revisit their mother and their home. Madame de Se- 
 vigne is examining some miniatures ; by his bright- 
 coloured cheeks and gay countenance it is easy to 
 recognise her husband the Marquis, who is sitting at the 
 feet of Mademoiselle du Vigean : "he speaks of Saint 
 Evremond, and makes her laugh; he speaks of the 
 Due d'Enghien, and makes her blush." 
 
 The Due d'Enghien was devotedly attached to Ma- 
 demoiselle du Vigean. He was, however, married off bv 
 his family to some one else whom he could not love, 
 and she ended her days as a Carmelite nun. In the 
 crowd all about the room, a whole host of wits, 
 writers, orators, are to be recognised : young Bossuet, 
 1'Abbe Godeau the whole book-shelf is there, bound in 
 velvet and silk and gold-thread, glittering, conversing, 
 waiting for M. Corneille, and for M. de Voiture, who 
 arrives first, dandling on his silken legs. 
 
 Not very far from the Hotel de Eambouillet stands 
 another great house, which still opens its doors to the 
 public, to the wits and beaiix espriti of our own time, who 
 may, if they so choose, commune there with the voices 
 of the past, gathering in sound and volume from the 
 vaguest incoherence of early Merovingian times, to the 
 bitter emphasis of those terrible days which followed 
 the glorious reigns of the great Louis and his well-beloved 
 grandson. This hotel, which in Madame de Sevigne's 
 day belonged to a respectable family, is now converted
 
 M. LE MARQUIS. 23 
 
 into the Public Eecord Office of Paris, where he who 
 runs may read ; and it is impossible not to be struck by 
 those writings on the wall, following so soon upon the 
 noisy feast of wit and banter. There is Marie Antoin- 
 ette's farewell to her children, interrupted by Sanson 
 coming to carry her to her death; there is Charlotte 
 Corday's firm writing and devoted confession to her 
 Father. Literary rhymes, compliments, and criticisms 
 sink into a whisper before such solemn voices as these. 
 
 But all these tragic times are yet unborn ; and it is 
 not with them that we are concerned, but with a hum- 
 bler race, more resembling our own women of the world, 
 busy with trifles, with fancies, and finery, some utterly 
 frivolous, others with warm hearts for their own home 
 treasures, though somewhat forgetful of the troubles 
 outside. A truer heart never beat than that of the hand- 
 some, fair -haired young lady, with the dazzling com- 
 plexion and laughing mouth, and the sparkling eyes of 
 different hue : had she lived in later times, she might 
 perhaps have shown what generous constancy was also 
 hers. 
 
 The young couple had not been very long .married 
 before a secret became known, which the poor young 
 lady had done her best to keep to herself. This was 
 the serious subject for complaint which she had against 
 her husband his neglect and his infidelity. Knowing 
 what her nature was, one may guess at the sorrow of 
 her early life, although she rarely speaks of it. Once 
 indeed she writes of " 1'abime " from which her uncle 
 rescued her an abyss indeed, into which at one time 
 she must have seemed sinking deeper day by day ; in- 
 difference, extravagance, infidelity to her tender, faithful,
 
 24 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\ 
 
 and responsible mind, all this must have been a heavy 
 load to bear in silence. Sevigne did not try to conceal 
 his indifference for his wife. He is said to have told 
 her that perhaps others might find her agreeable, but 
 that she could never charm him. He said this openly 
 too ; and many of the unscrupulous people by whom she 
 was surrounded now attempted to pay court to her them- 
 selves, thinking that natural resentment must needs make 
 her an easy prey. Her free, open humour, her natural 
 coquetry, blinded them to her good sense, and her clear 
 perception of right and wrong. Her husband's conduct 
 was too flagrant for her to be able to esteem him, but 
 she never ceased to love him ; while he, on the contrary, 
 esteemed her without love. 
 
 " He loved everywhere," said Bussy-Rabutin, speaking 
 of him, "but never anything so amiable as his own wife." 
 Bussy, among the rest, did not hesitate to do his utmost 
 to ingratiate himself with the young Marquise, who 
 daily fascinated him more and more ever since she had 
 been beyond his reach. He himself had been mar- 
 ried off by his anxious parents to another cousin a 
 daughter of that aunt, Madame de Toulonjon, Sainte 
 Chantal's youngest, and now only surviving, child ; but 
 his marriage does not seem to have interfered with his 
 assiduities. 
 
 It was in the autumn of 1646 that Madame de 
 Sevigne's own daughter, " the prettiest girl in France," 
 was born ; and we read of the christening : " Fransoise 
 Marguerite de Sevigne, daughter of Messire Henri de 
 Sevigne, Lord of the Manor of the Eochers, of Bodegat, 
 of Buron, &c., and of Marie de Eabutin, living in the 
 Rue des Lions ; the godfather was the Bishop of Chalons,
 
 HER FIRST-BORN CHILD. 25 
 
 Jacques de Neucheze, who had married the couple some 
 two years before; the godmother, Dame Claude Mar- 
 guerite de Gondi." This motherhood, this new deep 
 interest, dawning at a time when all other natural hopes 
 and trusts had so cruelly failed her, must indeed have 
 flooded the young mother's aching empty heart with 
 strange new happiness and hope ; and this may in part 
 account for the passionate tenderness which, all her life 
 long, Marie de Sevigne gave to this her first-born child. 

 
 26 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MADAME DE SEVIGNE's COUSIN. 
 
 THE parents seem to have spent the winter after the' 
 little daughter's birth in Paris; and in March 1648 a 
 second child, a son, was horn to Madame de Sevigne. 
 The latter event took place in Brittany, at the Rochers, the 
 paternal home. A letter to Bussy, already a widower, 
 " the father of daughters only," is dated from here. It 
 playfully reproaches him for his long silence and indif- 
 ference, and threatens him with the coming vengeance 
 of the little new-born boy. In the autumn of this same 
 year, we find the Sevigne family comfortably estab- 
 lished at the Abbaye of Ferrieres, where Bussy is also 
 staying, and celebrating the merits of a certain Mattre 
 Crochet, the cook of the hospitable Jacques de Neu- 
 cheze, who is entertaining them all. The flavour of 
 Mattre Crochet's soup steams appetisingly still at this dis- 
 tance of time : Bussy declares no other broth is possible 
 after it. Bussy himself must have been glad of a little 
 country air and quiet retirement at this particular season, 
 for he had been burning his fingers, and behaving in a 
 way which was greatly reprobated, even in those days 
 Avhen so much was tolerated. The incident is perhaps
 
 MADAME DE MIRAMION. 27 
 
 not one of the least curious of all the many curious 
 incidents which were regarded as commonplace events 
 in those very uncommonplace times. Bussy's Avife, 
 Gabrielle de Toulonjon, having only left him daughters, 
 he wished for a son to perpetuate his name, and deter- 
 mined to marry again. The modest cousin desired youth, 
 beauty, and, above all, a very large portion to satisfy 
 his expensive habits, and to enable him to keep up 
 his position at Court. Through a certain Le Bocage, 
 whom he had met at dinner at the Grand Prior,- his 
 uncle's, house, he chanced to hear of a lovely young 
 widow, angelic both in disposition and fortune (for she 
 was a millionaire), who seemed to Bussy the very person 
 he should wish to promote to the dignity of Comtesse de 
 Bussy-Rabutin. Le Bocage did not know her personally, 
 but he introduced Bussy to a certain priest called Father 
 Clement, who, for a consideration, enabled them to see 
 the lady at her devotions one day. The Count was 
 charmed by her appearance, her youth, her piety, and 
 her equipage, which was waiting at the church door, and 
 which showed her to be a person of consequence. 
 
 Father Clement, for a further consideration, seems to 
 have informed Bussy that his lovely penitent was less 
 absorbed in her pious mourning than she appeared to be; 
 and the Count, who thought it could only be an honoiir 
 to a lady of the middle classes to be connected with so 
 noble a house as his, summarily determined to carry the 
 lovely widow off and marry her without more ado. 
 Hearing that she was to drive on a certain day from 
 Issy to the Mount Valerien, he made his arrangements, 
 placed relays of horses at certain places along the road, 
 secured the co-operation of several friends, who assembled
 
 28 MADAME DE SE>IGNE". 
 
 a small company of cavaliers, followed by their servants, 
 all armed and mounted. 
 
 Madame de Miramion (this was the lady's name, she 
 became afterwards celebrated for her many good deeds 
 and charities) was not alone : she was accompanied by 
 her mother-in-law, and, according to the custom of the 
 day, by two waiting-women and an old valet. They 
 had reached St Cloud, when suddenly their carriage is 
 stopped, two cavaliers appear at either window, tearing 
 down the leather curtains. The poor lady, dreadfully 
 alarmed, tries in vain to drive them away, beating with 
 her bag, and screaming for help ; there is no one to 
 interfere. The armed men force the coachman to retrace 
 his steps, and to bring the carriage into the Bois de 
 Boulogne, which is not far off. The poor lady defends 
 herself in vain, her screams, her tears, her prayers, have 
 no effect ; Bussy, indeed, primed by Father Clement and 
 his own vanity, can scarcely believe in them, and con- 
 siders it all a pretence, a comedy acted for the mother- 
 in-law's benefit. We are told that once, in her despair, 
 Madame de Miramion suddenly flung herself through 
 the doorway into the brushwood by the roadside ; but 
 she was immediately picked up and replaced in her 
 seat, all covered with scratches and blood, her mother- 
 in-law and the elder waiting-woman having been mean- 
 while forcibly expelled from the coach. The poor lady's 
 wild cries and appeals after they leave the wood are 
 explained to the bystanders as those of a mad woman, 
 conveyed by order of the Court to be shut up; and, 
 indeed, the poor thing's appearance, her torn dress, 
 dishevelled hair, her scratched and bleeding face, and 
 wild looks, only serve too well to bear out this assertion.
 
 MADAME DE MIRAMION. 29 
 
 "When they arrive at their destination, Madame de 
 Miramion refuses to eat or rest, and only threatens to 
 kill herself. Bussy, much surprised, complains that he 
 had been assured she was a lamb, but he finds her a 
 raging lion. Although he approached her with every 
 respect, and in his most fascinating manner, she only 
 replied to his advances, by a solemn oath before heaven, 
 that under no circumstances whatever would she con- 
 sent to marry him. He was in some perplexity, and 
 his friends were urging him to let the lady go, when 
 their advice was suddenly confirmed by the news that 
 600 men from Sens were on their way to besiege the 
 castle and set Madame de Miramion free. The mother- 
 in-law had not been inactive, and had raised the 
 country. 
 
 Thirty-six years afterwards, some important lawsuit of 
 Bussy's depended upon the decision of a near relation of 
 Madame de Miramion's. The suitor actually went on 
 the strength of this first introduction to bespeak her 
 good word on his behalf; and the beautiful and most 
 forgiving lady, now very fat, very placid, and renowned 
 for her good deeds, agreed to his wishes, and exerted 
 herself warmly in his favour. 
 
 We now come to troubled and complicated times. 
 Madame de Sevigne" was in Paris in the December of 
 1648, and D'Onnesson, her kinsman (who was after- 
 wards so good an advocate when Fouquet was tried 
 for his life), was with her in the "lantern" of the 
 Courts of Justice listening to a trial, when the deputies 
 burst into the great hall demanding a General Assembly. 
 This was the beginning of the Fronde, that first rising 
 of the people against the Ministry and the Crown.
 
 30 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 When Paris was no longer deemed a safe residence 
 for the young king, the Court left in the night and 
 retired to St Germains. The Prince de Conde followed 
 its fortunes ; and Bussy, who had heen more occupied all 
 this time in trying to make love to Madame de Sevigne 
 than with politics, now followed ' his chief, although 
 grumbling loudly, and greatly discontented at the way 
 in which he had been used by him. 
 
 Chance thus threw him into the opposite camp to 
 the Sevignes, whose near relationship to Gondi and 
 other Liberals made them partisans of the disaffected 
 cause. Sevigne himself followed the Due de Longue- 
 ville into Normandy, where a rising against Mazarin 
 was attempted, and the principal feat recorded of 
 him on this occasion is, that he had the honour of 
 making the duke laugh. Longueville seems to have 
 made Mazarin laugh, if we are to believe contem- 
 poraneous records, so small were the' results of his 
 many preparations and fanfaronnades. Madame de 
 Sevigne" remained in Paris with her young children, 
 writing letters to Bussy, who was keeping a sulky 
 guard at St Denis, and who passed the time in this 
 sentimental correspondence with the enemy. 
 
 A sort of peace between the rival parties was made 
 in 1649. It was rather a cautious neutrality than a 
 permanent peace. Not long afterwards everybody was 
 taken by surprise when the great Conde himself, whose 
 haughty and domineering character had incurred the 
 Queen Regent's bitter displeasure, was arrested, together 
 with his brother Conti, and by the help of Gondi 
 the coadjutor, the princes were shut up in Vincennes. 
 Bussy, who always found himself on the wrong side,
 
 FRONDISTS. 31 
 
 remained in Paris, in order to gain time, and pre- 
 tended to be entirely absorbed in the details of his 
 second marriage with Louise de Rouville, another cousin, 
 to whom he was united in the month of May. 
 
 Meanwhile Conde's partisans were not idle. His 
 wife had assembled a force at Montrond, and raised 
 Bordeaux with the help of Bouillon and La Rochefou- 
 cauld ; and she now wrote an urgent summons to Bussy 
 to join her, which summons he reluctantly obeyed. There 
 were now no less than five different parties in France all 
 fighting, intriguing, and combining love, war, self-interest 
 in their curious diversities. The Old Fronde declared 
 itself for the Queen Regent, for the King, and the Court, 
 but maintained its hatred to Mazarin : to this cause the 
 Sevignes belonged. The partisans of the princes were 
 called the New Fronde. 
 
 Mazarin, says Walckenaer, founded his ambition on the 
 re-establishment of the royal power and the greatness of 
 France. Conde's dream, on the contrary, was the over- 
 throw of Mazarin, and his own consequent ascendancy. 
 But notwithstanding all opposition and the many plots 
 against his life and liberty, the Minister, backed by the 
 Queen, went on his way undaunted until he thought the 
 time had come for Louis to assert his own authority, 
 We all know the pictures of the young king in full 
 hunting costume, with his felt hat on his head, entering 
 the hall of deliberation, followed by his suite, and 
 haughtily commanding that in future his parliament 
 should abstain from all comment upon the administra- 
 tion of his kingdom. It is for the historian, not for 
 the compiler of a hand-book, to evolve a moral out of 
 all these complications. Poor Bussy gained nothing in
 
 32 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\ 
 
 this struggle, and one is really sorry for his disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 He writes to Madame de Se"vigne from Montrond in 
 July 1650 : "I have at last declared myself for M. le 
 Prince, ma belle cousine, not without great reluctance, 
 for I am serving against my king in the interests of 
 a prince who does not care for me. But it is true that 
 his condition fills me with pity : I shall therefore serve 
 him as if he loved me while he is a prisoner; and if 
 ever he is set free I will give him back my commission, 
 and leave him at once to return to my duty. What 
 do you say to these sentiments ? Tell me at once if 
 you do not find them noble and worthy? "When I 
 think that last year we were both on opposite sides, 
 and that we are still opposed, although we have both 
 changed places, I think we are playing at the game 
 of prisoner's base" Then he goes on to say that it is 
 a fine thing for a woman of twenty to be mixed up 
 with politics : the celebrated Madame de Chevreuse had 
 not begun earlier. " However, your side is always the 
 best," he concludes, "for you do not leave Paris, and 
 I am despatched from Paris to Montrond, and not a 
 little afraid that at last I may be sent from Montrond 
 to the devil !" 
 
 The celebrated Duchesse de Chevreuse was no longer 
 twenty, but she still had extraordinary influence, and 
 was not yet tired of intriguing. She seemed to have 
 interests in every faction. With the princes, to one of 
 which she wished to marry her daughter : with Mazarin, 
 whom she humoured, hoping for help in the repayment 
 of certain sums owing to her by the state, she kept a 
 firm influence over the Queen, from the habit of long
 
 SAD DATES. 33 
 
 years. She also intrigued secretly with Gondi, with 
 whom she had still more complicated relations. 
 
 The Sevigne's, the coadjutor's kinsfolk and firm allies, 
 we read, entertained her at a banquet, described by Loret, 
 the chronicler of those days. It seems to have been a 
 brilliant and noisy feast. Many candles are recorded as 
 having shone, as well as beautiful ladies. There was 
 noise and music ; there were ortolans ; soup was spilled, 
 and a silver dish was stolen on the occasion. 
 
 It cannot have been very long after this that Sevigne, 
 finding his wife's presence a constant reproach and re- 
 straint, carried her off to Brittany, and left her with her 
 children at his old chateau of the Eochers, returning 
 himself to Paris, where he resumed his foolish and dis- 
 sipated ways. She did not see Paris again for many 
 months. 
 
 Everything was changed for her when she returned 
 thither once more. One of the saddest dates of her life 
 was approaching. Years afterwards, as an old woman, 
 she writes : "I have only retained in my memory two 
 dates those of the year of my birth and of my marriage ; 
 but, without augmenting their number, I shall in future 
 forget the year in which I was born, which now saddens 
 and overwhelms me, and I will put in its place the date 
 of my widowhood, and the commencement of an exist- 
 ence which has been tolerably peaceful and happy, with- 
 out brilliance, without distinction, but which may end 
 in a more Christian spirit than if it had been stirred 
 by great events, and that, in truth, is what matters most 
 of all." 
 
 F.C. XIIL C
 
 34 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 WIDOWS' WEEDS. 
 
 THERE is something very tragi-grotesque in the death 
 of the husband of Madame de Sevigne. He was, as we 
 have seen, handsome, well-born, faithless, rude, dissipated, 
 and alone seemed insensible to the sweetness of the 
 young wife who loved him. Among others Sevigne 
 chose his wife's cousin, Bussy de Eabutin, as his con- 
 fidant; and Bussy used to lose no time in repeating 
 these confidences to Madame de Sevigne herself, who 
 sometimes reproached her husband, but without effect. 
 We have heard him complain of his wife, that she did 
 not charm him. The well-known Ninon de 1'Enclos 
 charmed him, alas ! and some whose influence was even 
 more fatal to the foolish young man ; for Ninon, with all 
 her faults, was a generous woman, and scorned to fleece 
 those whom she had first bewitched. Others were less 
 scrupulous, and among these last was a certain wicked 
 little Madame de Gondran, married, so M. Paul Mesnard 
 tells us in his excellent biography of Madame de Sevigne', 
 to a sort of Georges Dandin of a husband. " La belle 
 Lolo," as her acquaintance called her, was as interested 
 as she was beautiful, only caring for finery, flattery, and
 
 MADAME DE GONDRAN. 35 
 
 fashion. Among her many caprices, we hear of her in- 
 sisting upon wearing a certain pair of diamond ear-rings 
 at a ball, which ear-rings happened to be heirlooms be- 
 longing to Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The Marquis, 
 who could refuse no request of Madame de Gondran's, 
 was reduced to lying to obtain them, and pretended 
 that he wanted to borrow the jewels for Mademoiselle 
 de la Yergne, his wife's great friend, the most respect- 
 able and well-conducted of women. People were not a 
 little surprised when they recognised the celebrated 
 brilliants dancing at the ball in the fair Lolo's ears. 
 To help her friend's husband out of a most unpleasant 
 dilemma, Mademoiselle de la Vergne consented to take 
 the transaction on herself, and went to thank Made- 
 moiselle de Chevreuse for the loan of the precious orna- 
 ments. Sevigne's attentions were unfortunately not 
 only confined to borrowing, for the benefit of Madame de 
 Gondran. He bestowed most royal sums out of his own 
 and his wife's fortunes to gratify her endless fancies. 
 Madame de Sevigne, against the advice of her faithful 
 uncle De Coulanges (who had some short time before 
 insisted upon a legal division of goods between the 
 married couple), had advanced to her husband, not with- 
 out difficulty, the sum of 50,000 pieces, which were all 
 rapidly running through the fair Lolo's grasping fingers, 
 when an unforeseen incident brought about a tragedy, 
 and put an end to the Marquis's ill-starred generosity. 
 A certain Lager, a Gascon, had happened to make some 
 insolent jokes about Madame de Gondran and her doings, 
 which came to the knowledge of the Marquis, who 
 immediately proposed to chastise Lager with a stick, 
 according to the simple custom of the time. Lager
 
 36 MADAME DE SEVIGNE\ 
 
 prudently ran away from a not undeserved beating, but 
 nevertheless determined to revenge the affront when he 
 could do so without inconvenience to his bones. Chance 
 threw him into the company of a certain Chevalier 
 d'Albret, a brother of the better-known Marshal d'Albret, 
 a high-spirited young man " qui tuait tres bien son 
 monde," says the French chronicler. Albret had him- 
 self once been a victim of the fair Lolo's, but of late, 
 not a little to his indignation, had found her door con- 
 stantly shut when he called. Lager maliciously assured 
 Albret that this insult had been instigated by Sevigne, 
 who had not only persuaded Madame de Gondran to 
 desire her servants to forbid Albret the house, but had 
 also openly spoken of him in the most contemptuous 
 manner. A meeting was immediately demanded by the 
 indignant Chevalier ; and although Sevigne", brought face 
 to face with Albret, emphatically denied what Lager had 
 laid to his charge, he added that he was only accustomed 
 to justify himself sword in hand, and that the duel must 
 therefore take place. D'Albret replied that he had not 
 come all this long distance to waste his time. We are 
 told that the two then embraced and fell to. 
 
 At first the advantage seemed to be with SeVigne*, but 
 presently becoming excited, he pressed his adversary too 
 hotly. Albret parried the stroke. As S6vigne precipi- 
 tated himself forward, his opponent's sword ran right 
 through his body, and he fell. He was brought back 
 to Paris, the surgeons pronounced his wound mortal, 
 and he died the next day, very loath to go. He was but 
 twenty-seven years of age. 
 
 The wife he had used so badly and the unconscious 
 husband of Madame de Gondran seem to have been the
 
 WIDOWHOOD. 37 
 
 only two people who sincerely mourned for him. The 
 poor young widow came up hurriedly from her distant 
 liochers when the sad news reached her. Gondran 
 came in tears to the funeral. It is said that Madame de 
 Sevigne" went to Madame de Gondran and fetched away 
 her husband's picture and a lock of his hair, in re- 
 turn for some letters which Madame de Gondran had 
 written, and which she had only to blush for. So died 
 the poor young Marquis, a man of honour, agreeable, 
 handsome, and witty in conversation ; but he was 
 egotistical, for ever occupied with his own concerns, 
 unable to respond to the calls and interests of others 
 and so it happened that, young as he was, his companions 
 had already wearied of him, and that he was left with 
 so few real friends. His widow went back to her home, 
 where she mourned him and hid herself away tending 
 her children, and, in her turn, was watched and cared for, 
 both spiritually and temporally, by her faithful guardian 
 and uncle, the Abbe de Coulanges. 
 
 It was some time before she could again meet her 
 friends. She lived quietly, paying off the debts her hus- 
 band had incurred. Two years afterwards, when she 
 had begun once more to go into the world, she suddenly 
 fainted dead away in some company where she had been 
 spending an evening. She had seen D'Albret, the slayer 
 of her husband, coming in at a doorway.
 
 38 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 LIBATIONS. 
 
 of her own contemporaries ever paid Madame de 
 Sevigne a prettier compliment than Sainte Beuve, in the 
 preface to his celebrated volume of celebrated women. 
 " It is impossible to speak of women," he says. " without 
 first putting one's self into good humour by the thought 
 of Madame de Sevigne. With us moderns this process 
 takes the place of one of those invocations or libations 
 which the ancients were used to offer up to the pure 
 source of grace." 
 
 In Madame de Sevign^'s own day such compliments 
 and libations were so abundant, that we are told it was 
 almost considered in the light of an insult if a young 
 and charming lady was not addressed in language of 
 exaggerated devotion, amounting almost to love-making, 
 otherwise, says one of her biographers, we might almost 
 wonder at her patience with Menage and his love-poems, 
 with gouty Costar's gallant declarations, and the long- 
 winded protestations which she had to encounter on 
 every side. We hear of other more brilliant aspirants 
 to her favour. There is a quarrel recorded which took 
 place in the ruelle of her own bedroom between a Eohan
 
 LATONA AND HER CHILDREN. 39 
 
 and a Tonquedec, each wishing to be preferred ; and be- 
 sides these, we read of the Count du Lude, of Conti, of 
 Fouquet, and even of the great Turenne himself, all 
 admiring her and courting her smiles. Bussy, the un- 
 scrupulous, did not hesitate to encourage the more power- 
 ful of these aspirants, and reproached his cousin with 
 her coldness and insensibility. 
 
 Here is a charming description of Madame de Sevigne 
 written about this time, which is quoted by all her bio- 
 graphers. It is the Abbe Arnauld, 1 the brother of the 
 well-known Mere Angelique of Port Eoyal, who is writ- 
 ing, in 1657, six years after the Marquis de Sevigne's death. 
 
 " It seems to me," he says, " that I still see her before 
 my eyes as she appeared to me the first tune I ever had 
 the honour of beholding her, when she arrived, sitting 
 in the depths of her great chariot, that was thrown open 
 wide. On either side of her sat the young gentleman 
 her son, and the young lady her daughter, all three such 
 as those whom the poets have described. They recalled 
 to me Latona with the young Apollo and the young 
 Diana, so indescribable a charm radiated from all of 
 them from the mother and the children." 
 
 Pomponne, who was also present on this occasion, 
 admired the beauty of the two children. " M. de Pom- 
 ponne remembers you as a little girl," the mother writes 
 long after. " You were peeping behind a pane in my 
 uncle De Sevigne's house, as lovely as an angel. Your 
 brother was there too, as beautiful as yourself. You 
 said you were a prisoner, a princess driven from your 
 father's Court." 
 
 1 The Abbe" was the youngest and twentieth child of his parents. 
 He was uncle to Pomponne, Louis the Fourteenth's Minister.
 
 40 MADAME DE 
 
 Here is also Mademoiselle de Scudery's description 
 of Madame de SeVigne, under the name of " Clelie," in 
 one of those mysterious romances which created so great 
 an excitement at the time. People were new to novels 
 and novel- writing, and thrilled more easily than we do 
 over the loves and sorrows of imaginary princes and 
 princesses. Princess Clarinte shall speak for herself. 
 
 " Princess Clarinte has blue eyes, full of life and expression. 
 She dances with marvellous grace, and charms all hearts. 
 Her voice is sweet and melodious, and she sings in a pas- 
 sionate manner. She reads a great deal, although she has 
 few pretensions to being learned. She has learnt the Italian 
 language, and she prefers certain little Italian songs, which 
 please her better than those of her own country. She has 
 found means (without either being severe or misanthropical) 
 to keep a good reputation in a great Court, where she receives 
 all the honest people, and inspires affection in all hearts 
 that are capable of feeling it. This same pleasant temper, 
 which becomes her so well, and diverts others as well as her- 
 self, enables her to make friends with many who, if they 
 dared, would be glad to pass for her lovers. She says, 
 laughing, that she has never been in love with anything but 
 her own good name, and that she watches it with jealousy. 
 When it is necessary, she can leave the world and the Court, 
 and enjoy country life with the same tranquillity as if she 
 had been born and bred in the woods. She returns to us 
 gay and beautiful, as if she had never left Paris. She wins 
 the hearts of all women, as well as those of men. She writes 
 as she speaks that is to say, in the most courteous and 
 agreeable manner. I have never seen so much charm united 
 with so much light of intellect, such innocence and virtue. 
 Nobody else has ever better known the art of being graceful 
 without affectation, witty without malice, gay without folly, 
 modest without constraint, and virtuous without severity." 
 
 Madame de Sevigne only laughed when she read one
 
 BLINDMAN'S-BUFF. 41 
 
 of these descriptions, and said that to be so perfect was 
 not in human nature. One of her correspondents the 
 courteous Costar assures her that those who had never 
 understood the beauty of her mind its grace, its depth, 
 its gentleness might perhaps think so, and that she 
 herself wore a certain bandage of modesty across the 
 eyes which prevented her from seeing clearly. 
 
 Here is one more sketch of our Marquise from the pen 
 of the Abb6 de Montreuil, which a friend has rendered 
 into English. It will be seen that the original has not 
 lost by its change. 1 
 
 To the Marquise de Sevigne playing at blindman's-buff. 
 Translated from Abbe de Montreuil. 
 
 " Your right is to enthrall, 
 You charm in every way ; 
 But surely, most of all, 
 You charm us all to-day. 
 Your blindfold eyes we see, 
 And deem you ' Love ' none other : 
 Your blindfold eyes we free, 
 And lo ! you are ' Love's mother.' " 
 
 Hallam Tennyson. 
 
 " De toutes les fa^ons vous avez droit de plaire, 
 Mais surtout vous savez nous charmer en ce jour : 
 Voyant vos yeux bandes, on vous prend pour 1'Amour ; 
 Les voyant de'couverts, on vous prend pour sa mere."
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 PEN AND INK. 
 
 FOR many years Madame de Sevigne's letters do not 
 seem to have teen preserved with any care by her 
 friends, whatever compliments they may have paid her, 
 and however glad they may have been to hear from her. 
 With the exception of a few to her cousin Bussy, one 
 or two to Menage, and the well-known and affecting 
 letters to Pomponne describing the trial of Fouquet, 
 there is little of her correspondence still extant outside 
 the great tide of written love, advice, maternal anxieties, 
 which began to flow from Paris in the autumn of 1671 
 to the south, where her daughter, Madame de Grignan's 
 married lot was cast. 
 
 One packet, indeed, of Madame de Sevigne's letters 
 (which has since disappeared), concerning her cousin 
 La Trousse's interests, was unfortunately preserved for 
 a time, and cost her no small anxiety and annoyance. 
 The papers had been put away by Fouquet, the great 
 surintendant, in a casket containing many other far less 
 creditable epistles, love - letters, bargains, requests, 
 promises, from the various Court beauties in his pay. 
 When the crash came, and the king's long-smothered
 
 FOUQUET'S CASKET. 43 
 
 indignation burst forth when Fouquet himself was 
 suddenly arrested and taken to the Bastille when his 
 wonder - palace and art -treasures were seized and scat- 
 tered to the winds, this packet was carried off among 
 the rest of his papers to the king's own cabinet. Louis 
 was able to read for himself new proof of the surintend- 
 ant's long - suspected duplicity. The chapters in the 
 second volume of Walckenaer's history of Madame de 
 Sevigne", describing the great Minister's rise and fall, are 
 well worth the attention of those who are interested in 
 the history of those days, when life and emotion were so 
 vivid, so rapid and impetuous. 
 
 As one reads Walckenaer's pages, it seems as if there 
 must have been more sound in the people's voices 
 then than now, brighter colours in the air, eyes more 
 brilliant, the interests more noisy and unaffected, the 
 characters and features more marked. This splendid 
 surintendant rises and sets, a dazzling figure. There is 
 something which strikes one's imagination in the story 
 of the dying Mazarin with his last breath desiring the 
 young king to send for Fouquet, to respect his advice, 
 to utilise his wonderful powers, at the same time warn- 
 ing him not to trust him entirely, to keep a scruti- 
 nising watch upon his schemes and accounts. Then we 
 read of Colbert secretly at work, apparently a subordin- 
 ate, but in reality a powerful enemy, tracking Fouquet's 
 splendid steps, disentangling the intentional confusion of 
 his lavish accounts, and silently laying before the king, 
 day by day, the key to Fouquet's complicated schemes. 
 Unconscious, Fouquet meanwhile pursued his aims, buy- 
 ing the goodwill of courtiers, seizing on every vacant post, 
 extending his power. He had grand ideas. The glory of
 
 44 MADAME DE 
 
 France was dear to him ; his policy abroad was worthy 
 of a great kingdom ; he was unscrupulous, but generous 
 and honourable at the same tune. How he was loved by 
 his friends, how true they remained to him at the hour 
 of his most desperate straits, is a matter of history. 
 Every school-girl has learnt La Fontaine's touching ode 
 to his fallen patron ; and Madame de Sevigne's letters 
 (those outside, not inside the casket) also tell us, in most 
 unmistakable language, how true and sincere was the 
 feeling of affection he inspired. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne's distress at the scandal which 
 had got abroad concerning her letters to the surinten- 
 dant was great. She writes to Menage to beg that he 
 will take every opportunity to contradict any reports 
 that may have been spread, when it was known that 
 among this venial correspondence some of her writing 
 had been discovered. 
 
 And then again, in answer to her old tutor, who 
 replied that he had already taken up arms in her 
 cause, she says : 
 
 " I do not forgive myself that, instead of writing to you as 
 I did, I did not send you straight away a letter of thanks. I 
 now pay my debt, and beg you to believe that I am as grate- 
 ful as I ought to be for your goodness. I send a compliment 
 to Mademoiselle de Scudery for the same reason." 
 
 She thus writes to M. de Pomponne : 
 
 " Could you have ever imagined that my poor letters, all 
 full of M. de la Trousse's marriage, should have been put 
 away so mysteriously ? I am very much concerned by the 
 necessity in which I am placed of trying, perhaps in vain, 
 to justify myself to a thousand persons who will never be- 
 lieve the truth. You, I think, will understand the suffering
 
 FIDELITY. 45 
 
 this causes a heart such as mine. I conjure you to explain 
 to every one all that you know to be true. I cannot have 
 too many friends on this occasion." 
 
 Three years later, Madame de SeVigne^ exonerated by 
 the king himself, was again writing to M. de Pomponne, 
 who was then in a sort of honourable exile, on account 
 of his friendship for Fouquet. Perhaps none of her 
 letters is more graphic and interesting than these 
 which tell of Fouquet's trial, and describe his cour- 
 ageous bearing in adversity with all the eloquent 
 admiration and generous partisanship of a sincere 
 friend. No quality is more admirable in Madame de 
 Sevigne than this fidelity of heart. She is true through 
 good report and ill report, uninfluenced by ebbing for- 
 tunes, unshaken by changing opinions ; and this, in a 
 person of such vivid imagination, is no small tribute to 
 the loyal affections which kept her steady through all 
 the chances of life to those upon whom she had once be- 
 stowed her friendship. 
 
 "To-day, Monday, Nov. 17th, 1664, M. Fouquet was 
 examined for the second time. He sat down without cere- 
 mony, as he did on the first occasion, and the chancellor 
 again desired him to put up his hand and to take his oath. 
 He replied that he had already given the reasons which 
 must prevent his taking the oath. Thereupon the chan- 
 cellor rushed at once into a great discourse to prove the 
 legitimate powers of the Chamber that the king had estab- 
 lished it, &c. 
 
 " M. Fouquet answered that often things were done by 
 authority which afterwards, upon reflection, did not appear 
 to be quite advisable. 
 
 "The chancellor interrupted him. 'What ! you then say 
 that the king abuses his power?'
 
 46 MADAME DE SE>IGNE. 
 
 " M. Fouquet replied, ' You say so, sir, not I. That is not 
 what I think ; and I wonder that, in the condition in which 
 I am, you should wish to oppose me to the king.' " 
 
 All her letters were nominally addressed to Pomponne, 
 but she knew that he passed them on to his father, to his 
 brother, to the Chateau de Guenegaud, which was not 
 far distant from his own home, and that her bulletin 
 carried news to the little coterie of faithful friends and 
 well-wishers. Her frankness, her courage, her fidelity, 
 give a heart to the story of reckless licence and pro- 
 fusion, of vindictive persecution and revenge. 
 
 On the 20th of the same month she writes : 
 
 " M. Fouquet was questioned upon the affair of the gold 
 pieces this morning. He answered very well : several of the 
 judges bowed to him. The chancellor made this a subject of 
 reproach, and said it was not the custom. As he was return- 
 ing by the arsenal on foot for exercise, M. Fouquet asked 
 who were those workmen he perceived. He was told that 
 they were people altering the basin of a fountain. He went 
 up to them and gave his advice ; and then turning to 
 D'Artagnan (the Hedzoff of those days), 'Do you wonder 
 that I should interfere 1 I was formerly considered clever 
 at these sort of things.' " 
 
 21si. " . . . M. Fouquet was rendered very impa- 
 tient by certain objections made, which seemed to him 
 ridiculous. He showed his impatience too much, and 
 answered with a haughtiness which gave displeasure. He 
 will correct himself, for this manner is not good ; but in the 
 truth, patience fails one at times, and it seems to me I 
 should do as he does." 
 
 Some days after she writes : 
 
 " M. Fouquet entered the Chamber this morning, and was 
 interrogated about the city rates. He was very badly
 
 FOUQUET. 47 
 
 attacked, and defended himself very well, although this is 
 one of the most dangerous places of the whole affair. 
 
 " I know not what good angel warned him that he had 
 been too proud. He corrected himself of his pride to-day, as 
 the others corrected themselves of their bows to him." 
 
 2d December. " Our dear and unfortunate friend spoke 
 for two hours this morning, so well that several could not 
 help openly admiring him. M. Eenard, among the rest, 
 said, ' This man is incomparable ; he never spoke so well 
 in Parliament, he never was more collected.' It was again 
 on the subject of the 24,000. . . . God grant that my last 
 letter may tell you that which I ardently desire. Farewell, 
 dear sir. Ask our solitary [Arnauld] to pray to God for 
 our poor friend." 
 
 She describes a little incident which is slight enough 
 in itself, but which enlists the reader's sympathy. 
 
 " L'Abbd d'Effiat bowed to Fouquet in court. Fouquet 
 said, ' Sir, I am your very humble servant,' as he returned 
 the bow with that fixed and smiling expression we all know 
 so well." 
 
 Meanwhile the queen-mother is dying, and the trial is 
 postponed. Madame de Serigne breaks off her account 
 of Fouquet, and describes the administration of the 
 viaticum. 
 
 " It was the most magnificent and the saddest thing in the 
 world to see the king and all the Court with tapers, and a 
 thousand torches, going to fetch and to carry back the holy 
 sacrament. It was received with an infinity of lights. The 
 queen made an effort to raise herself, and took it with a devo- 
 tion which melted all the bystanders to tears. It was not 
 without difficulty that she had been brought to this : only the 
 king could make her hear reason ; to every one else she said 
 she would communicate, but not for death."
 
 48 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE". 
 
 Madame de Sevigne returns to her prisoner : 
 
 9th December. " I assure you these days are very long, 
 and uncertainty is an overwhelming thing. ... In the depths 
 of my heart I have a little shred of hope, I know not whence 
 it comes or whither it goes : it is not enough to let me sleep 
 in peace. I was speaking yesterday to Madame du Plessis of 
 all this business. I can only meet those with whom I can 
 speak of it, and who are with me in feeling. She hopes as I 
 do, without knowing the reason why." 
 
 17th December. "You are weary, my poor friend; we 
 also are weary. I was sorry to have told you that judg- 
 ment was to be given on Tuesday, for, not hearing any news, 
 you must have imagined all was lost, notwithstanding 
 which, we still retain all our hopes. Every one is interested 
 in this great affair speaking of little else, reasoning, draw- 
 ing conclusions ; people count chances on their fingers, melt 
 with pity, with apprehension, hoping, hating, admiring ; 
 some of us are sad, some of us are overwhelmed. In short, 
 my dear sir, the state in which we live is an extraordinary 
 one, but the resignation and courage of our dear sufferer are 
 almost more than human." 
 
 One of Madame de SeVigne's biographers says, that in 
 the interest a woman takes in a man who has loved her, 
 there is always something of love. It may he so ; but 
 a love which does not shrink from comforting the dis- 
 grace of an old friend is not one to be ashamed of. 
 Here is the outburst of warm-hearted sympathy : 
 
 Saturday. "Thank God, sir, and praise Him, our poor 
 friend is safe. Thirteen votes were on M. d'Ormesson's side, 
 and nine on that of St Hilaire. I am so happy, I am be- 
 side myself." 
 
 On the following Sunday she writes again : 
 
 " I was dying for fear another than I should have given
 
 SENTENCE. 49 
 
 you the pleasure of hearing the good news. My courier 
 does not seem to have hurried, although he told me when he 
 started that he should not rest before reaching Livry. How- 
 ever, he assures me he was first to reach you. How coir, 
 forting this news must have been to you ! What inconceiv- 
 able pleasure do the moments bring, in which our hearts 
 and minds are relieved from such terrible suffering ! 
 
 " It will be long before I recover from the happiness I 
 felt all yesterday. In truth, it was too complete, I could 
 hardly contain myself." 
 
 It would be easy to go on multiplying extracts from 
 this vivid and lifelike description ; but this is the story of 
 Madame de Sevigne, and not of Fouquet, the great surin- 
 tendant. The end of the trial is well known. Sainte 
 Beuve quotes Pelisson's l noble outburst in his chief's 
 defence, and La Fontaine's touching line, " Et c'est etre 
 innocent que d'etre malheureux ; " but in the eyes of 
 Louis XIV., to be unfortunate was to be guilty. As 
 we read in our letters, the first joy of Fouquet's friends 
 over his supposed safety was great. Banishment for 
 life and confiscation of property seemed scarcely a pun- 
 ishment after their many apprehensions. But they had 
 not sufficiently taken into consideration the royal pre- 
 rogative, by which Louis was able to add lifelong soli- 
 tary imprisonment to disgrace, confiscation, and exile; 
 and Fouquet, at fifty years of age, separated from his wife 
 and children and aged mother, was carried off by the 
 king's command to the castle of Pignerolles, on the con- 
 fines of Piedmont. Just before his death, after a cap- 
 tivity of sixteen years, he was allowed to see his wife 
 once more, and it was even hoped that his broken health 
 
 1 Pelisson was also sent to the Bastille, and also remembered by a 
 faithful friend, Mademoiselle de Scudery. 
 
 F.C. XIII. D
 
 50 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 might somewhat relax the severity of his treatment ; but 
 he died before any change had been made. Time had 
 passed, and the keenness of his friends' sympathy had 
 been blunted, but he was still remembered with warm 
 affection and regard. "Whatever his faults may have 
 been, says Sainte Beuve, Fouquet had in him the true 
 fibre of humanity : he could touch its spring in others, 
 and they would answer to him. 
 
 Fouquet being disposed of, his nymphs dispersed in 
 tears (pleurez Nymphes de Vaux\ his music silenced, 
 his splendours forgotten, it seems time that other festiv- 
 ities should distract us. While the cheerless years pass 
 wearily for the prisoner, we may read dazzling accounts 
 of the splendours of the Court, of masks, of triumphal 
 receptions, of varied entertainments, of marriages and 
 pageants ; of a young and brilliant Court brimful of life, 
 of high spirits and amusements and self-indulgence. The 
 Queen Eegent was dead, after horrible torture heroically 
 endured : only young people were left to make merry.
 
 51 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 RABUTINAGE. 
 
 DURING all this time, while Fouquet's letters carried so 
 much talk and scandal, in which Madame de S6vigne 
 herself was not spared, no one took her part more warmly 
 than her second cousin, Bussy de Rabutin, whose tes- 
 timony in her favour is the more to be relied upon 
 because, for some years past, a coldness had existed be- 
 tween them. They had been warm friends. It was 
 Madame de Sevignd herself who, as we have said, in- 
 vented the word Rabutinage, to express the family ties 
 and the sympathy which bound them together. " I have 
 been touched by your letters" (to the king), she says, 
 writing to Bussy. " It seems to me that they should 
 have the same effect upon our master as upon me ; and 
 yet he is not called Eabutin, as I am." In this same 
 letter, written in 1668, she recapitulates the causes of 
 their bitter quarrel. It was an old one, which had 
 begun ten years before, when Madame de SeVigne* was a 
 young widow, and her children children still. The 
 quarrel was about money. Bussy had asked his cousin 
 for a loan, which was delayed ; and in his irritation he 
 had published a satirical portrait of her, not only ridicul-
 
 52 MADAME DE SEVIGNE". 
 
 ing her virtues, but accusing her of vice under a prudish 
 exterior. This calumny was printed, not by Bussy him- 
 self, but by a woman to whom he had given it. Madame 
 de Sevigne felt it keenly. Ten years passed before the 
 coiisins were really reconciled. 
 
 " I see," she writes, in a retrospective letter of expostula- 
 tion and forgiveness, " that you are ill informed of the news 
 from these parts, my cousin. Learn then from me that it is 
 not the custom here to accuse me of faithlessness to my 
 friends. I have many other faults, as Madame de Bouillon 
 says, but not that one, and you may erase this count from 
 the list of my failings." 
 
 Then she reverts to the original quarrel : 
 
 " We are near to each other," she says, " and of the same 
 blood ; we suit each other, we like each other ; we are inter- 
 ested in one another's fortunes. You spoke to me of advanc- 
 ing money to you upon the ten thousand pieces you were to 
 receive from M. de Chalon's succession. You say that I re- 
 fused you ; I say I lent you the money : for you well know, 
 and our friend Corbinelli is my witness, that in my heart I 
 only wished to comply with your request ; and while we 
 were seeking the consent of Neucheze to allow our names to 
 be inserted in the deeds, in order to be eventually repaid, 
 impatience seized you." 
 
 It is easy to imagine that the Bienbon, a methodical 
 and orderly man, might insist upon such due formal- 
 ities, for Bussy's character was in itself no guarantee for 
 repayment. Bussy the suspicious declared, however, 
 that it was all a pretext for refusing. He could not wait, 
 moreover ; the money was wanted for his equipment be- 
 fore starting on a campaign. He turned to another 
 woman, Madame de Montglas, who had apparently no 
 Abbe to restrain her, and who pawned her diamonds and
 
 BUSSY. 53 
 
 raised the necessary sum. Then Bussy joined his com- 
 pany, full of his resentment against Madame de Sevigne 
 " amie jusqu'a la bourse" he calls her ; and when, a 
 year afterwards, to amuse Madame de Montglas, he 
 wrote his history of the ' Loves of the Gaules,' contain- 
 ing satirical portraits of all the chief persons of the day, 
 the cruel attack upon Madame de Serigne appeared. 
 
 " At last the day came," says the lady, " the unhappy day 
 when I read for myself, with my own ' ill-matched eyes,' that 
 which I had refused to believe in. If horns had started from 
 my head I should have been less amazed. I read and re- 
 read that cruel portrait. I might have been amused with it 
 had it been written of another person than me, by another 
 than you. . . . To be in every one's hands ; to find one's 
 self in print, the laughing-stock of the Provinces, where such 
 things do irreparable injury ; to be on every book-shelf to 
 receive this cruel pain, and from whom ? I will not dwell 
 longer upon all my reasons for suffering : you have good 
 sense, and I am sure a quarter of an hour's reflection will 
 make you see it all, and feel as I do. . . . 
 
 " This is what I wanted to say to you once in my life, and 
 I entreat you to erase from your mind all idea that it is I 
 who am to blame. Keep this letter and read it, if ever the 
 fancy takes you to disbelieve me, and be just to us both, as 
 you would be were you judging of something happening 
 between two other persons, own that you have cruelly 
 offended the friendship between us, and I am disarmed." 
 
 Madame de SeVigne* may well have been disarmed by 
 Bussy's repentance, which was generous and complete. 
 It will be as well to give his own words : 
 
 " I was in the wrong, but the resentment I afterwards felt 
 towards her was the height of my injustice. I shall never 
 blame myself enough for having offended the prettiest woman 
 in France my near relation, whom I had always loved, and
 
 54 MADAME DE SEYtGNE". 
 
 whose friendship I never had reason to doubt. It is a stain 
 on my life that I tried indeed to obliterate, when the surin- 
 tendant was arrested, by loudly taking the part of the Mar- 
 quise against those who would have confounded her with the 
 mistresses of that Minister. Not only generosity but truth 
 impelled me to act in this way. Before embarking on the 
 Marquise's defence, I consulted Le Tellier, who, except the 
 king, alone had seen the letters in Fouquet's casket. He 
 told me that those written by the Marquise were the letters 
 of a friend with no little wit, and that they had delighted 
 the king far more than all the sentimental nullities of the 
 rest. The surintendant had been greatly to blame when he 
 mixed up friendship with so much love-making. The Mar- 
 quise was well pleased by my defence. Her kind heart and 
 her near relationship both caused her to forgive me, and 
 since that time (which also was that of my disgrace) her 
 affection for me rekindled ; and except for some explana- 
 tions, and some little reproaches which a painful remem- 
 brance drew from her, there are no marks of friendship 
 which I have not received from her since then, nor of grati- 
 tude that I have not tried to show, and that I shall not owe 
 her for the rest of my life. We resumed our friendship in 
 the first year of my exile." 
 
 This is quoted from a printed note to his memoirs. 
 "Writing to his cousin in private, he dwells and not 
 without some justice on the displeasure it caused him 
 when the only person of his blood whom he loved in 
 all the world abandoned him in an affair of honour in 
 which she ran no risk : 
 
 "I own," he says, "that I had then as much hatred for 
 you as I had felt affection before. It is ever so ; and if I 
 had gone no further, you would never have washed yourself 
 free from the stain of abandoning your friend and kinsman 
 in his need ; but my after-conduct effaced your fault."
 
 DUPLIQUE AND TRIPLIQUE. 55 
 
 She sends him, in return, what she terms a duplique 
 to his replique an answer to his reply, which is con- 
 clusive, but not easy to translate : 
 
 " Oil diantre," says the lady. " Would you have had me 
 find twelve or fifteen thousand francs 1 Do you think I 
 kept them in a money-hox ? Unless the Abbe de Coulanges 
 had been my surety, I could not have raised the quarter of 
 a crown, and he would do nothing without this Burgundian 
 security, whether necessary or not." 
 
 " The day after receiving this letter from the Marquise," 
 says the Count, " I answered as follows : ' No one can be less 
 capable of triplique than I am, my fair cousin. Why, then, 
 do you oblige me to it ? T gave myself up from the first. I 
 asked for life ; you wish to slay me helpless on the ground, 
 is not this somewhat inhuman ? Dare then, petite brutale, 
 to strike a man who throws himself at your feet, who con- 
 fesses his fault, and who prays for forgiveness.' " 
 
 Then comes a pleasant epistle from the lady : 
 
 " Rise, Count ! I do not wish to kill you on the spot. If 
 you wish it, take up your sword to resume the combat. But 
 it seems better still that I should grant you your life, and 
 that we should live in peace. Only own to the truth that 
 is all I ask. This is a friendly enough condition. You can 
 no longer call me, with any justice, 'petite brutale.'' " 
 
 Then she gaily concludes her letter : 
 
 " Farewell, Count ! Now that I have vanquished you, I 
 shall tell every one that you are the bravest man in France, 
 and describe our encounter on the day when I speak of single- 
 handed fights. My daughter sends you her compliments. 
 The good opinion you have of her fortunes consoles us a 
 little." 
 
 This is the end almost the end of the quarrel. 
 Bussy's answers seem to have delayed. The lady pun-
 
 56 MADAME DE 
 
 ishes him with a couple of delightful fanciful scoldings. 
 She fears that, with all the best intentions in the world, 
 she may have killed him outright (not being accustomed 
 to handle a weapon). This is the only reason which she 
 can accept for his not having answered ; and then again, 
 has he not received her letter granting him quarter? 
 She was far from wishing to slay him on the ground ; 
 she was expecting to hear from him after this noble 
 action. " You never thought of an answer," she says, 
 reproachfully ; " you were content to rise, take up your 
 sword, and walk away, never intending, I hope, to use it 
 against me any more." And so the two make friends, 
 perhaps, as Mesnard says, " with a more tender and 
 serious feeling on Bussy's side than he had ever ex- 
 perienced in his life before." He was alone now 
 deserted by many, embittered by disappointment and 
 broken hopes a man of boundless ambition and vanity, 
 doomed to failure and inaction. In his loneliness her 
 friendship and the warmth of her generous heart must 
 have endeared her to him far more than the sprightly 
 charm of her wit.
 
 57 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN FRANCE. 
 
 ONE of Madame de Sevigne's letters to Eabutin con- 
 tains the compliments of the prettiest girl in France. 
 "The name pleases me well enough," says the mother, "but 
 I confess that I am somewhat tired of doing its honours." 
 
 Madlle. de Sevigne was born in 1646, and was con- 
 sequently about 22 years of age at the time. There is 
 no mention of her in her mother's early letters, and all 
 that we know of her childhood consists of some few 
 allusions to it in the Marquise's later correspondence. 
 In one letter Madame de Sevigne wonders at her own 
 courage in having had the " barbarity " to send her little 
 girl to a convent. " They told me it was necessary for 
 your education," she says pathetically, in her own ex- 
 cuse, and also at the same time pleading the cause of 
 Madame de Grignan's own children against their mother. 
 
 There is also an allusion to a story of a slap on the 
 cheek, given by little Marguerite de Sevigne" to a youth- 
 ful companion, who ventured to approach an ugly face 
 too near her own. " It is to be feared," says her bio- 
 grapher, " that the not over-judicious parent only laughed 
 instead of reproving this ebullition." The friend of the
 
 58 MADAME DE SE>IGNE\ 
 
 family, the Abbe la Mousse (no doubt the Abbe de 
 Coulanges brought a good deal of clerical society to the 
 house), used to instruct the young lady, and teach her to 
 read Descartes ; and he seems to have occasionally re- 
 monstrated with his pupil on account of her vanity. 
 " Eemember that all your beauty will turn to dust and 
 ashes," says the Abb& " Yes," cries the young lady ; 
 " but I am not yet dust and ashes." 
 
 Two centuries ago Mdlle. de Sevigne was a very 
 beautiful creature as fair as her mother, we are told, 
 more brilliant, less winning, with more regular features, 
 with a colder nature. The poets of the time sang the 
 charms of the two each looking more beautiful for the 
 reflection of the other's beauty. We hear of Mdlle. de 
 Sevigne at Court, where she is much praised for an 
 accomplishment she inherits from her mother. She 
 danced admirably, and was chosen to figure in the king's 
 royal ballet with the charming young Madame (whose sad 
 fate is so touchingly recorded by Madame de Motteville) ; 
 with Mdlle. de Saint Simon, described by her brother as 
 "perfectly good and perfectly beautiful" (Madame de 
 Sevigne takes a less complimentary view of the lady) ; 
 with Mdlle. de Mortemar, who soon after became Madame 
 de Montespan ; and with Louise de la Valliere, that pathetic 
 figure in history. Certain characters in fiction, certain 
 men and women who have lived, and whose stories have re- 
 mained to us, will never cease to appeal to our sympathy. 
 
 We owe something more than dancing masks to 
 these years, 1667-68. It was a great epoch in politics 
 and in literature. Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine, 1 were 
 
 1 "A year before Mademoiselle de Sevigne's marriage, La Fontaine 
 dedicated to her his fable of the Lion amoureux, proving thereby his
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE SEVlGNE". 59 
 
 bringing out their greatest works ; critics and poets and 
 preachers, saints and sinners, were all alike full of life 
 and energetic interest in this life and the next. The 
 learned Jansenists were holding their own at Port Eoyal ; 
 Madame de Sevigne's strong sympathy for them was well 
 known. Conde and Turenne, those two great rivals, were 
 leading the king's armies from victory to victory. Even 
 Louis took his own mysterious part in the march of 
 events : he did not forget Mazarin's early training, and 
 played his game, setting one great man against another, 
 one country's disaster against another, ever keeping in 
 view the supremacy of the King of France. 
 
 Notwithstanding her dancing and her beauty, Mdlle. 
 de Sevigne's marriage was still a matter of anxiety to her 
 mother. Once or twice everything had seemed on the 
 point of being settled, but each time Madame la Marquise 
 had interfered to break off engagements which did not 
 appear to her to promise well for the girl's happiness. 
 Suitors seem to have kept somewhat aloof, and those who 
 presented themselves were scarcely what the fond mother 
 could have expected. One young man was stupid and 
 rich ; another bore a doubtful character, although a Duke. 
 Other suggestions were made which concerned Mdlle. de 
 Sevigne's future. The scheming Bussy spoke out quite 
 openly at the time of La Valliere's decline : the mother 
 and daughter were happily unconscious of these horrible 
 suggestions. They went their ways, welcomed by their 
 friends, enjoying life and its interests. Sometimes they 
 
 interest in all that concerned his friends. Le CurS et le mart is a 
 version in verse of one of Madame de Sevigne's letters, and Madame 
 de Sevigne's celebrated account of the death of Louvois is a version 
 in prose of one of La Fontaine's fables, La mart et le mourant." 
 -J. A.
 
 60 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE". 
 
 retired to Livry with the good Abbe ; sometimes they 
 travelled into Brittany to superintend their domains and 
 to read their books. The Hotel de Severs was one of 
 their favourite haunts in Paris : it seems to have been a 
 second Hotel de Rambouillet. Boileau and Eacine were its 
 poets ; its mistress was that faithful friend of Fouquet's, 
 Madame du Plessis Gue"negaud. Here wits and fine 
 ladies met, and indulged in all sorts of sports and jeux de 
 societe. Madame de Se'vigne herself took part in some 
 of the little plays that were performed to amuse the 
 companies assembled. 
 
 One whole autumn she seems to have spent with her 
 daughter at Fresnes, the country-house of Madame de 
 Guenegaud. There is a pleasant letter describing the 
 party assembled there. It is written to Pomponne, then 
 ambassador at the Court of Stockholm. He would like 
 to be there, she tells him, and she goes on to write the 
 moment down. 
 
 " M. d'Andilly on my left hand that is to say, on the side 
 of my heart ; Madame de la Fayette on my right ; Madame 
 du Plessis is just before me (she is amusing herself by daub- 
 ing little figures) ; Madame de Motteville a little further on, 
 meditating profoundly. There are also present our Comte 
 de Cessac, whom I fear because I hardly know him ; Ma- 
 dame de Caderousse, and her sister, a newly culled fruit that 
 you are not acquainted with ; and, above all, Mademoiselle 
 de Sevigne, coming and going by the dressing-room, flutter- 
 ing like a firefly. I am assured, sir, that this company would 
 greatly please you, most of all if you could see in what man- 
 ner you are remembered here." 
 
 In the same way that Mr Huxley, or some other great 
 physiologist, might reconstruct the whole of an extinct 
 existence from one or two bones still remaining, "Walck-
 
 A COUNTRY-HOUSE PARTY. 61 
 
 enaer, 1 the historian of Madame de Sevigne, goes on to 
 reconstruct the whole society of her day, and to tell the 
 history of all those by whom she was surrounded. He 
 gives a comprehensive sketch of each person mentioned, 
 Madame de la Fayette, the faithful friend of La 
 Rochefoucauld and of Sevigne'; De Motteville, the up- 
 right Court lady, the touching historian of Anne of 
 Austria, and of poor, pathetic, charming Madame, whose 
 tragedy was yet to come. He gives us the fortunes of 
 the " newly culled fruit " the young unmarried daugh- 
 ters of the house ; of the eldest, who was married to the 
 Due de Caderousse, whose suit Madame de SeVigne" had 
 repelled ; of De Cessac, who is Madame de Gu^negaud's 
 relation, not Madame de Sevigne's. Her dislike to him 
 is apparently well founded, for De Cessac was afterwards 
 dismissed from Court for cheating at cards. Then OUT 
 biographer goes on to tell us much more that is not writ- 
 ten down, how the ladies returned to Paris for the 
 latter part of the autumn ; how they saw the " Misan- 
 thrope" played, and witnessed the success of "Andro- 
 maque," that lovely tragedy, even then more popular 
 than the history of the great Cid himself. He de- 
 scribes a letter of Mdlle. de Sevigne's, and its fastening 
 of rose-coloured ribbon, sealed with a device, Hpiu grato 
 nasconde. He even tells us who presented this device 
 to the fair Marguerite ; and so goes on patiently and 
 almost marvellously, exhausting the facts which are to 
 be deduced from the faint, quaint, fast -fading signs 
 which remain after two hundred years are past. 
 
 Meanwhile the glorious conquests of Louis XIV. were 
 echoing far and wide ; their echoes were drowning the 
 
 1 The work of Hypolite Babon should also be mentioned here.
 
 62 MADAME DE siVIGNE". 
 
 tinkling of the guitars, and their victories were bringing 
 the usual epilogues of pain, and tears, and parting. 
 
 " Almost every one," says Madame de Sevigne, in one of 
 these letters to Pomponne, " is in misery ahout brother or 
 husband ; for, notwithstanding all our success, there is always 
 somebody being killed or wounded. For me who am ever 
 hoping that I have some future son-in-law engaged with the 
 rest, I wish for the general safety of all the chevaliers." 
 
 This son-in-law is her chief preoccupation and interest. 
 Then at last conies the personage so long expected, 
 discussed, and dwelt upon ; perhaps to English ears the 
 news is somewhat crudely expressed. She writes to 
 Bussy, to whom she is in the act of being reconciled : 
 
 "I must tell you something which, without doubt, will 
 give you pleasure. It is, that the prettiest girl in France is 
 to marry, not the best-looking youth, but one of the most 
 honest men in the kingdom M. de Grignan, whom you 
 have long known. All his wives are dead, so as to make 
 room for your cousin ; and by extraordinary good fortune, 
 his father and his son as well. So that being richer than 
 he ever was before, and moreover, by birth and standing, 
 and by his good qualities, all that we could wish for, we 
 make no such bargains as are customary, but trust to the 
 two families that have passed before us. M. de Grignan 
 himself seems well pleased with our alliance." 
 
 Marriage must have been an everyday affair to 
 Grignan, after his several experiences. Mdlle. de 
 Sevigne" was somewhat perturbed, and would, it is 
 said, have gladly put off the wedding. De Retz was 
 also of her mind, and greatly troubled by the confi- 
 dence which Madame de SeVigne showed in her son- 
 in-law's solvency. It is true he had land and high 
 lineage, and both his first wives had brought him
 
 MOTHER-IN-LAW. 63 
 
 ample dowries ; but he was a man of expensive habits 
 and involved estates. "We are told that he had to raise 
 money even to pay the expenses of his second marriage 
 with Mdlle. du Puy du Fou et de Champagne. His 
 first wife had been also an heiress Angelique Clarisse 
 d'Angennes. She was a daughter of the incomparable 
 Arthenice; but this lady's fortune seems to have been 
 secured to her two daughters ; and so it came to pass 
 that of Mdlle. de Sevigne's ample dot, 180,000 livres 
 were to go at once to pay the bridegroom's debts. In vain 
 did the Cardinal utter his warnings. Madame de SeVigne 
 is not the first mother-in-law whose enthusiasm for her 
 son-in-law has known no delays or precautions, and they 
 evidently liked each other's society. She used to laugh 
 gaily at his jokes and his irregular features. She called 
 him Le grand Matou, because of his tuft of hair ; but, at 
 the same tune, she declared that he was " the most desir- 
 able of husbands, and of divine society." He was an 
 honourable man, though inclined to extravagance ; brave, 
 accomplished, and of easy temper. At the time of his 
 marriage he was Lieutenant-General in Languedoc ; later 
 he was appointed to a still higher post. De Grignan 
 was near forty, and very plain, as has been said, but of 
 good figure and excellent understanding, an honest 
 man, noble, polite, " knowing what was due to himself," 
 says Saint Simon. 
 
 The contract was signed on the 27th of January 1669, 
 and on the 29th the marriage took place. Madame de 
 Sevigne" notes that it is the day of Saint Francis de Sales. 
 The wedding seems to have been a very brilliant affair, 
 and the names of the guests echo with the clang of ances- 
 tral dignities. Monteils, Adhemars, Grignans in differ-
 
 64 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE". 
 
 ent combinations, or all three in one; Kochefoucaulds, 
 Polignacs, Simianes, Harcourts, De Brancas on the 
 side of the bridegroom. The ladies' roll is less impos- 
 ing ; for the Sevigne"s, noble as they were, and of ancient 
 race, had lost many of their chiefs, and belonged to the 
 losing side in politics. They had little interest, and had 
 formed no great alliances of late. De Retz, their most 
 powerful ally, was in disgrace ; Bussy, the head of the 
 Chantals, was exiled from Paris; the young Baron de 
 Sevigne never attained to the dignities which should 
 have been his by right of descent. 
 
 He was not present at his sister's wedding, but left 
 La Mousse as his representative. The young man was 
 away on a chivalrous adventure. He had joined the ill- 
 fated crusade headed by La Feuillade, which started to 
 fight the Turks in Candia. The expedition was entirely 
 composed of volunteers, of the noblest families, who 
 took arms as privates in this sacred cause. De Sevigne 
 belonged to the company commanded by Saint Paul, 
 who was afterwards killed at the passage of the Ehine. 
 Young Sevigne had consulted the bellicose Bussy, the 
 Cardinal de Retz, and La Rochefoucauld, who had each 
 their own reasons for advising him to go. When all 
 was settled he told his mother, and the poor soul had to 
 accept his determination. His word was given ; it was 
 too late to retract. 
 
 Saint Simon is undoubtedly hard upon the young 
 Baron, whom he describes as not so much a man of wit 
 as a man modelled upon a wit ; and who says that of the 
 charm and abundance of his mother, and the frigid polish 
 of his sister, he had made an awkward mixture. Saint 
 Simon, however, allows that he was a good and honest
 
 CHARLES DE SE"VIGNl 65 
 
 luan; it would seem impossible not to feel a genuine 
 todmiration for Charles de Sevigne's warm-hearted gener- 
 osity and nobleness of nature. His love for his mother 
 "was of that pure and unselfish quality, seeking not its 
 own, not envious. His own rights never seem to trouble 
 him ; his second place he accepts with a generous sweet- 
 ness. I confess that, with all my admiration for that 
 charming mother, I cannot forgive her entirely for doing 
 such scant justice to her son's tender and honourable na- 
 ture. The young Baron's early follies must have recalled 
 his father's lamentable career to her mind, and blinded 
 her to the son's nobler qualities. One episode in the 
 young man's life must indeed have given a sickening 
 pang to his mother's heart, and may partly account for 
 the strange difference in her feeling for her children. 
 In early life Charles de Sevigne fell under that same 
 fatal spell of Ninon de 1'Enclos's influence which had 
 first ruined Madame de Sevigne's home happiness. But 
 Charles de Sevigne was a different man from his father. 
 He had heart and reality of feeling. Charles had all 
 the heart, all the depth of feeling in which his father 
 had been wanting. His letter to his sister, written soon 
 after their mother's death, is one of the most touching 
 and generous ever penned. 
 
 " If it should be true," he says, " that there was some more 
 tender feeling in our mother's heart for you than for me, can 
 you believe in good faith, my dearest sister, that I should 
 deem it a fault in her that you should be more lovable than 
 I ? And as to her fortune, be it want of luck or of merit, 
 mine has not been such as to call for an extra portion. 
 Enjoy quietly and in peace that which you owe to my 
 mother's affection and goodwill. Even if it were in my 
 power to interfere (and the mere thought of it fills me with 
 
 F.C. XIII. E
 
 66 MADAME DE SE'VIGXE'. 
 
 horror), I should look upon myself as a monster if I had the 
 slightest intention of so doing. Three parts of my life are 
 run ; I have no children of my own, and you have given me 
 some I tenderly love. If I could wish to be more rich, it 
 would only be so far as your children are concerned." 
 
 All this was long, long after the times of which we are 
 treating. 
 
 The Grignan marriage was in 1669, and did not go 
 off without some contretemps. As usual, there is an 
 episode with Bussy, who seems to have been justly 
 offended by the coldness and incivility of the Conite de 
 Grignan on the occasion, and refuses to sign the contract 
 or to write his congratulations. Madame de Sevigne is 
 determined to keep everybody good friends. She per- 
 suades, entreats, and explains difficulties away. " With 
 what good grace," says M. Mesnard, " does she abuse 
 every privilege of a woman ! " " You are right in that in 
 which anybody else would be wrong," says Bussy, yielding 
 as usual to her entreaties. M. de Grignan also had to 
 yield to her wishes, when, less than a year after his mar- 
 riage, his governorship was transferred from Languedoc to 
 Provence, and it became necessary for him at once to as- 
 sume his position. He left his wife in Paris under her 
 mother's care. Madame de SeVigne was determined to 
 keep her daughter, and her earliest letters to Grignan 
 concern Madame de Grignan and her health, and the baby 
 born some months after his departure. The grandmother 
 is triumphant, and the mother-in-law still more so. 
 
 " Have I not given you the most charming wife in the 
 world 1 " she cries. " Is it possible to be more well behaved, 
 more notable ? can you be more tenderly loved, could any- 
 body have more Christian sentiments ? . . . Your wife 
 still complains bitterly of all the days that we have detained
 
 GOOD ADVICE. 67 
 
 her here, and says seriously that it is cruel to have separ- 
 ated her from you. One would think that it was for our own 
 pleasure that we had sent you off two hundred leagues." 
 
 " Do not let us speak of this woman," she writes again ; 
 " we love her beyond all reason. She is very well ; and I am 
 writing to you to-day on my own private account. I want 
 to speak to you of M. de Marseille, and to entreat you, by all 
 the confidence you have in me, to follow my advice in your 
 conduct towards him. I know what the Provinces are, and 
 the pleasure people take in encouraging divisions there. I 
 assure you that time or other reasons have changed his feel- 
 ing. These few days past he is greatly softened ; and if only 
 you would not treat him as an enemy, you would not find 
 one in him. Let us take him at his word until he has done 
 something against it. Nothing is more likely to change good 
 feeling than to show doubt ; it is often enough to be suspect- 
 ed of being an enemy to become one in fact. Confidence, on 
 the contrary, leads to right doing ; we are touched by the 
 good opinion of others, nor does one easily resolve to lose it. 
 Open your heart, and you will perhaps be surprised by the 
 result." 
 
 These letters are full of good sense, of interest and 
 solicitude, as well as of tender absurdity where her 
 daughter is concerned : few people are more clear-sighted 
 than Madame de Sevigne when she is not rapturously 
 gazing at Madame de Grignan's perfections. Her ad- 
 miration for her daughter may have been excessive, 
 her love for her is far more touching, and must come 
 home to all who have ever loved any one else, or been 
 loved themselves. Compliments in which we are ex- 
 pected to agree may easily jar upon us, but sucli tender, 
 unselfish affection and devotion can only touch our 
 truest and most natural sympathy.
 
 68 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 A ROMANTIC PRINCESS. 
 
 THE mother and daughter were still together, when an 
 event took place which might be deemed less surprising 
 now than at a time when caste was worshipped with that 
 fervour which still exists among oriental nations, where 
 it forms part of a religious creed. In Madame de Se- 
 vigne's day, precedence in this world and in the next 
 were not disentangled ; and even in our own enlightened 
 times the two things do not seem set quite apart in peo- 
 ple's minds. Madame de Grignan, being still at home, 
 is not yet a correspondent : M. de Coulanges, the little 
 fat cousin, is the person upon whom she pours out 
 her delightful abundance of interest, and emotion, and 
 excitement. 
 
 " PARIS, Monday, December 15, 1670. 
 
 " I am going to tell you of the most astonishing thing, 
 the most surprising the most marvellous the most mirac- 
 ulous the most triumphant the most bewildering, unheard- 
 of the most singular, extraordinary, unbelievable, unfore- 
 seen event ; the greatest, the smallest, the rarest, the com- 
 monest, the most vibrating, until this day the most secret ; 
 the most brilliant and enviable; in short, a thing of which
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENS1ER. 69 
 
 one finds but one example in past ages, a thing which ice 
 in Paris cannot believe ; how, then, will you credit it at 
 Lyons ? . . . a thing which may happen on Sunday, and 
 which perhaps, on Monday, will not have been done. I can- 
 not make up my mind to tell you, try to find it out for 
 yourself. I give you three chances. Do you give it up ? 
 "Well, then, I must tell you : M. de Lauzun is to be married 
 at the Louvre on Sunday guess to whom. I give you 
 four, I give you ten, I give you a hundred to one that you 
 do not guess. I hear Madame de Coulanges saying, ' Here 
 is a pretty mystification ! It is Madame de la Valliere.' No, 
 madame ; you are wrong. ' Then, I suppose it is Mademoi- 
 selle de Retz.' Nothing of the sort, you country lady. ' Oh, 
 indeed ! do you think us so very dense ? It must be Ma- 
 demoiselle Colbert.' Still less. ' Then, surely Mademoi- 
 selle de Cre"qui.' You are quite out of it. I see I shall have 
 to tell you at last. He is to be married on Sunday, at the 
 Louvre, with the sanction of the king, to Mademoiselle 
 
 Mademoiselle de Mademoiselle Guess again. He 
 
 marries Mademoiselle, 011 my word, my sacred word, 
 Mademoiselle the great Mademoiselle Mademoiselle, the 
 daughter of the late Monsieur the granddaughter of Henry 
 IV. Mademoiselle d'Eu ! Mademoiselle de Dombes ! Ma- 
 demoiselle de Montpensier ! Mademoiselle d'Orleans ! Ma- 
 demoiselle, first cousin to the king ! Mademoiselle destined 
 for a throne ! " 
 
 Madame de SeVigne" scarcely did justice at first to the 
 true-hearted, grotesque, one-idea'd princess, who was 
 ready to sacrifice her throne, her fortune, her high posi- 
 tion, for the sake of a selfish schemer, 1 who had been 
 able for a time to conceal his interested and sordid 
 motives. She attributed every high quality to Lauzun 
 
 1 " Lauzun, in order to fascinate, chose the strange method of inso- 
 lence and scorn. His nephew afterwards used the same successful 
 means to charm the daughter of the Regent." J. A.
 
 70 MA.DAME DE SE'VTGNE'. 
 
 every delicate scruple; adored him; nearly broke her 
 heart when the king retracted his sanction ; was faithful 
 to him for years and years ; and finally, poor soul, having 
 attained her dream, woke up from it as from a nightmare. 
 Madame de Sevigne, who began by laughing, ended in 
 sympathy with the poor princess. 
 
 " December 19, 1670. 
 
 " That which is described as dropping from the clouds is 
 what happened yesterday at the Tuileries ; hut I must go 
 farther back than yesterday. You are still in all the joyful 
 transports and raptures of the princess and her happy lover. 
 On Monday the thing was declared, as I told you. All Tues- 
 day went by in talk, in Avonder, in compliments. On Wed- 
 nesday Mademoiselle made a formal donation to M. de Lau- 
 zun, in order that he should have the necessary titles, names, 
 and adornments with which to figure in the marriage-con- 
 tract, which was drawn up that same day. She gave him 
 (just to begin with) four duchies : the county of Eu, which is 
 the first peerage in France, and which confers the first rank ; 
 the Duchy of Montpensier, of which he bore the name all 
 day; the Duchy of St Fargeau ; the Duchy of Chatellerault, 
 all of which are computed at twenty-two millions. Thurs- 
 day morning that is to say, yesterday Mademoiselle hoped 
 that the king would have signed the contract, as he had pro- 
 mised to do ; but about seven o'clock in the evening, the 
 queen, Monsieur, and several barbons persuaded his Majesty 
 that this affair was doing harm to his reputation ; so that, 
 having sent for Mademoiselle and M. de Lauzun, the king 
 declared to them, in the presence of Monsieur le Prince, that 
 he positively forbade their thinking any more of this marriage. 
 M. de Lauzun received this order with all the respect, the 
 submission all the courage and the despair which so great 
 a catastrophe deserved. As for Mademoiselle, following her 
 humour, she burst into tears, into cries, with violent distress 
 end excessive complainings : all day she has kept her bed,
 
 TOOK MADEMOISELLE. 71 
 
 and would take nothing but broth. . . . What a subject for 
 romance or for tragedy ! above all, what a fine subject for us 
 to discuss, and to speak of, without ceasing ! That is what 
 we all do, day and night, evening and morning, unendingly, 
 unceasingly, and we hope that you will do the same." 
 
 So Madame de Sevigne tells the story at first. Later 
 on, having again seen the Princess, who sent for her, 
 and poured out her full heart, the not hard-hearted 
 confidante is melted and touched by the poor lady's 
 unfeigned misery. 
 
 " She called me to her, embraced me, bathed me in her 
 tears," writes Madame de Sevigne. " She said, ' Alas ! do you 
 remember all that you said to me yesterday ? Ah, cruel 
 prudence ! Ah, prudence ! prudence ! ' She made me weep, 
 so bitterly did she weep herself. I have returned to see 
 her twice : she is in great affliction, and has treated me all 
 along as a person who Avould sympathise with her sufferings. 
 Nor has she been mistaken. I have felt on this occasion 
 what people rarely feel for persons of so exalted a rank. 
 This is between us two and Madame de Coulanges ; for, as 
 you may imagine, such a confidence would be ridiculous 
 with others. Adieu." 
 
 Tragedies, comedies, farces, elegies, and marriage -epi- 
 thalamiums quickly follow each other, as we read in our 
 volume. Of poor Mademoiselle's long fidelity ; of Mon- 
 tespan's enmity to Lauzun, and his many years' incar- 
 ceration ; of the sacrifices made by the romantic lady, 
 and the king's consent to accept the enormous bribes 
 she offered for her lover's release, Mademoiselle has 
 herself given the history in her memoirs. It is a story 
 at once pathetic, laughable, and genuinely truthful. 
 
 Madame de Grignan had been married for many 
 months, and had not yet visited her own home. Mon-
 
 72 MADAME DE sviGX& 
 
 sieur de Grignan was still absent in his province, nor able 
 to leave his post. Even Madame de Sevigne" could find 
 no further excuse for detaining her daughter. Madame 
 de Grignan had recovered from her confinement : her 
 baby was now some months old. In those days it 
 seemed the natural thing for mothers to separate from 
 their infants, however reluctant they might be to part 
 from their married daughters. The letters written after 
 Madame de Grignan's first departure are full of all the 
 anguish of parting. The poor desolate mother is alone 
 for the first time. The home is empty, except for the 
 little nursling baby left to keep her company. 
 
 " My trouble would not be what it is if I could describe 
 it to you," she says ; "but I shall not try to write it down. 
 In vain I look for my dear child. I do not find her, and 
 every step she takes divides us farther and farther asunder. 
 . . . I went to Ste Marie crying, dying : it seemed to 
 me that my heart and my soul were being torn from me. 
 Indeed it was so in truth. I asked to be alone, and they 
 led me into a room belonging to Madame de Housset, where 
 they lit a fire. Agnes kept looking at me without a word. 
 There I remained five hours without ceasing to weep ; my 
 thoughts seemed to kill me. I wrote to Monsieur de Grignan. 
 You may imagine how I wrote. Then I went to Madame 
 de la Fayette, who renewed my pain by the sympathy she 
 showed for it. She was alone, sick saddened by the death 
 of a sister, a nun. She was as I could have wished to find 
 her. Then came Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld. They only 
 spoke to me concerning you. ... At eight o'clock I 
 came back from Madame de la Fayette ; but as I returned 
 to this place ah ! do you understand what I felt when I 
 climbed the steps ? There was the room where I always 
 entered. I found the doors open wide, but everything un- 
 furnished, disarranged, and your little daughter in the place 
 of my own. Do you understand all that I suffered ? The
 
 PREOCCUPATION. 73 
 
 awakenings of the night were dark indeed, and in the morn- 
 ing my spirits were no calmer. You make me again feel 
 all that it is possible to feel of tenderness ; and if you think 
 of me, be assured that I also continually am thinking of you. 
 It is what the devout call an habitual preoccupation ; it is 
 what one should feel for God : nothing distracts me, for ever 
 I see that carriage progressing always, which will never come 
 nearer. 1 I am always on the highroads. Sometimes I fear 
 lest the carriage may upset : the heavy rains of the last three 
 days have put me to despair ; the Rhone frightens me 
 strangely. I have a map before my eyes. I know the places 
 where you stop : you are at Nevers to-night, on Sunday you 
 will be at Lyons. Ah, my child ! what would I not give 
 to see you, to hear you, to enfold you to see you pass by, if 
 all the rest is too much to ask ! " 
 
 Here is a touch of which we must all recognise the 
 truth : 
 
 " I have seen that poor Madame Amelot. She weeps 
 bitterly. Je m'y connais." 
 
 The poor lady is experienced in tears. In this same 
 letter there is also a tender reproach which hints at 
 passing difficulties : 
 
 " Mechante ! " says the mother, " why do you sometimes 
 hide from me such precious treasures [of affection] ? You are 
 afraid I should die of joy ; but do you not fear lest I should 
 die of displeasure when I imagine the contrary? D'Haque- 
 ville will bear me witness to the state in which he has 
 formerly seen me; . . . but let us quit these miserable 
 remembrances. 5 ' 
 
 So the letters flow on, full of love and preoccupation, 
 with a vividness of detail, a tender absorption, which 
 bears irresistible witness to their genuineness of feeling. 
 
 1 " Ce char toujours fuyant," says Ph&dre to her confidante.
 
 74 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE". 
 
 People have accused Madame de Sevigne of playing a 
 role, of occasionally posing as the adoring mother ; but 
 any one who has ever felt, even in part, what is here 
 described, will recognise the truth and the simplicity 
 of the many anxieties, preoccupations, quick-changing 
 emotions, absurd susceptibilities, of a hungry heart. 
 There seems to have been love enough in this woman 
 to .make half-a-dozen daughters happy ; perhaps, poor 
 lady, there was too much for the happiness of one. 
 Such affection, such absorption, could not be returned 
 by a cold-blooded person with an irritable temper and 
 expensive habits, a husband, a huge household, a whole 
 province to preoccupy her. That Madame de Grignan 
 should have written so constantly, and preserved her 
 mother's letters so carefully, gives more assurance of her 
 merit than all the enthusiastic praises in the correspon- 
 dence itself, and indeed it seems almost disloyal to the 
 tender parent pouring out her whole heart to doubt of 
 her child's merit. 
 
 " I am all by myself to-day in my room, where my ill- 
 humour has brought me. I am weary of everything. It 
 was a pleasure to me to dine alone, as it is now a pleasure to 
 write to you without any reason ; but you, alas ! have not 
 such relief as this. I write on quietly ; but I cannot imagine 
 that you can read in the same way I cannot see a moment 
 which you may claim for yourself. I see a husband who 
 adores you, who is never weary of your company, and who 
 can scarce believe in his own happiness. There are orations, 
 infinities of compliments, of civilities, of visits, excessive 
 honours, which are paid to you ; and to all of this you have 
 to answer, you are overwhelmed. What does your laziness 
 do with all this confusion? does it suffer, does it hide away 
 in some inner closet, and die for fear lest it should not find
 
 YOUE LAZINESS. 75 
 
 its proper place ? It waits for you, for some chance moment 
 in which to remind you, at least, of its existence, and to say 
 a passing word. ' Alas !' says Laziness, 'have you quite for- 
 gotten me ? Remember I am your oldest friend that one 
 which has never abandoned you the faithful companion of 
 your brightest days, I who consoled you for lost pleasures, 
 and who sometimes taught you to hate them I who have 
 prevented you from dying of weariness, and in Brittany, and 
 when you were laid up. Sometimes your mother disturbed 
 our pleasures ; but I knew where to find you again. Now I 
 know not how to behave. These honours, these representa- 
 tions, will be the death of me if you do not take care.' And 
 it seems as if you said a little friendly passing word, and 
 gave some hopes of being more free at Grignan ; but you go 
 by quickly, and have no time to say much. Duty and reason 
 surround you, and do not give you one moment's peace. I 
 myself, who have always respected them, am against them, 
 as they are against me. ... I assure you, my dear 
 child, I am continually thinking of you, and every day 
 I feel what you once said to me, that there are certain 
 thoughts upon which we dare not dwell we must slide 
 across them." 
 
 She then goes on to recapitulate the parting : 
 
 " The closet where I embraced you without knowing what 
 I did, the church of the Capucins where I went to hear the 
 Mass, the tears which fell from my eyes to the ground as if 
 water had been spilt, the convent, Madame de la Fayette, 
 my return to this house, your room, the night, the morning, 
 your first letter, and all the others, and all the days, and all 
 the meetings with those who could enter into my sentiments. 
 Poor D'Haqueville was the first. I shall never forget the 
 pity he showed for me. ... I am taking an unfair 
 advantage of you, my dearest," she says, in conclusion. " I 
 have allowed myself this letter to-day ; my heart needed it 
 but I will not make a custom of writing them." 
 
 All this is in the first burst of separation. " How
 
 76 MADAME DE SE>IGNE. 
 
 much I wish to get a letter from you ! It is nearly 
 half an hour since I received the last," she writes. Then 
 she begins to give news again; encloses a letter from 
 Bossuet M. de Condom, as he was called; goes into 
 enthusiasm over Bourdaloue's sermon on death ; describes 
 with interest a thrilling crisis as to who is to present 
 Mademoiselle with a table-napkin. She can be enter- 
 taining even though she is in tears.
 
 77 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THK TRAGEDY OF VATEL. 
 
 THERE is much truth in a remark of Michelet, who 
 points out how curiously the pleasant, sprightly mind of 
 one country lady, writing down second-hand gossip, influ- 
 ences our impression of an age, of a Court, of which 
 she knew comparatively little ; whereas the real actors of 
 those days, who have told their own stories in far less 
 vivid language, are comparatively forgotten and ignored. 
 Madame de Sevigne^s glimpses, even though they be but 
 reflected by her own imagination, are so vivid, that 
 we are immediately convinced by her account ; and her 
 tableaux vivants present visions which remain in our 
 minds, whether or not they were correct. Take the 
 story of the Court in the chapel, listening to Bourdaloue's 
 sermon, and the Marechal de Grammont so transported 
 by the discourse, that he exclaims out loud, " 'S death, he 
 has the best of it ! " Madame bursts out laughing. The 
 sermon is interrupted : no one knows what is to happen 
 next. Madame de Sevigne was no more present on this 
 occasion than we ourselves ; but nevertheless she takes 
 us there, and proceeds to moralise upon the event. " I do 
 not think," she says to her daughter, " from the way in
 
 78 MADAME DE SE'viGXE*. 
 
 Avhich you describe your preachers, that it is with admira- 
 tion that you interrupt them." 
 
 Here is another episode which concerns the Marechal : 
 
 " I must tell you a little story which will amuse you. It 
 is quite a true one. The king has lately been dabbling in 
 verses. Messieurs de St Aignan and Dangeau are giving 
 him lessons in the art. He made a little madrigal the other 
 day, with which he himself was not over-delighted. One 
 morning he said to the Marechal de Grammont, ' Monsieur le 
 Marechal, I beg of you to look at this little madrigal, and 
 tell me if you ever read anything so pointless : since it has 
 been known that I have had a taste for verses, I am over- 
 whelmed with them.' The Marechal, after reading the 
 verses, said to the king, ' Sire, your Majesty is a divinely 
 inspired critic. It is perfectly undeniable that this is the 
 most stupid and ridiculous madrigal I ever read.' The king 
 laughed, and said, ' Don't you think that the person who 
 wrote it must be very fatuous ?' ' Sire, there is no other word 
 by which to describe him.' ' Well,' said the king, ' I am 
 delighted at your speaking so openly : it is I who wrote it." 
 ' Ah, Sire, what treason ! let your Majesty give it me back ; 
 I read it hurriedly.' ' No, Monsieur le Mare'chal ; first feel- 
 ings are always the best.' The king laughed heartily at 
 this absurdity, and every one thinks it is the most cruel 
 little joke to play upon an old courtier. For my part, I, who 
 always love to make reflections, wish the king would do so 
 too, and judge from this how little likely he is ever to know 
 the truth on any subject." 
 
 It was in 1671 that Louis XIV. finally determined 
 upon his campaign against Holland ; and having secured 
 the consent of Europe to this heroic undertaking, and 
 wishing to do honour to the great general who was to 
 take the command, 1 the king graciously accepted an invi- 
 
 1 "Although a professed and assiduous courtier, Conde kept up a
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF VATEL. 79 
 
 tation to Chantilly, where a fete was to be given in the 
 forest, the details of which were superintended by the 
 Due d'Enghien himself ; while Yatel, the general of all 
 the cooks, was to provide the food. Everything was 
 arranged with the greatest care and magnificence, every- 
 thing was going on brilliantly and smoothly, when an 
 event occurred which cast a gloom over the whole fes- 
 tivity, and of which the description is best given in 
 Madame de SeVigne's own words. It was on April 26, 
 1671, that she writes 
 
 " This is not a letter, but an account which Moreuil has 
 just given me of what happened at Chantilly concerning 
 Vatel. I wrote to you on Friday that he had stabbed him- 
 self : this is the story in detail : The king arrived on Thurs- 
 day evening. The hunt, the lanterns, the moonlight, the 
 promenading, the collation in a garden of jonquils all was 
 everything that could be desired. Supper came ; the joint 
 failed at one or two tables on account of some unexpected 
 diners. This upset Vatel. He said several times, ' My 
 honour is lost ; this is a disgrace that I cannot endure.' He 
 said to Gourville, ' My head fails me ; I have not slept for 
 twelve nights. Help me to give my orders.' Gourville con- 
 soled him as best he could. The joint which had failed, not 
 at the king's table but at the 25th table, haunted his mind. 
 Gourville told Monsieur le Prince. Monsieur le Prince 
 went \tp to him in his room and said, ' Vatel, all is well ; 
 there never was anything so beautiful as the king's supper.' 
 He answered, ' Monseigneur, your goodness overwhelms me. 
 I know the joint failed at two tables.' ' Nothing of the 
 sort,' said Monsieur le Prince ; ' do not disturb yourself, all 
 is well.' Midnight comes : the fireworks do not succeed; a 
 cloud overspread them ; they cost sixteen thousand francs. 
 
 certain independence of feeling and conduct. He engaged, as an 
 inheritance from Fouquet, Vatel his superintendent, and Gourville 
 his man of business." J. A.
 
 80 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 At four o'clock in the morning Vatel wanders about all over 
 the place : everything is asleep. He meets a small purveyor 
 with two loads of fish. He asks him, ' Is this all ? ' ' Yes, 
 sir.' The man did not know that Vatel had sent to all the 
 seaport towns in France. They wait some time ; the other 
 purveyors do not arrive. He grows excited ; he thinks that 
 no more fish will arrive. He finds Gourville, and says to 
 him, ' Sir, I shall not be able to survive this disgrace. My 
 honour and reputation are at stake.' Gourville only laughed 
 at him. Then Vatel goes up to his own room, puts his sword 
 against the door, and runs it through his heart it was the 
 third thrust, for he gave himself two wounds which were not 
 mortal. He falls down quite dead. Meanwhile the fish is 
 coming in from every side : people are seeking for Vatel to dis- 
 tribute it ; they reach his room, they clamour, they burst open 
 the door, they find him lying bathed in his blood. Monsieur 
 le Prince is hurriedly summoned ; he is in utter despair. 
 Monsieur le Due burst into tears ; it was upon Vatel that his 
 whole journey to Burgundy depended. Monsieur le Prince 
 told the king, very sadly, ' It was said to be the excess of his 
 own code of honour.' They praised him ; they praised and 
 they blamed his courage. The king said that for five years 
 he had delayed his coming, because he knew the extreme 
 trouble his visit would cause. . . . But it was too late 
 for poor Vatel. Gourville, however, tried to repair the loss 
 of Vatel, and the loss was repaired. The dinner was excel- 
 lent ; so was the luncheon. They supped, they walked, there 
 were games, there was hunting, the scent of jonquils was 
 everywhere ; it was an enchanted scene." 
 
 This letter was written on a Sunday, and on the fol- 
 lowing Wednesday Madame de Sevigne herself left Paris 
 for a few days, and went to Livry, stopping on the way 
 at Pomponne in order to see the venerable Arnauld 
 d'Andilly, the father of Pomponne, the Minister the 
 "brother of the celebrated Mere Angelique of Port Royal.
 
 GRIGNAN KEGINA. 81 
 
 He was a wise old man of upwards of eighty years of 
 age, who appears to have received her with great kind- 
 ness, and almost fatherly interest ; to have talked to her 
 about herself, her own state of mind ; to have urged her 
 with much earnestness to think more seriously of serious 
 things. She was a pretty pagan, he told her ; she had 
 an idol in her heart, and her idolatry was no less dan- 
 gerous than any other. She had not a word to answer 
 him with, she writes; but the conversation made no 
 difference in her convictions. After a few days spent 
 at Livry, where the idol is not forgotten, Madame de 
 Sevigne returns to Paris, and receives a letter from 
 Madame de Grignan, written at Marseilles, which fills 
 her with delight. 
 
 Madame de Grignan's progress homewards is like that 
 of a queen. She is the chief lady in Provence, and is 
 entertained everywhere with almost royal honours. This 
 mode of life seems to be agreeable to the belle Made- 
 lonne. She is feted everywhere, welcomed with bril- 
 liant hospitality; to the sound of the cannons, the Jwu of 
 the galley-slaves. Her approach is the signal for com- 
 pliments and for noises of every description. Out of 
 politeness to her, the name of Madame de Sevigne is 
 given as the password for the day ; all of which she 
 seems to have described at length, as well as her own 
 beauty, and the junketing and the feasting, and the 
 groans of the prisoners sinking day and night under the 
 weight of their chains. Her mother shudders at the 
 thought of the prisoners, quotes the line 
 
 " E di mezzo d'orrore esce il'diletto " 
 
 and then recapitulates her daughter's letter in delightful 
 F.C. xiii. F
 
 82 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE". 
 
 admiration, and winds up with a fervent wish that she 
 could present her compliments to the captain-general of 
 the galleys. 
 
 It is impossible not to be struck in all cases by the 
 acquiescence of people at their ease in the misery and 
 suffering around them. Madame de Sevigne, with all 
 her loving heart, was not faultless, and sometimes her 
 sentences are witty where we should have still more 
 loved her if she had been unsophisticated ; but her whole 
 life was surrounded by ceremony and sophistication. 
 The footman, lady's-maid, luncheon -basket, and rug of 
 the present, would make but a sorry figure beside the 
 triumphal processions which escort the travelling mar- 
 quises and comtesses of those days. When Madame de 
 Sevigne is leaving Paris for Brittany, she writes : 
 
 " I start on Monday. I think you must want to know 
 my equipage in order to see me pass by, as I watched M. 
 Busche t!O by. I am travelling with two carriages. I have 
 seven carriage-horses, one baggage-horse to carry my bed, 
 and three or four outriders. I shall be in my own open 
 coach drawn by two beautiful horses. The Abbe will be 
 sometimes with me. In the other carriage go my son, La 
 Mousse, and Helene. To this carriage there will be four 
 horses, with a postilion." 
 
 So they go off horses, postilion, Abbes, lady's-maid, 
 Marquise, and Baron making their leisurely way along 
 the road that led north to the old chateau near Vitre. 
 They amuse themselves on the way with readings from 
 Corneille by the young Baron ; while the Abbes con- 
 duct the devotional exercises. Then it is described how 
 Vaillant, the land-steward, had wished to give them a 
 brilliant reception, and had raised a little army of 1500
 
 THE ABBE FORGETS. 83 
 
 men to receive them, all armed, and neatly dressed with 
 new ribbons to their collars. These people go in orderly 
 array to wait for the travellers about a mile from the 
 house. Alas ! nobody appears, although the poor army is 
 in waiting from early in the morning until late at night, 
 when, sorry and disappointed, it is disbanded, and re- 
 turns to its various homes. The Abb6 had mentioned 
 the wrong day, and then forgot having so done, and the 
 travellers come up quietly without any reception, and 
 settle down to their tranquil country life.
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 FROM THE ROCHERS. 
 
 THESE early letters from the Kochers are full of a tran- 
 quil melancholy freshness which -is not unlike some of the 
 best of George Sand's pastoral idyls. Can the mother 
 see these alleys, these devices, this little study, these 
 Looks, these rooms, without sadness indescribable 1 ? There 
 are agreeable memories, but others so sweet, so tender, 
 as to be scarcely supportable. Sometimes she has reveries 
 in the forest, after which she comes back shaken as by 
 an attack of fever. Then she begins to look round, to 
 revive, to describe how her little trees are flourishing in 
 great beauty, and how the gardener, with sedulous care 
 and honesty, is training them up as high as the clouds. 
 Nothing is so lovely as these alleys which have seen her 
 daughter's infancy. 
 
 " Alas ! my child," she says, " how countrified are my let- 
 ters at present ! Once upon a time I could talk of Paris with 
 other people ; now you will only have news of me, and yet 
 my confidence in you is so great that I am persuaded you 
 v.'ould rather have this news than any other. The company 
 1 have here pleases me much. Our Abbe is always admir- 
 able. My son and La Mousse are ready to put up with me, 
 and I with them. We are always seeking each other ; and
 
 A GEORGIC. 85 
 
 when my affairs keep me away from them, they are all in 
 despair, and think me absurd to prefer a farmer's tale to one 
 of La Fontaine's. They are every one of them devoted to you, 
 and are, I believe, about to write to you. For me, I come in 
 advance ; I do not care to speak to you in a tumult. My 
 daughter, love me always : my life, my soul, are in your 
 love. In you are centred all my joys and all my sorrows. 
 I own to you that all the rest of my life seems to be covered 
 with shadow and sadness, when I reflect that so much of it 
 is destined to be spent away from you." 
 
 "Farewell," she says, concluding another letter. "I am 
 cross ; I am bad company. When I shall have received 
 your letter, my words will come back to me. At bedtime, 
 when one lies down, one has thoughts which are grey and 
 brown, as M. de la Rochefoucauld says, and at night they 
 become black altogether." 
 
 Hers is one of those quick and impressionable natures 
 of which the moods change, for whom the present is 
 everything; though be it remembered that to faithful 
 natures this present ever contains the affections which 
 are an integral part of loving souls : to Madame de 
 Sevigne" all through her life her daughter was ever 
 present. 
 
 A Whit-Sunday follows the black and brown one. 
 
 " Sunday. At last, my child, I breathe freely. I sup 
 like M. de la Souche. My heart is relieved from a weight 
 which gave me no rest. I could better endure to be a little 
 delayed in your remembrance than to bear that horrible 
 anxiety about your health. But how I repent having writ- 
 ten all my fears ! It will give you pain while my own is 
 ended. This is the misfortune of absence. Alas ! it is not 
 the only one. And so you are blooming ! What ! not pale, 
 not thin, not exhausted, like the princess Olympia! Ah ! I 
 am too happy. Amuse yourself ; take care of yourself. I 
 thank you for dressing yourself."
 
 86 MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 
 
 Then she goes back to her original theme that fugue 
 of separation which haunts her always. 
 
 " How true it is," she says, " that we seem to see each 
 other, to speak to each other, through a thick crape veil ! 
 You at least know the Rochers, and your imagination can 
 paint us as we are ; but as for nie, I know not where I am. 
 I have made a Provence for myself a home in Aix per- 
 haps more beautiful than the one you possess. I can see you 
 in it ; I can see Grignan too ; but you have -no trees, that 
 troubles me. I cannot go where you walk. I fear lest the 
 wind should blow you from off your terrace. If I thought 
 some whirlwind would carry you off here to me, I would 
 keep my windows open, and God knows how I would receive 
 you 
 
 i" 
 
 80 the lady travels in spirit forwards and backwards 
 from the unknown Provence to the present Brittany. 
 
 Whether or not the lady's imagination embellished 
 the home of her daughter, it is certain that nothing 
 could be a more delightful picture than that one of 
 the life she is leading in her old chateau. It is like the 
 mise-en-scene of one of Alfred de Musset's most charming 
 proverbs. Enter the Abb^s, enter the brilliant lady, 
 enter the Baron with his songs. There is the elder 
 Abbe, the uncle, with his accounts and counters, carefully 
 going over. the business items in the study where he 
 sits ; there is the easy - going and easily persuaded 
 La Mousse, who was afterwards converted by his own 
 catechumens, in the library with his books. There is the 
 smiling Marquise working at her altar-cloth, and listening 
 with bright eyes to her son's readings and recitals. He 
 makes her laugh, nor will he let her go on with her 
 serious course of study. The Baron prefers Rabelais to
 
 P1LOI3. 8 1 / 
 
 Nicole, Corneille to Tacitus. He pours out verses, fables, 
 comedies, which he acts like Moliere, says his mother. 
 When he is gone they mean to resume their sermons. 
 As for Paris and the Court, they are already far distant 
 from her mind : for her only Brittany and Provence 
 exist ; and she is beginning, so she says, to make the best 
 of things, to spend her days in some little peace and joy, 
 after the heartbreaking days of parting through which 
 she has had to pass. Her son, when he is there, makes 
 her laugh; and then when she remembers that her 
 daughter is not there, she goes away to her own room to 
 weep. But it is not whilst her son is with her that she is 
 to be pitied, he and the Abbes make up a happy home 
 together, and brighten her days as they pass. Out of 
 doors Pilois the gardener is her trusty escort ; he is her 
 favourite companion, and she prefers his conversation to 
 that of many who have the title of Chevalier at the Par- 
 liament of Eennes. She tells her daughter how much 
 she sees of him, and that they are constantly about to- 
 gether at all seasons, in wet weather and in sunshine, 
 consulting, devising new alleys, new improvements, new 
 inscriptions. The literary fashion of the day seems to 
 have been to hang sentences and mottoes everywhere, 
 inside the old halls and outside in the pleasure-grounds, 
 on the trees as well as the scutcheons. " Sweet inertia," 
 says one tree ; " Lovers hate idleness," cries another. 
 Madame de Sevigne had a fancy for erecting little 
 summer-houses for new plantations and avenues. She 
 takes to building, too, and enlarges the chapel for which 
 she is working the altar-cloth. The neighbours, says 
 Walckenaer, hearing this, take it for granted that she 
 loves the place and loves them too, and means to spend
 
 88 MADAME DE SEVIGNE\ 
 
 her life among them. But it is to be feared that Madame 
 la Marquise was scarcely deserving of her popularity, 
 and had no such intention. Sometimes, it is true, she 
 pays a visit in a carriage with six horses, attended by 
 her son. Nothing is more pleasant. They seem to fly, 
 so she declares ; they sing songs along the road. They 
 are charmed with the Chateau de Fouesnel, where they 
 call, and with its amiable inhabitants ; but at other times 
 she complains (in confidence, be it remembered, and 
 writing privately to her daughter) of the wearisomeness 
 of tiresome company, and confesses her joy as she sees 
 the carriagefuls driving off. I have known, and do still 
 know, some saints who have, I do believe, never grudged 
 any human being's share of their friendly time and 
 charity ; but there are not many such, and too many of 
 us can, alas ! sympathise with Madame de Sevigne" on. 
 this occasion. Among the neighbours are noble ladies 
 from Yitre, who call, rejoicing in the strange names of 
 Bonne foi de Croqueoison and of De Kerborgne. They 
 appear in short dresses cut high above the instep, which 
 amuse their hostess. Perhaps at this distance of time it 
 may be allowed that the petticoats were not unreasonable, 
 for it seems to have been a rainy season. " Most people 
 say, After the rain comes the fine weather," writes the 
 lady; " but we say, After the rain, more rain." Another 
 neighbour is Mademoiselle du Plessis, who appears and 
 disappears in the letters. One day we find her declaring 
 that twelve hundred joints had been roasted on the 
 occasion of her sister's marriage. " ' Twelve hundred ? 
 Perhaps you mean twelve, Mademoiselle.' 'No, Ma- 
 dame ; twelve hundred, or let us say eleven hundred for 
 fear of exaggeration.' She would not abate a single
 
 THE ENSIGN'S MALICE. 89 
 
 chicken," says Madame de Sevigne, who again, on an- 
 other day, writes, " Here comes Mademoiselle du Plessis. 
 She bestows upon me the kiss which you remember, and 
 begs me to show her that part of your letters where you 
 speak of her. My son is impertinent enough to declare 
 to her before me that you always mention her with much 
 pleasure ; and then he goes on to say to me, ' Show her 
 the letter, Madame, that she may be assured of this.' I 
 turn crimson, as you do when you think of the sins of 
 others. I am obliged to tell a thousand fibs, to say that 
 I have burnt the letter. Such are among the malices of 
 our ensign." 
 
 Mademoiselle du Plessis was the daughter of some 
 quiet neighbours with whom Madame de Sevigne was on 
 terms of friendly intimacy. The girl appears to have 
 been singularly plain, ill-mannered, and affected ; and 
 although apparently devoted to the Marquise, this lady 
 may have had good reason for mistrusting the sincerity 
 of somewhat overdone professions. Perhaps, however, 
 when writing to her daughter (and as other mothers are 
 apt to do), she laughed with her child, while in her heart 
 she felt some self-reproach for her own satire. 
 
 Besides these humble neighbours there are also more 
 important personages mentioned. Chief among them are 
 the Governors of Brittany, the Duke and Duchess de 
 Chaulnes, who make much of the charming widow. Of 
 the Duke later records give a cruel portrait. The Duchess 
 seems to have been an impulsive and sprightly person, 
 wishing for amusement and also for the company of 
 Madame de Sevigne. There is a sense of Shake- 
 spearian life in the mirth-loving companies that come and 
 go, unexpected, uninvited, laughing, joking, clattering
 
 90 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE". 
 
 on horseback into the courtyard at the Rochers. At 
 other times they arrive in disguise. They are like the 
 people in "As You Like It," and our Lady Eosalind 
 adds too much to the brightness of the hour to be will- 
 ingly allowed to hide herself away for long in her old 
 moss-grown castle. But though she is glad to see them, 
 she complains to her daughter, not without reason, of 
 the expense and trouble of so much society, and finds 
 four or five hundred pounds a great deal to spend on 
 fricassees. There is something essentially French in the 
 character of Madame de Sevigne^ in her economies as 
 well as her expenses, her good sense and her gaiety of 
 heart.
 
 91 
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 SYLLABUBS, DUCHESSES, ANP HAYMAKERS. 
 
 LRITTANY had certain independent rights and privi- 
 leges of its own in those days, and among them that of 
 assembling a sort of parliament at Rennes, which was by 
 way of settling the affairs of the Province. "When these 
 Etats Generaux are opened, all the country assembles to 
 do honour to the ancient institution, to enjoy itself, to 
 feast, to make merry. Madame de Sevigne also joins 
 the concourse, never having been there before, and is 
 warmly welcomed. This is her impression of what goes 
 on. Subsequent events showed, alas ! only too plainly, 
 how correct her impression was. 
 
 " The Etats do not last long," she says ; " they ask what is 
 the king's will, they themselves say not one word, and all is 
 done. . . . An infinity of presents given, of pensions 
 granted, of roads and towns repaired ; fifteen or twenty great 
 tables constantly spread ; unceasing gambling ; perpetual 
 balls ; comedies three times a- week ; a great deal of finery, 
 that is what we mean by the States-General. I am forget- 
 ting," she adds, "the three or four hundred pipes of wine 
 which are swallowed ; but though I overlook this trifling 
 item, others take care to remember it."
 
 92 MADAME DE SE~VIGN& 
 
 Madame de Sevigne did not remain with the merry- 
 makers for any length of time on this first occasion; 
 and after paying her farewell compliments to Madame 
 de Chaulnes, came home. All Brittany was tipsy the 
 day she left; forty gentlemen had dined in the room 
 beneath hers, and had each drunk forty healths that of 
 the king coming first and all the glasses being broken 
 after it. The pretext for all this was intense joy and 
 extreme gratitude for the king's liberality in returning 
 25,000 francs out of the present which the province was 
 compelled to make to the Crown. " Thus the present is 
 now only 2,250,000 francs," says Madame de Sevigne, 
 who is not tipsy with gratitude. But she had not 
 escaped so easily. 
 
 " Here I am," she writes a few days later, from Vitre, " in 
 full county company ; otherwise the whole county would be 
 at the Rochers. Last Sunday, as soon as I had sealed my 
 letters, I saw four carriages with six horses in my courtyard, 
 with fifty gardes on horseback, several chargers led and seve- 
 ral equerries riding. It was M. de Chaulnes, M. de Rohan, M. 
 de Lavardin, Messieurs de Coetlogon, De Lomaria, the Baron 
 de Guais, the Bishops of Rennes, of St Halo, Messieurs 
 d'Argouge, and eight or ten more I did not know. I am 
 forgetting Monsieur cl'Harouis, who is not worth mention- 
 ing. I receive all these, a great deal is said, a great deal is 
 answered. After a walk, with which they all seemed greatly 
 pleased, a very excellent and very abundant collation was 
 discovered at the end of my terrace, and above all, Burgundy 
 wine flowing like the waters of Forgues : all this was sup- 
 posed to be conjured up by magic. M. de Chaulnes begged 
 me most pressingly to go to Vitre, 1 and I accordingly went 
 there on Monday evening. Madame de Chaulnes gave me 
 
 i There are delightful glimpses of Vitre, with its gables a 
 in Mr Caldecott's sketches and Mr Birket Foster's views of Brittany.
 
 AT VITRE. 93 
 
 supper, with the comedy of ' Tartufl'e ' not ill played, and a 
 ball, where the passepied and the minuet nearly made me cry, 
 they reminded me so vividly of you. People often ask me 
 about you, and I am not long in finding answers. I always 
 think that every one can see my thoughts through my petti- 
 coat-body. . . . 
 
 " In the evening we supped together ; then came the ball. 
 I wish you could see the graces of M. de Lomaria, and the 
 air with which he takes off his hat and puts it on again. 
 What lightness, what precision ! he might defy the whole 
 Court." 
 
 Madame de Sevigne has a weakness for dandies. 
 Here is an allusion to an agreeable scamp she seems to 
 have had some liking for M. de Pomenars, notorious in 
 many ways. But our easy-going Marchioness pronounces 
 him divine, and says there is nobody for whom she would 
 so gladly wish two heads : never will his one head last 
 him his life. 
 
 She enjoys all this company, but is longing to be 
 quietly at home again with her Abbes, or walking by 
 herself in her lonely avenues, for poor La Mousse is 
 suffering from toothache, and cannot escort her. 
 
 " Do not fear for me the weariness that comes from soli- 
 tude ; except for the evils which come from my heart, against 
 which I have no strength, I am to be pitied for nothing. 
 My humour is a happy one, and I find myself better here 
 and alone than in the bustle of Vitre. I have been for eight 
 days in a peace, which has cured me of a most horrible chill. 
 I drank water, I did not speak, I did not sup ; and although 
 I did not shorten one of my wanderings, I cured myself. 
 Madame de Chaulnes, Mademoiselle de Murinais, Madame 
 Fourche, and a good-looking girl from Nantes, were here 
 on Thursday. Madame de Chaulnes rushed in saying she 
 could no longer rest without seeing me ; that all Brittany 
 was weighing on her shoulders, and that, in short, she was
 
 94 MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 
 
 dying of it all. Upon which she flung herself upon my bed, 
 every one surrounding her, and in one moment she was fast 
 asleep from sheer weariness. We went on talking, and she 
 woke up at last, praising and delighting in the agreeable 
 liberty of the Rochers." 
 
 Although the quotation is long it is impossible not to 
 continue it, so pleasant and pretty a picture does it give 
 of the Watteau-like life of those days : 
 
 "We sat in the depths of those woodlands," she says, 
 " while the others were playing their mall ; and I made her 
 describe Rome to me, and by what chance she had married 
 M. de Chaulnes, for I always try to interest myself. While 
 we were absorbed, comes a barbarous rain like that at Livry, 
 which, without warning, suddenly begins to drown us, to 
 drench our clothes with water. In one moment the leaves 
 were saturated, in the next our clothes were sodden. We all 
 have to run, some of us call out, some fall down, some 
 slide. At last we reach home, a great fire is made up ; 
 every one changes slips and petticoats I supplying every- 
 thing ; shoes are dried ; we die of laughing. Thus we 
 treated the Governess of Brittany in her own province. 
 After everything else came a pleasant collation, and then 
 this poor woman returned, no doubt more loath to take up 
 her wearisome r6le than offended by the liberties with which 
 she had been treated here." 
 
 It was in order to do honour to the Duchesse de 
 Chaulnes that Madame de Sevigne had wished to have 
 her meadows mown some little time before, and on that 
 occasion it was that the celebrated letter was written to 
 Monsieur de Coulanges concerning the lazy valet It 
 is one which Madame de Thianges admired, and sent to 
 borrow, together with a second which is unfortunately 
 lost, and which was called the " Letter of the Horse."
 
 PICARD. 95 
 
 "This word is over and above my fortnightly letter, my 
 dear cousin, to inform you that you will soon have the 
 honour of receiving Picard ; and as he is the brother of 
 Madame de Coulanges' valet, I am glad to let you know 
 what my measures concerning him have been. You know 
 that Madame de Chaulnes is at Vitre : she is there awaiting 
 her husband, the Duke, who arrives in ten or twelve days for 
 the opening of the Brittany Chambers. You think that I am 
 Avandering : she is there awaiting her husband and all the 
 Chambers, and, meanwhile, she is at Vitre all alone, dying 
 of dulness. You cannot understand how this will ever lead 
 to Picard. She is there dying of dulness. I am her only 
 consolation, and you can well believe with what a high hand 
 I carry it over Mademoiselle de Kerbone and De Kerqueoison. 
 All this is very roundabout, but nevertheless we shall soon 
 reach the point. As I am her only consolation, after having 
 paid her a visit, she must come to me, and I want her to 
 find my lawns neat and my alleys neat those great alleys 
 which you love. But still you don't understand where this 
 is leading. Here is another little circumstance relating to it. 
 You know this is haymaking time : I had no labourers, so 
 I am obliged to send to that meadow which the poets have 
 praised, to fetch all those working there to come and clean 
 up here (you still see no point), and in their place I send all 
 my people to faner. Do you know what to faner means ? I 
 must explain : to faner is the prettiest thing in the world. It 
 is to turn hay over and over whilst gambolling in a meadow ; 
 if one can do this much, one can faner. 
 
 11 All my people went off gaily : Picard alone came to tell 
 me he wouldn't go, that he hadn't entered my service for 
 this, that it was not his business, and that he preferred 
 going back to Paris. Upon my word my wrath rose. I 
 reflected that this was the hundredth time he had offended 
 me, that he had no heart, nor feeling; in a word, the meas- 
 ure was overflowing. I took him at his word, and in spite 
 of all that was said for him, I remained as firm as a rock, 
 and he is gone. It is true justice to treat people according 
 to their services, good or bad. If you see him again, don't
 
 96 MADAME DE SEVIGNE". 
 
 receive him, don't protect him, don't blame me ; and remem- 
 ber that he is the fellow in all the world who least likes 
 haymaking, and is the most unworthy of being well treated. 
 This is the story in a few words. For my part, I like narra- 
 tives in which one is only told what is necessary without any 
 straying either to the right or to the left, or going back to 
 the beginning of things. In short, to speak without any 
 vanity, I think you have here a model of a pleasant nar- 
 rative." 
 
 After all the junketing comes a very natural reaction. 
 
 " I am cross to-day, my child ; I am as when you used to 
 say, ' You are cross ;' I am sad, I have no news of you. A 
 great friendship is never tranquil, maxime; it rains, we are 
 alone ; in a word, I wish you more joy than I have to-day." 
 
 But though, she complains a little, and is, as all sen- 
 sitive people must be, liable to sudden changes and de- 
 pressions, this must have been, on the whole, a happy 
 time of her life. She is at home among her own 
 people and her own possessions, she is comparatively 
 young still, her health is good, her beauty great, her 
 Avits are bright, she is richer than in later days, when 
 for her children's sake she had despoiled herself of so 
 much, that instead of driving with the six horses har- 
 nessed to her carriage, she had a difficulty in buying 
 two. Some of her most beautiful letters are written 
 at this time. Here is one refreshing in tone and in 
 sentiment : 
 
 " You know that I am always a little obstinate about my 
 reading. It is in the interest of those to whom I speak that 
 I should read beautiful books. That one which now con- 
 cerns us is the ' Morale ' of Nicole. There is a treatise 
 in it upon the art of maintaining peace among men, which 
 delights me. I have never seen anything more useful, nor
 
 YOUTH AND AGE. 97 
 
 more witty and full of enlightenment. If you have not 
 read it, do so ; if you have read it, read it with new atten- 
 tion. I can believe that every one will find himself in 
 it : for me, I am persuaded it was written to my inten- 
 tion. I hope to profit by it I shall try to do so. You 
 know I never could endure that old people should say, 
 I am too old to correct myself. I could more easily for- 
 give the young folks for saying, "We are too young. Youth 
 is so amiable that we could only adore it if the soul and 
 the mind were as perfect as the body ; but when one is no 
 longer young, then it is that one must try to perfect one's 
 self, and try to regain by good qualities that which one 
 loses in the agreeable ones. It is long since I first began 
 to make these reflections, and for this reason every day I 
 mean to improve, in soul, in mind, in sentiment. It is with 
 these things that I am preoccupied with which I fill this 
 letter, not having many other subjects upon which to write." 
 
 " I imagine yon at Lambesc," she continues ; " but I 
 cannot see you plainly from here. There are sJiadowtt 
 in my imagination ichich hide you away from my sight" 
 
 Another passage in this letter describing the younger 
 of her two Abbes must not be omitted. How delight- 
 fully the story is told ! how pleasantly the figure is 
 sketched ! 
 
 '' As to La Mousse, he holds catechisms on saints' days and 
 Sundays. He wishes to go to heaven. I tell him it is on 
 account of his curiosity, and in order to assure himself once 
 and for all whether the sun is a mass of dust moving vio- 
 lently, or a globe of fire. The other day he was interrogating 
 some little children, and after several questions, they began 
 jumbling up everything together, so that, when he came to 
 ask them who the Virgin was, they all answered one after 
 the other, that she was the creator of heaven and earth. He 
 was not at all shaken by these little children ; but when he 
 heard some of the men and women, and even the old men, 
 
 F.C. xin. o
 
 98 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\ 
 
 saying the same thing, he at last became convinced, and gave 
 in to the general opinion. In short, he didn't know any 
 longer where he was, and if I hadn't arrived at that moment, 
 he would never have got out of it. This new view would 
 have caused a very different disturbance from the various 
 movements of the small molecules." 
 
 So writes Madame de Sevigne to her daughter, an 
 ardent disciple of Descartes, whose works she had 
 studied under the guidance of this same La Mousse. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne stayed on at the Eochers till late 
 in November, anxiously waiting for news of Madame de 
 Grignan, whose lying-in was daily expected. "You 
 ask me," writes the mother, " whether we have any 
 green leaves left on our trees. Yes, there are many still : 
 they are woven in and out with aurora tints and dead 
 foliage. The whole makes a web of very lovely texture." 
 This was on the 15th of November 1671. On the 29th 
 she receives the good news of her daughter's safety. It 
 is impossible not to love her for her open-hearted delight. 
 
 " Do you know what one does in so great an excess of joy ? " 
 she writes. " The heart seems too full : one weeps without 
 being able to stop one's self. These tears are of a sweetness 
 which cannot be compared to anything, not even to the 
 brightest joys. You who are a philosopher, you know the 
 meaning of all these results. As for me, I feel them, and I 
 am going to cause as many masses to be said in gratitude to 
 God for His goodness as I used to offer up to ask for it. If 
 this state could last for ever, life would be too happy ; but 
 one must enjoy the present, sorrows come soon enough. . . . 
 My child, I thank you more than a thousand times for the 
 three lines you have written to me they complete my full 
 joy. My Abbe is transported, as I am, and our Mousse is 
 enchanted."
 
 99 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 TORCHES AND BEACONS. 
 
 ALL this winter of 1671-72, wars and rumours of war 
 were in the air. Charles de Sevigne had left Paris when 
 his mother reached the capital. He had been ordered 
 to join Luxembourg's army, which was encamped near 
 Cologne. Madame de Sevigne had come back to a new 
 house which she had lately taken, with an apartment in 
 it destined for her daughter and her son-in-law, " the 
 pretty apartment where you can be settled without un- 
 settling me." It was near the Place Royale where she 
 was born, and round about which she lived all her life. 
 She saw her old friends, she made some new acquaint- 
 ance, she tried for her children's sake to keep up her 
 connection with the Court ; she wrote letters to her son, 
 who was spending the winter in dull hardship and weari- 
 someness. " I am unhappy for your little brother. He is 
 very cold ; he is camping out ; he is for ever marching to- 
 wards Cologne. I had hoped to see him here this winter, 
 but there he still is." So says Madame de Sevigne in 
 her letters to her daughter, who was meanwhile enjoy- 
 ing her life to the uttermost, and sparing neither pres- 
 ent debt nor future difficulties in order to gratify her
 
 100 MADAME DE S^VIGNE. 
 
 ambitions. One gets a general impression of grandeur 
 flags, trumpets, carriages and horses, company, and hosts 
 of idle servants below, whilst the masters play cards up 
 above. Nearly a hundred people sit down to dinner 
 every day in the Chateau de Grignan ; and besides all 
 this, new courts are built, new turrets are raised, and 
 enclosing walls. It is not yet known upon what danger- 
 ous foundations this splendour is reared. The sons of 
 the family club together to keep up the pomp of the 
 ancestral home. The daughters are driven into convents 
 in order to contribute their portions to the general ex- 
 pense ; but it is not to be met even by such sacrifices as 
 . these, and debts and display seem to have been an in- 
 heritance in the ancient family. Madame de Sevigne 
 prudent woman that she was is beginning already to 
 write warning after warning. Sainte Chantal's grand- 
 daughter, the Abbe's pupil, has a born gift for adminis- 
 tration ; but this, unfortunately, does not seem to have 
 descended to Madame de Grignan : display, vanity, reck- 
 less expenditure, gambling of every sort, seem to have 
 been her curse and that of her foolish family. The Grig- 
 nans in Provence were only following the example of the 
 Court in Paris, where expensive displays and masquerades 
 were filling the minds of the courtiers, but among these 
 things were others more worthy to be remembered. 
 Racine was bringing out " Bajazet ; " Corneille was read- 
 ing his neAV play to Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld 
 Corneille, whom Madame de Sevigne places so infinitely 
 beyond Racine. " It is good taste to admire Corneille 
 beyond every one," she says somewhere, and she urges 
 her daughter always to show good taste. 
 
 The age was rich in literary work of every kind : wars
 
 MADAME SC AKRON. 101 
 
 and anxieties did not quench the eager spirit all about 
 Moliere, and La Fontaine was delighting the world. 
 A humbler genius. La Eochefoucauld, was publishing 
 a new edition of his Maxims. " Here they are," says 
 Madame de Sevigne, " revised, corrected, augmented : 
 I send them to you from him. There are some which 
 seem to me divine, others which to my shame I cannot 
 understand." Then after describing her little grand- 
 daughter's bedtime and le petit coucher of Mademoiselle 
 d'Adhemar in a few charming sentences, she goes on to 
 public affairs, and speaks of the war again : " Spain is 
 taking the part of Holland ; God preserve France from 
 the Swedes and the English." 
 
 Madame de Sevigne hears all sorts of news from all 
 sorts of people. She is very much in the world ; her 
 children are away ; there is nothing to keep her at home. 
 She is going out and about very constantly with friends, 
 such as the Coulanges, Pomponne, and Madame de 
 la Fayette ; and, besides these, she makes many new 
 ones, among whom not the least noticeable is Madame 
 Scarron, still the governess of the king's natural children, 
 but destined to be Madame de Maintenon, Queen of 
 France in all but name. The ladies spend their even- 
 ings constantly in each other's society ; they drive about 
 together. 
 
 . " We enjoyed escorting Madame Scarron back at midnight 
 to the very depths of the Faubourg St Germain, almost by 
 Vaugirard in the country. It is a fine and large house, into 
 which one is not allowed to enter. There seem to be a large 
 garden, and fine big rooms. She has a carriage, horses, and 
 attendants. She is dressed modestly and magnificently, as a 
 woman who passes her life with persons of quality. She is 
 
 DIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA
 
 102 MADAME DE SE"VIGXE\ 
 
 amiable, beautiful, good, and natural ; she is very agreeable 
 company. We came home gaily by the light of lanterns, and 
 without any fear of thieves." 
 
 In juxtaposition with this, I feel impelled to quote 
 a description of the mother of the children confided to 
 Madame de Maintenon's care. It was written some 
 years later. 
 
 " The queen has been twice to the Carmelites with Quanta 
 (Madame de Montespan). This latter took it into her head 
 to have a lottery : she caused everything that could be suit- 
 able for nuns to be brought. This made a great play in the 
 community. She talked much with Sister Louise de la Mis- 
 ericorde (Madame de la Valliere). She asked her if, in truth, 
 she was as happy there as people said. * No,' answered the 
 other, ' I am not happy ; but I am content.' Quanto then 
 talked a great deal about the brother of Monsieur (the king), 
 and inquired if she had any message for him, if there was 
 anything she could say for her. The other very quietly, but 
 perhaps piqued by this patronage, ' Anything you like, 
 raadame ; anything you like,' this spoken with all the 
 grace, wit, and modesty imaginable. Quanto then wished to 
 eat, and gave a piece of forty pistoles to buy what was neces- 
 sary for a certain sauce which she herself concocted, and 
 which she ate with admirable appetite. I tell you the facts 
 without any comments." 
 
 Little comment, indeed, is needed to this curious 
 description. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne, although longing to rejoin her 
 daughter, was detained in Paris by the dangerous ill- 
 ness of her aunt, Madame de la Trousse. She remained 
 therefore at her post ; her little baby granddaughter was 
 also under her care. 
 
 " Yesterday," she writes, " I dined with La Troche, in com- 
 pany with the Abbe Arnauld and Madame de Valentine.
 
 MADAME DE LA TEOUSSE. 103 
 
 After dinner we had Le Camus, and his son and heir. It all 
 made up a very perfect little symphony. Then came Ma- 
 demoiselle de Grignan with her attendant knight, Beaulieu ; 
 her governess, Helene ; her lady's-maid, Marie ; her little 
 lackey, who was Jaco, the son of her nurse ; and the nurse 
 herself in her Sunday clothes. She is the very nicest coun- 
 trywornan I have ever known. All these people were brought 
 forward, they were sent into the garden and much admired. 
 I love this little household almost too much. . . . But, my 
 child, the question is about our departure. One day the 
 Abbe and I say to each other, ' Let us go ! the aunt will 
 linger until the autumn.' The next day we find her so ex- 
 hausted that we say, ' We must not think of going, it would 
 be barbarous. She will not live beyond the May moon.' 
 And thus we go from one day to another. Do you under- 
 stand this condition 1 It is very cruel. One thing which 
 makes me wish to be in Provence, is to be able to feel sin- 
 cerely grieved by the loss of a person who has always been 
 so dear to me ; and I feel that if I am here, the liberty that 
 I should gain would seem to take away a portion of my ten- 
 derness and of my true nature. . . . Leave us to unravel 
 this sad adventure, and be assured that the Abbe and I are 
 more ready to offend conventionality by leaving too soon, 
 than the feeling which we have for you, by remaining with- 
 out necessity." 
 
 How pretty all this is about the little grandchild, how 
 natural and well expressed, how tenderly felt ! If people 
 have good moods and had ones in the course of their 
 many varied lives, this surely was one of the wisest and 
 best of Madame de Sevigne's many moods. She did 
 her duty bravely all through this summer ; she tended 
 her sick, consoled those in trouble, bore up against her 
 own anxieties, sacrificed her own wishes to her sense of 
 right. It was not for herself that she made excuses 
 and avoided that which seemed to her the best. It was
 
 104 MADAME DE SEVIGXE. 
 
 not for her own convenience that she left unfulfilled 
 any duty in life. When her suffering aunt died at last, 
 she closed the weary eyes and brought home to her own 
 house a cross and lonely cousin whom she seems to have 
 kept with her for many years. 1 
 
 Madame de Sevigne's own letters are full of sadness 
 about this time. 
 
 " Am I, too, to meet this sorrow, with so many others who 
 are at present in my heart ? The extreme peril in which my 
 son is placed ; the war raging more and more fiercely each 
 day ; the couriers who only now bring the news of the death 
 of some one or other of our friends and acquaintances, and 
 who may bring worse news still to me ; the dread one feels 
 lest bad news should come, and the curiosity one has to 
 know of it ; the desolation of those who are overwhelmed 
 with sorrow, and with whom I spend so much of my life ; the 
 indescribable condition of my aunt ; the longing I have to 
 see you, all this makes me lead a life so strange and contrary 
 to my humour and temperament, that I must in truth have 
 good health to withstand so much. 
 
 " I am well,' 7 she continues ; " but of what use is my health 
 to me ? it only serves to watch those who have none. The 
 fever has traitorously seized poor Madame de la Fayette ; 
 my aunt is more suffering than ever she is sinking day by 
 day. What can I do ? I leave my aunt's to hurry to tlje 
 poor La Fayette, and then again I leave La Fayette to return 
 
 1 There are many allusions to Mademoiselle de Meri, and to the 
 domestic storms incident to her stay. It is most assuredly the pre- 
 cision of the Abbe. When arithmetic is ignored, when the rules of 
 twice two make four are offended in any way, the good Abbe" is beside 
 himself : it is his temper, and he must be taken on this footing. On 
 the other hand, Mademoiselle de Meri is quite different. When, for 
 fun or from conviction, she has taken up a side, there is no end to it. 
 She drives him on, the Abbe is suffocated by a torrent of words. He 
 loses his temper, plays the uncle, and bids her sharply "be silent." 
 In return he is told he has no politeness.
 
 A DESOLATE HOUSEHOLD. 105 
 
 to my aunt. Neither Livry, nor my walks, nor my pretty 
 house, are anything to me now ; and yet I must go to Livry 
 for a moment's rest, for I am quite worn out." 
 
 Madame de Sevigne was present by chance when the 
 news canie, " falling like hail," upon the Due de la 
 liochefoucauld, of the death of poor young De Longue- 
 ville, his reputed son of the wound of the Prince de 
 Marsillac, his heir of the death of the Chevalier de 
 Marsillac. Poor Madame de Longueville's despair is 
 most affectingiy described also. 
 
 " You have never seen Paris in its present state : every- 
 body is weeping or expecting to weep. One keeps thinking 
 of poor Madame de Nugent. Madame de Longueville, I 
 hear, is quite heartbroken. I have not seen her, but this is 
 what I have been told. Mademoiselle de Vertus had been 
 back two days at Port Royal, where she almost always is. 
 She was sent for with Monsieur Arnauld to break this ter- 
 rible news. Mademoiselle de Vertus had only to show her- 
 self ; this hurried return implied something dreadful as soon 
 as she appeared. 'Ah, Mademoiselle, how is my brother?' 
 Her thought did not dare go any farther. ' Madame, he is 
 getting over his wound.' ' There has been a battle and my 
 
 son 1 ' She received no answer. ' my son ! my dear 
 
 child ! Answer me, Mademoiselle, is he dead 1 ' ' Madame, 
 I have no words with which to answer.' ' O my dear son ! 
 Did he die instantly ? Not one single moment's grace ? O 
 my God, what a sacrifice ! ' And thereupon she fell on her 
 bed, and went through everything which the most keen 
 anguish could make her endure convulsions, fainting 
 fits, death-like silences, smothered cries, bitter tears, trans- 
 ports towards heaven, tender, piteous wailiugs. She sees 
 certain people ; she takes nourishment, because it is the will 
 of God she should do so ; she can get no kind of rest ; her 
 health, already bad, is visibly getting worse. For my part, 
 death is what I wish for her, not seeing how she is to live 
 after such a loss."
 
 106 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 LE REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE. 
 
 FEW will find fault with Madame de Sevigne's personal 
 relations with those she loved, and to whom she felt 
 bound by the ties of life. In impersonal things she has 
 been blamed, as I have said, for the want of feeling she 
 showed in describing certain events, such as the sufferings 
 of the poor country-folks in Brittany during the wicked 
 campaign of 1675, when their unsparing governor, the 
 Due de Chaulnes, first drove the peasants to rise against 
 the cruelty of his rule, and then put doAvn the rebellion 
 with armed force and cruel executions horrible to read of. 
 That the Marquise's sympathy was in the right place, 
 there is no doubt. She was too just and too clear-sighted 
 not to see the truth; but that she turned away from it and 
 from painful realities, and avoided any strong emotion 
 that did not seem to her to be part of her own life, is no 
 less true. This avoidance of the vicarious pain of others' 
 sufferings is perhaps the besetting temptation of highly 
 wrought natures and fine sensibilities. It is one which 
 haunts the beginning of life when people do not know, 
 and the end of life when they know too well. In 
 Madame de Sevigne, some such things especially during
 
 MEETINGS. 107 
 
 these years jar upon one's genuine admiration and 
 enthusiasm. So little more is wanting to this sweet, 
 sensible, and delightful woman, that one grudges the 
 inadvertent evidences of want of courage to face the 
 truth want of honest, righteous indignation where 
 wrong was done, which she should have resented ; but 
 at the time the earlier time of which we have been 
 writing it would be a captious critic indeed who 
 could do aught but admire and respect her devotion, 
 her cheerful goodness, her wonderful sympathy and 
 perception. 
 
 It is quite cheering to hear of her at last fulfilling her 
 heart's desire, and enfolding the idolised form of her 
 daughter once more in her arms. She seems to have 
 reached Grignan in the autumn, and made occasional 
 excursions from time to time. What a pleasant letter is 
 that one dated from Lambesc, the 20th December 1672! 
 
 " . . . I was all ready dressed at eight o'clock. I had 
 drunk my coffee, heard the Mass, made all my farewells. The 
 luggage was loaded : the bells of the mules were reminding 
 me that it was time to mount into the litter. My room was 
 full of people : they were entreating me not to start for sev- 
 eral days. The rain had been falling steadily since yester- 
 day : it had rained continuously, and at this very moment 
 it is pouring more heavily than usual. I bravely resisted all 
 these persuasions, honourably keeping to the resolution I had 
 taken, and which I announced to you by post yesterday, 
 assuring you that I should arrive on Thursday, when sud- 
 denly M. de Grignan, in an omelette-coloured dressing-gown, 
 appears, and speaks to me so seriously of the temerity of my 
 enterprise, assuring me that my muleteer would not be able 
 to follow my litter, that my mules would be falling into the 
 ditches, that my people would be drenched and unable to 
 assist me, that in one moment I changed my opinion, and
 
 108 MADAME DE SEVIGNE". 
 
 yielded entirely to his own remonstrances. Thus, my child, 
 coffers are brought back into the house, mules unharnessed, 
 maids and men drying themselves after having only crossed 
 the yard, and a messenger despatched to you, knowing your 
 goodness and your anxiety, and waiting also to quiet my own 
 mind (for I am in trouble about your health) ; and this man 
 will either return and bring us news of you or lose his way 
 in the roads. In a word, my child, he will arrive on Thurs- 
 day at Grignan instead of me, and I shall actually start when 
 it pleases Heaven ; and M. de Grignan, who rules me in good 
 faith, and who understands all the reasons which make me 
 reasonable, desires to be at Grignan." 
 
 When Charles de Sevigne got back to Paris at last, 
 his mother was still in Provence with her daughter. 
 She had vainly hoped that the Baron might have joined 
 them, but his leave was very brief. He found Madame 
 de la Fayette in Paris, and he went to her, for she 
 writes about this time asking for money for the young 
 man, and reminding Madame de Sevigne that her ex- 
 cessive liberality towards her daughter entails some 
 equivalent towards her other child. 1 The young soldier's 
 expenses were enormous, as indeed were the expenses of 
 all the wars and all .the warriors of those days. The 
 ensign, let us hope, obtained his supplies, for he soon 
 hurried back to his army, in which was M. de Luxem- 
 
 1 "Your son has just left me," writes faithful Madame de la Fay- 
 ette. " He came to bid me farewell, and to beg me to explain to 
 you the reason he has for needing money. They are so good that I 
 have no need to explain them to you at much length, for you can 
 realise from where you are the expense of an endless campaign : every 
 one is in despair, every one is ruined. It is impossible that your son 
 should not do a little as others do ; and besides this, the great affec- 
 tion you have for Madame de Grignan should make you testify to 
 her brother as well." The beautiful pearl necklace which is painted 
 in the portraits hal just gone to Madame de Grignan.
 
 TARIS AGAIN. 109 
 
 bourg, as his mother said. Madame de Sevigne mean- 
 while remained with her daughter until October, when 
 they parted after a whole year spent together, during 
 which another son was born to Madame de Grignan. 
 The poor Marquise does not get used to these partings, 
 and writes as touchingly as ever : 
 
 " This is a terrible day, my child. I own to you that it is 
 almost more than I can bear. I have left you in a state 
 which only adds to my pain. I think of all the steps you 
 take, and of those I also take, and how in this way it might 
 happen that we might never meet again. This heart is at 
 rest when I am near to you ; it seems to be its natural con- 
 dition, and the only one that contents it. ... I am 
 always looking for you, and I find that everything is want- 
 ing because you are wanting. ... I must not hope more 
 from the future than from the past. I know what your 
 absence has made me suffer, and that I shall be still more to 
 be pitied. It seems to me that I did not half embrace you 
 when we parted : I did not tell you enough how your 
 tenderness has satisfied me." 
 
 And so on, and so on. She is steeped in Grignans, 
 she says. She did not come back straight from Pro- 
 vence, but took a month on her road, going round by 
 Eourbilly, the home of her forefathers, to collect her 
 rents, which seem to have been very scarce notwith- 
 standing the plenty of the harvest and the fulness of the 
 crops. She returned to Paris to her cousin's house at 
 first to that Emmanuel de Coulanges who was her play- 
 fellow all through life, and to whom almost her latest 
 letter is written. The little, round, jovial, merry, easy- 
 going man is well known to us through Saint Simon's 
 description, and so is his wife the sylph, the leaflet, as 
 Madame de Sevigne calls her. There are extant letters
 
 110 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE". 
 
 not very readable of Madame de Coulanges. She is 
 described as lively, talkative, brilliant, welcomed at 
 Court and everywhere else for her bright wits. It was 
 a reproach to her, in this age of universal grasping, that 
 she begged no favour either for herself or for her hus- 
 band from her powerful relations. She and M. de 
 Coulanges seem to have lived apart for many years : the 
 only thing we hear of her asking is once when she is 
 very ill, and she sends a farewell message to her parents, 
 with a request that they will remember to leave money 
 to her husband, for although she is estranged from him 
 she cannot forget that before quitting him she spent all 
 his. The two were living together when Madame de 
 Sevigne arrived from Provence, and she seems to have 
 received a little ovation on this occasion. She sets 
 down a page full of the names of the people who came 
 to supper on her arrival. She then retired to the most 
 comfortable bed in the world, which she says wearied 
 her more than her whole four weeks of travel. After 
 counting every hour, she finally arose in the dawn to 
 find a chicken and a pan of broth simmering on her hob ; 
 and at nine o'clock in the morning most of the people 
 who had left at two seemed to have returned again. 
 
 " If you ask me what people speak of in Paris," she 
 writes, " I should tell you that they speak only of M. 
 and Madame de Grignan, their affairs, their interests." 
 This was about the tune of the siege of Orange, a strong- 
 hold in France fortified by the Dutch, which M. de 
 Grignan had been ordered to attack. The garrison was 
 very small. People said that he (Grignan) would have 
 to bombard it with roast apples. The country rallied 
 round him on this occasion, and the Count, at his own
 
 A FORTIFIED CITY. Ill 
 
 expense, raised an army, and besieged and carried the old 
 place in its sunny plain among the olives and the vine- 
 yards. His exploit brought him into favour at Court : the 
 king graciously remarked that he was satisfied with Grig- 
 nan. Madame de Sevigne, delighted, sends off the news, 
 and urges them by every inducement to lose no time in 
 coming to Paris to profit by the sunshine of their favour. 
 Pomponne also is all-powerful at this time, and very 
 favourably disposed towards his old friend and her chil- 
 dren. Madame de Sevigne had long known Pomponne 
 and his family. It was to him that she wrote the well- 
 known letters about the trial of Fouquet, which are the 
 first we have of hers. She seems to have lived on easy 
 and familiar terms with him, and she describes among 
 other things how she had amused herself by playing a 
 certain game with the great Minister, a game that many 
 people have tried to play since her time. It is called the 
 reverse side of tJte cards, and it consists in guessing at 
 the realities that lie under the resemblances all round 
 about. On one occasion Pomponne had turned a compli- 
 ment, which she repeats with no little pleasure. " "Would 
 you know," he says, " why it is that Madame de Sevigne 
 appears to love Madame de Grignan so passionately 1 ? 
 It is because she loves her passionately." 
 
 This game, applied to the events now crowding in 
 daily from every side, might have revealed strange con- 
 trasts to the national trophies of splendour, victory, 
 prosperity. There go the king's triumphant armies, 
 invading peaceful and unoffending nations, with great 
 magnificence and clanking, with victorious generals 
 commanding. Here come deputies from the provinces, 
 swelling the crowds of courtiers, with abject gratitude
 
 112 MADAME DE SE>IGNE\ 
 
 for ridiculous favours ; and on the other side we find 
 misery and sorrow, the poor oppressed and ruined, 1 
 starving country-folks rebelling, homes desolate, rich 
 and poor alike in sorrow and tribulation. 
 
 We have read of the old Marechal de Grammont 
 and his buffoon-like performances. There is a descrip- 
 tion of the Marechal, which gives a very different pic- 
 ture of the poor old courtier. A courtier no longer, a 
 stricken father mourning his son, it is indeed a reverse 
 side to the glittering medal. It is dated December 8, 
 1673. 
 
 " I nvust begin by telling you about the death of the 
 Comte de Quiche. The poor fellow died of illness and ex- 
 haustion in the army of M. de Turenne ; the news arrived 
 on Tuesday morning. Father Bourdaloue came to announce 
 what had occurred to the Marechal de Grammont, who was 
 not unprepared, for he knew of his son's extreme clanger. 
 He made every one go out of his room. He was in the little 
 apartment just outside the Capucines. When he was alone 
 with the priest, he flung his arms round his neck, saying that 
 he guessed what he had come to tell him ; that it was his 
 own death-stroke, and that he received it from the hand of 
 God ; that he was losing the only and the veritable object of 
 all his tenderness and all his natural inclination ; that he 
 had never had any real joy or real sorrow except by this 
 son, who had many admirable qualities. He flung himself 
 upon a bed, for he was at the end of his strength ; but he 
 did not weep, for in such a condition one does not weep. 
 The priest was weeping, and, as yet, he had not said one 
 
 1 " Many of those who interested themselves in the cause of the 
 peasants paid for their sympathy with disgrace and ruin : Racine, 
 Fenelon, Vauban, were examples of this. La Fontaine was more 
 fortunate, but not less outspoken. See the fable of ' Death and the 
 Woodman.'" J. A.
 
 THE MARSHAL DE GRAMMONT. 113 
 
 word. At last lie spoke to him of God, as you know he can 
 speak. They were together for six hours, and then, to com- 
 plete the sacrifice, the priest led him to the church of those 
 good Capucines where they were repeating vigils for the 
 dear son. The Marechal came in almost falling, trembling, 
 rather dragged and pushed along than on his legs. His face 
 was scarcely to be recognised. M. le Due saw him in this 
 condition, and wept as he described it to us at Madame de la 
 Fayette's. The poor Mare'chal then at last returned to his 
 little room: he is like a condemned man. The king has 
 written to him. Nobody sees him. Madame de Monaco is 
 entirely unconsolable ; so is Madame de Louvigny, for the 
 reason that she is not afflicted. Do you not wonder at her 
 good fortune? Here in one moment she is Duchesse de 
 Grammont. The Comtesse de Quiche behaves with great pro- 
 priety. She weeps when they tell her of the messages and 
 excuses her dying husband sent to her. She says, ' He was 
 amiable ; I should have loved him passionately if he had 
 loved me a very little. I suffered his indifference with 
 pain, his death affects me and fills me with pity. I always 
 hoped that perhaps his feeling for me might change.' " 
 
 All this is sincere, and written with true feeling. 
 
 F.C. xin.
 
 114 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 AX UNCOMFORTABLE CHAPTER. 
 
 WHATEVER else she writes about, all Madame de 
 Sevigne's letters at this time begin and finish in one 
 strain, urging, entreating, advising, persuading her 
 daughter to join her at Paris. Madame de Grignan, 
 who seemed in no hurry to obey her mother's summons, 
 gave the expense of the journey as an excuse. Ma- 
 dame de Sevigne was deeply hurt, and writes a some- 
 what sarcastic letter to her who is wisdom and reason 
 and philosophy in one recalling the enormous sums 
 spent at Aix, in comedies, in fetes, in diversions, and 
 banquets of every sort. She will try to submit to accept 
 the role of an extravagant, unreasonable parent expect- 
 ing impossibilities, and to look upon it all as a penance 
 inflicted by Heaven; but those are depths, she says, 
 which take away all the gladness of life. At last, after 
 much demur, the Grignans arrive upon the scene. 
 
 It is no very grateful task to inquire into the condi- 
 tions of the happiness and the unhappiness which this 
 mother's devoted absorption in her daughter gave rise to. 
 It has been said that the two could not live together in 
 any peace, and people have again and again mistrusted
 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 115 
 
 their sincerity. It is, I think, evident enough all 
 through this correspondence that they loved each other, 
 truly, devotedly. But it is not always those who love 
 each other most who escape the jars and trials of love itself. 
 Madame de Sevigne seems to have been in a somewhat 
 morbid and susceptible condition, to have been perhaps 
 unreasonable in her demands and anxieties about this 
 time, and perhaps also she realised only too well, now 
 that she had lived a year in Provence, what were the 
 dangers and overhanging shadows of the house; and 
 her eagerness to bring her daughter to Paris and to 
 further her worldly success was but a very natural desire 
 to avert the ruin which seemed to her impending. Her 
 constant warnings and entreaties may have given offence. 
 When Madame de Grignan came at last, it seems as 
 if the two were out of tune. "When you choose 
 you can be adorable," writes the poor mother from 
 Livry that summer. " I must indeed be well persuaded 
 of the solid foundation of your affection for me, since I 
 am still alive." And again, " The excesses of liberty 
 which you give me wound my heart." This one letter 
 only remains written to Madame de Grignan in the 
 summer of 1674, during a temporary absence. Nor is 
 it till the 27th of May 1675 that the correspondence be- 
 gins again ; but, meanwhile, there are one or two letters 
 to Bussy and his daughter, and one to the Comte de 
 Guitaut. There is a business letter from the Abbe, men- 
 tioning a wound which the young Marquis de Sevigne 
 has received in the war, and threatening a farmer that 
 he will be renounced for ever unless, under these circum- 
 stances, he pays his rent. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne is ill at this time, and threatened
 
 116 MADAME DE SE~VIGNE". 
 
 with that mysterious and universal malady, vapours. A 
 pretty little note of Madame de Grignan's on the subject 
 sounds genuine somehow. " Thank you for thinking of 
 me," she wrote to Bussy, " to pity me for my mother's 
 illness. I am glad that you know how my heart is 
 touched by anything that can happen to her. It 
 seems to me that this is the best part of myself." 
 There is also a correspondence about the marriage of 
 Bussy's daughter with the Marquis de Coligny (the 
 poor young bridegroom), who died so soon after, and 
 who was so quickly forgotten. 
 
 " I think I am mad not to have written to you sooner 
 about my niece's marriage," says the Marquise ; " but I am 
 in reality as a mad woman, and this is the one good reason 
 that I can give you. My son is going away in three days to 
 the army, my daughter in a few more goes to Provence. It 
 is not possible that, with such separations, I should be able 
 to keep before me what I possess of good sense. Take pity 
 on me, therefore, and believe that among all my own tribu- 
 lations I feel the injustice which has been done to you. I 
 approve entirely of the alliance with M. de Coligny : it is an 
 establishment which appears suitable for my niece." 
 
 Madame de Grignan having finally departed, the cor- 
 respondence begins again. "Ah, what a day is that 
 one which opens absence ! How has it seemed to you 1 
 To me it has brought all the bitterness and the sorrow 
 I apprehended." 
 
 There is something almost of a great composer's art in 
 the endless variations and modulations of this lady's 
 fancy. She laments, she rejoices, she alters her note, 
 her key ; she modulates from tears to laughter, from 
 laughter to wit. She looks round for sympathy, tells
 
 "MUSIC IN WORDS." 117 
 
 the stories of the people all about her, repeats their 
 words, describes their hopes, their preoccupations. Then 
 she remembers her own once more, and repeats again and 
 again, in new words from fresh aspects, the fancies and 
 feelings which fill her heart. No wonder Madame de 
 Grignan valued such letters, and prized them, and kept 
 them safe.
 
 118 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 THE GREAT GENERAL. 
 
 THE July of the year 1675 was a month of pouring 
 rain, followed by extreme heat. Madame de Sevigne" 
 describes a procession from St Genevieve to Notre Dame, 
 in which a sacred reliquary was carried by twenty men 
 dressed in white, with bare feet, preceded by an arch- 
 bishop and an abbe blessing everybody right and left, 
 and by 150 monks, also barefooted, and followed by the 
 whole Parliament dressed in red, and various companies. 
 The provost and the town councillors were left at St 
 Genevieve as hostages for the safe return of the relics. 
 The reason of this procession was to invite the return of 
 fine weather, and to cause the rain to cease. It seems 
 that the weather became settled just before the proces- 
 sion started, and it was therefore supposed that any 
 extra virtue left over from the ceremony went to bring 
 back the king from his campaign. 
 
 The procession, whatever its merits may have been, 
 did not avert the great disaster which so soon befell the 
 king's armies, and of which the news shortly reached 
 them all in Paris, spreading universal consternation.
 
 TURENNE. 119 
 
 The account of Turenne's death is one often quoted and 
 referred to. 
 
 "Let us speak a little of M. de Turenne. Do you not 
 wonder that \ve should find ourselves happy to have re- 
 crossed the Rhine ? and that which would have shocked us 
 if he had been in the world, now seenis a piece of prosperity, 
 because we have him no longer. See what a difference 
 conies from the loss of one man alone. Listen to what seems 
 to me very fine. It strikes me as if reading Roman his- 
 tory. Saint Hilaire, lieutenant-general of artillery, made 
 M. de Turenne, who had been always galloping until then, 
 to stop short, in order that he might show him a battery. 
 It was as if he said, ' Sir, I pray you stop a little, for it is 
 here that you are to be killed.' Then the cannon-ball comes 
 and carries off the arm with which Saint Hilaire is pointing 
 out the battery, and strikes M. de Turenne at the same mo- 
 ment. The son of Saint Hilaire flings himself on to his 
 father, and begins to cry and to weep. ' Be silent, my 
 child,' the father says, and he shows him M. de Turenne 
 stiff and dead. ' That is what you have to weep for ; that is 
 wJiat is irreparable.' And without heeding himself he begins 
 to bemoan this great loss. M. de Rochefoucauld weeps him- 
 self, admiring the man's generosity." 
 
 There is a further account, of which the first part is 
 somewhat melodramatic, where the company outvies 
 itself in lamentations, but the end is simple and full 
 of truth. 
 
 " My daughter, I am really going to speak to you again 
 of Monsieur de Turenne. Madame d'Elbceuf, who is spend- 
 ing some days with the Cardinal, her brother, begged me to 
 dine with them both to talk over their affliction. Madame 
 de la Fayette came too. We did exactly that which we had 
 intended : our eyes were not dry the whole evening. Mad- 
 ame d'Elbceuf had a divinely well-painted portrait of the
 
 120 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\ 
 
 hero, whose suite had arrived at eleven o'clock. All these 
 poor people were in tears, and already dressed in black. 
 Three gentlemen from amongst them came forward, whom 
 the sight of this portrait almost killed. There were heart- 
 breaking cries, no one could say one word : his valets, his 
 lackeys, his pages, his trumpeters all were weeping, and 
 made the others weep too. The first who was able to speak 
 answered our sad questions, and gave us the narrative of his 
 death. He had wished to go to confession, and whilst he 
 was closeted he had given his orders for the evening : he 
 was to take the Communion the following day, Sunday, 
 which was the day he thought he should give battle. He 
 mounted his horse on the Saturday at two o'clock, after 
 having eaten ; and as he had a great many followers, he 
 left them all thirty feet off from the height which he wished 
 to reach, and said to little D'Elbceuf, ' My nephew, stay 
 there ; you do nothing but hover round me, and make me con- 
 spicuous.' M. d'Hamilton who was near the spot whither 
 he was going, said, ' My lord, come this way ; they are fir- 
 ing in the direction towards which you are going.' ' Sir,' 
 said he to him, ' you are right ; I have no wish whatever to 
 be killed to-day ; that will be the best way.' He had scarce- 
 ly turned his horse when he saw Saint Hilaire, hat in hand, 
 who said to him, ' My lord, cast your eyes on that battery 
 which I have just had placed.' M. de Turenne turned ; and 
 in one instant, without being stopped, his arm and his body 
 were shattered by the same shot which carried off the arm 
 and hand which held Saint Hilaire's hat. This gentleman, 
 who was still looking at him, didn't see him fall ;. the horse 
 carried him on to where he had left little D'Elbceuf ; he 
 had not yet fallen ; but he was bent head downwards on 
 the saddle. At that moment the horse stops, the hero falls 
 into the arms of his men ; twice he opens wide both eyes and 
 his mouth, and then remains motionless for ever: he was 
 dead, one half of his heart carried off. There were screams 
 and tears : M. d'Hamilton stopped the noise, and removed 
 little D'Elbo3iif, who had thrown himself on the body, re- 
 fusing to leave it, and who was swooning with anguish.
 
 CRAPE AND MUFFLED DRUMS. 121 
 
 They cover the body with a mantle and carry it on a litter 
 noiselessly : a carriage comes and conveys him to his tent. 
 It was there that M. de Lorges, M. de Roze, and many 
 others, thought they should die of grief ; but they had to 
 control themselves, and to think of the great matters which 
 lay on their shoulders. There was a military service given 
 him in camp, where tears and cries formed the true mourning, 
 besides which all the officers wore crape scarves. All the 
 drums, too, were covered with crape, and only beat one roll, 
 trailing bayonets, and arms reversed. One cannot realise the 
 tears of a whole army without feeling deep emotion. . . . 
 When. the corpse left the army, a new despair began, and 
 wherever it passed, one heard only wailings. At Langres 
 they went to meet him in mourning dress, to the number of 
 two hundred or more, followed by the populace, and all the 
 clergy fully robed. A solemn service took place in the 
 town, and in one moment they had all agreed to share the 
 expense^ which amounted to five thousand francs, for they 
 followed the corpse to the next town, and wished to pay 
 for everything. What do you say to these natural signs 
 of a feeling founded upon extraordinary merit 1 He is to 
 arrive at St Denis to-night or to-morrow : all his people 
 go to meet him two leagues away." 
 
 After Turenne's death, it being impossible to replace 
 him, it was agreed that the king should make eight 
 generals in the place of this one. People in those 
 days called their eight generals " change for Monsieur 
 de Turenne." 
 
 It is during this autumn that Madame de Sevigne 
 again writes to Bussy complaining of " vapours." " That 
 good health which you have seen so triumphant has 
 received attacks of which I am humiliated, as though I 
 had been affronted. As for my life," she says, "you 
 know it well enough. It is passed with five or six 
 friends whose society pleases, in a thousand duties
 
 122 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE". 
 
 which one is compelled to attend to, and which are no 
 trifling matter. But that which vexes me is that in 
 doing nothing the days pass on : one grows older one 
 dies. I find this very evil." Then she returns to the 
 death of Turenne once more to that cannon fired by 
 chance, which has taken him alone among ten or twelve. 
 " For myself, iclio see Providence in all things, I see that 
 cannon loaded from all eternity. I see everything leading 
 M. de Turenne to its mouth, and I find nothing hurtful 
 in all this, supposing his conscience to be in a good con- 
 dition. What would he have ? He dies in his glory : his 
 reputation could gain nothing more. In that moment he 
 enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing his enemies retreat of 
 reaping the fruit of his three months' endeavours. Some- 
 times, in the course of a long life, the star grows dim." 
 AVas this the thought which induced Cardinal de Eetz, 
 Madame de Sevigne's. faithful old friend and connection, 
 to retire from the world about this time, to give up his 
 cardinal's hat, to take leave of all his friends, of busy life 
 and its complicated interests 1 De Eetz is spoken of as by 
 far the ablest politician of the day, but he had missed his 
 mark somehow, others were preferred to him. After 
 the death of the hero of war, " he of the breviary " also 
 wishes to depart the world of politics and fashion, and 
 in going seems to have wished to bestow various pos- 
 sessions upon his most favoured friends. There is much 
 talk of a certain silver casket or cassolette which Madame 
 de Grignan refuses, and Avhich her mother entreats her 
 to receive with some little graciousness. It is said that 
 in all loyalty and friendship Madame de Se"vigne hoped 
 much for her grandchildren for Pauline his god- 
 daughter -from the succession of the Cardinal ; that
 
 JEALOUSY. 123 
 
 Madame de Grignan alternately yielded to and rebelled 
 against her mother's well-meaning endeavours for bring- 
 ing her into nearer relations with the Cardinal. One 
 might imagine many reasons which may have set Ma- 
 dame de Grignan against him, some of them more 
 reasonable and perhaps more to her credit than that 
 curious and unamiable jealousy which ever set her 
 against those friends dearest to her mother.
 
 124 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 BASSETTE AND HOCA. 
 
 " MY hair stood on end," cries our Marchioness, 
 "when the coadjutor told me that at Aix the other 
 day he found M. de Grignan playing at Iwca. What 
 a madness ! In God's name, do not allow it." The 
 rage for lioca which then existed was something be- 
 sides a mere passion for gambling. These extrava- 
 gant people, all wanting money, none able to earn it, 
 tried to make a living out of games of chance, and 
 played from dire necessity. There seems to have been 
 less excuse for others the Queen, for instance, who 
 " lost twenty thousand pieces, and missed her Mass one 
 morning before mid-day." The King said, "Madame, 
 let us calculate how much this would come to in a year." 
 There is an odd outburst in one of Madame de SeVigne's 
 letters, where she is speaking of the romantic episode of 
 Madame de la Sabliere and her devoted La Fare, who 
 was not, alas ! faithful to the end. Here is Madame 
 de Sevigne's epitaph upon the grave of a friendship 
 which should have lasted to the end : 
 
 " You ask me what has caused the dissolution of con- 
 tinuity between La Fare and Madame de la Sabliere. It is
 
 MADAME DE LA SABLIERE. 125 
 
 bassette. Could you have believed it ? This is the name by 
 which infidelity has declared itself : it is for that prostitute 
 bassette he has quitted that religious adoration. The moment 
 had come when this passion was to cease, to pass to another 
 object. Who would have believed that bassette would have 
 proved the road to salvation for any one ? Ah ! it has been 
 well said there are five thousand roads that lead to Paradise. 
 Madame de la Sabliere noticed from the first this distraction, 
 this desertion. She examined the bad excuses, the insin- 
 cerities, the pretexts, the embarrassed explanations, the 
 forced conversations, the impatiences to be gone from her, 
 the journeys to St Germains, where he was in the habit of 
 playing, the weariness, the not knowing what to say next ; 
 and at last, when she had well observed this eclipse which 
 was falling, and the strange phenomenon that was gradually 
 hiding so much bright love, she took a resolution. I know 
 not what it cost her ; but, in short, without quarrelling, 
 without reproach, without excitement, without dismissing 
 him, without explanations, without wishing to confound 
 him, she herself eclipsed herself ; and although she did 
 not give up her house, where she sometimes returns even 
 now, and without having said that she was renouncing 
 all, she has found herself so well established at the In- 
 curables that she spends nearly all her life there, feeling 
 with pleasure that her illness is not like that of the sick 
 people whom, she serves. The superiors of the house are 
 charmed with her wit ; she governs them all. Her friends 
 go and see her ; she is always good company. La Fare 
 plays bassette. This is the end of this great affair, which 
 drew the attention of every one. This is the road God had 
 marked out for this pretty woman. She did not say, with 
 crossed hands, ' I wait for grace.' How weary am I of these 
 discourses ! . . . She learns the returns, the bassettes, the 
 uglinesses, the pride, the grief, the misfortunes, the splen- 
 dours, everything is of use. Everything is made to serve by 
 the Great Workman. . . . My child, this letter becomes in- 
 finite : it is a torrent that I cannot keep back. Answer me 
 in three words. Rest yourself, keep yourself, and let me
 
 126 MADAME DE SEVIGXE. 
 
 see you and embrace you again with all my heart. That 
 is the aim of my wishes. I do not understand any change 
 in solid friendship, wise and well founded ; but as for love 
 ah ! that is too violent a fever to last Farewell, my very 
 dear and very loyal one. I like that word." 
 
 A good deal has been said in these pages, but perhaps 
 scarcely enough, of the desperate extravagance of the 
 Grignan family, whose magnificence was not to be paid 
 for even by an income such as theirs. The little eldest 
 daughter, of whom her grandmother wrote such affecting 
 descriptions, had now attained the mature age of five years, 
 and her anxious parents began to look forward to her 
 future. Whether it was for the sake of the little son of 
 three, or in order to pay the parent's debts at hoca, or to 
 keep Lachan the valet in wigs, it is certain that poor 
 little Marie Blanche's portion was needed by her splendid 
 family; and it was arranged that the child should be 
 disposed of in the most convenient and cheapest fashion. 
 In vain Madame de Sevigne protested. Marie Blanche 
 was to be a nun, pious and economical. It may be said, 
 in bare extenuation of her parents' conduct, that such 
 arrangements belonged to the custom of the day, and to 
 the tradition of a family which counted a saint among 
 its many distinctions. But the poor little girl was no 
 saint. She seems to have been clever, loving, jealous, 
 attaching by nature, with little turn for convent life. 
 " My heart aches for her," says the grandmother ; but 
 her remonstrances lack the vigour of irresistible indig- 
 nation ; they are far too gentle, too gracefully worded. 
 In 1680 Madame de Grignan made a retreat to the very 
 convent at Aix where her little daughter was immured. 
 " You do not mention little D'Adhemar," says Madame
 
 MARIE BLANCHE D'ADHEMAR. 127 
 
 de Sevigne ; " did you not allow her a tiny corner from 
 which the child might peep at you?" 
 
 For sixty years to come, the poor little D'Adhemar 
 was destined to live in her unwilling captivity ; nor was 
 she freed till her life ended at sixty-five, by which time 
 her cold-hearted mother and the sons for whom she 
 schemed were dead, and the house of Grignan and its 
 meretricious splendours were laid low, and the palace 
 built up of daughters' dowries, of the younger sons' 
 portions, passed into the hands of strangers. 
 
 There were worse things happening in 1675 than the 
 cloistering of a helpless child, though, for the matter of 
 that, cruelty in a parent seems perhaps the most wicked 
 of wicked things. It was in this year that the rebellion 
 in Brittany broke out afresh, and was put down with 
 monstrous retaliation, that cannot be read of even now 
 without indignation. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne, whose own affairs imperatively 
 demanded her presence at the Rochers, hesitated for some 
 time before she dared face the journey in the disturbed 
 state of the country. The farmers were unable to pay 
 their rents ; they were overwhelmed with taxes and im- 
 positions; the country people were uprising; the fields 
 were uncultivated, the farms unlet. The intrepid old Abbe 
 urged his niece to delay no longer : aged as he was, he was 
 prepared to accompany her, and to set to work for her 
 service. Some of his letters written at this time are still 
 extant, and full of shrewd prudence and patient ability. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne started by water in order to vary 
 the journey, which was far less alarming than she had 
 anticipated. They floated from one pleasant old town 
 to another, from chateau to chateau, from welcome to
 
 128 MADAME DE SE>IGNl 
 
 welcome. Occasionally they stuck in the mud. After 
 some difficulties and adventures, they finally reached 
 their home, which was standing peaceful and secure 
 amidst a sea of troubles. "Whatever may have been 
 the faults of the Due de Chaulnes, he was a good 
 friend to his friends. He protected the widowed 
 Marquise, kept the armies from the gates, the oppressors 
 from her door : all was peace at the Eochers, although 
 elsewhere, and all about the country, far and near, the 
 cry of the despoiled and martyred inhabitants went up 
 to heaven. 
 
 When Madame de Sevigne does speak of the troubles 
 of her unhappy province, it is to the purpose. On the 
 13th of October she writes 
 
 " You say with good reason that dates do nothing to make 
 delightful the letters of those we love. Good heavens ! are 
 public events so dear to us ? Your health, your family, 
 your least action, your sentiments, your bubbles from Lam- 
 besc, these are what really touch me ; and I believe that you 
 are in the same mind, so that I do not hesitate to speak to 
 you of the Rochers, of Mademoiselle du Plessis, of my alleys, 
 my woods, my affairs, of the Bienbon and of Copenhagen, when 
 the occasion presents itself. Everything is important to me 
 that comes from you, even to your strips of worsted-work. 
 I am glad to know everything. If you want any more 
 needles to work with, I have some admirable ones. Yester- 
 day I did infinite needlework ; it was as dull as my com- 
 pany. I only work when they all come in. As soon as I am 
 alone I walk, I read, I write, and a Du Plessis no more hin- 
 ders me than does Marie. Heaven gives me the grace not to 
 hear a word she says. . . ." 
 
 Then she continues 
 
 " Would you have news of Rennes ? There are now five 
 thousand troops there, for others have come from Nantes.
 
 AT EENNES IN 1675. 129 
 
 They have laid a tax of a hundred thousand crowns upon 
 the inhabitants, and if this sura is not produced in four-and- 
 twenty hours, it is to be doubled and exacted by the soldiers. 
 They have hunted out and banished the inhabitants of one 
 whole great street, and forbidden, upon pain of death, that 
 any of these are to be sheltered or taken in, so that all these 
 miserable people were to be seen ; women lying - in, old 
 men, children wandering in tears at the gates of the town, 
 not knowing where to go, nor how to find food, nor where 
 to sleep. The day before yesterday a pedlar was broken on 
 the wheel : he had begun the dance and the pillage of the 
 stamps. He was quartered after his death, and his four 
 parts exposed at the four corners of the town. He, dying, 
 said that the Commissioners of Stamps had given him 
 twenty-five crowns to begin the sedition, and nothing else 
 would he say. Sixty burghers have been taken, and to- 
 morrow they are to begin the hangings. This province is a 
 fine example for the others above all, to teach respect for 
 governors and governesses, and not to say rude 1 things to 
 them, and not to throw stones into their gardens." 
 
 De Quincey's celebrated passage about incivility was 
 not then written, but surely this is plain speaking for 
 1675. Again she writes in " bitter irony," as Walckenaer 
 says 
 
 " You speak very pleasantly of our miseries. "We are no 
 longer so much broken on the wheel as we were. One of us 
 a- week only, to keep justice in hand. It is true that mere 
 hanging now seems a refreshing process. I have quite a 
 new idea of justice since I am in this country. Your galley- 
 slaves seem to me a society of honest folks, who have retired 
 from the world to lead a peaceful existence." 
 
 The Bienbon seems to have set to work immediately 
 on his arrival at the Rochers. 
 
 " The Bienbon is ever the Bienbon," writes her niece. 
 " His are speaking deeds. The obligations I owe to him are 
 F.c. xiii. I
 
 130 MADAME DE SE'VIGNK. 
 
 innumerable, and that which makes me even more grateful 
 for them is his constant friendship and affection for you, and 
 the zeal he has for your interests. ... I do not dare think 
 about seeing you : when this hope enters my heart and its 
 realisation is so far away, it gives me too much pain. . . . 
 You assure me that you are well. God grant it, my best one. 
 ... As for me, I am in perfect health. You would like 
 my sobriety and my exercise ; seven hours of bed like a 
 Carmelite. This rigid life pleases me."
 
 131 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 F1DELE AND OTHER FRIENDS. 
 
 THE Bienbon was not the only good friend at work 
 trying to serve the Marquise with her complicated af- 
 fairs ; another who remained in Paris was D'Haqueville, 
 who for many years appears in her correspondence, 
 active, busy, always ready. " He is those D'Haque- 
 villes" says the grateful lady ; " so many are his good 
 deeds that one man could not suffice to them. "Write 
 to them, my daughter, in all confidence; their kind 
 hearts suffice to everything. . . . He only loves 
 those who overwhelm him," she continues. "Let us 
 overwhelm him." 
 
 " You do not tell me," she asks a few clays later, " if you 
 have been so well treated in your Assembly as to be allowed 
 to send the king no more than your usual gift ; ours is aug- 
 mented. I could have beaten that gaffer Boucherat [the 
 Chancellor], when I heard of this augmentation. I do not 
 think half of it can be paid. The States are opened to- 
 morrow at Dinan. All this poor Parliament is ill at Vannes. 
 Rennes is a deserted town. The taxes and the punishments 
 have been cruel. . . ." 
 
 Then she passes to her own affairs. There is a pleasant
 
 132 MADAME DE SOIGNE". 
 
 apparition of a little dog breaking in to relieve all tins 
 gloom, and to divert their minds. The dog is a present 
 from a friend and neighbour, Madame la Princesse de 
 Tarente, a curious character, and at this time a constant 
 companion of Madame de Sevigne. She was Amelia of 
 Hesse, daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and 
 she was aunt to Madame, the second Madame. She had 
 been married to the Due de la Tremouille, Prince of 
 Tarente, who died in 1672, leaving her with a son and a 
 beautiful daughter, who was then at the Court of the 
 King of Denmark. The parent princess is described as 
 having a heart of wax, which seems a questionable com- 
 pliment; but for Madame de Sevigne the heart was 
 made of more lasting material, and to her life's end 
 Madame de Tarente proved a true and faithful friend. 
 Fidele was the little dog, the rival of Marphise, who 
 had been left in Paris, and who was not to be allowed to 
 know of Fidele's existence. Fidele was a little per- 
 fumed creature, with silky ears, "soft breath," blond 
 coat, the gift of the impetuous princess to her friend. 
 He eats bread, he attaches himself to Madame de Se"- 
 vigne ; she fears she may succumb to his charms, al- 
 though she has vowed never to love any dog but Mar- 
 phise. St. Martin's summer burns on, and her continuous 
 walks are protracted. She does not know the use of an 
 arm-chair, and spends the hours alone in these alleys, 
 followed by a servant. She comes home when night is 
 falling, and the fire and the tapers have brightened the 
 room. She fears the twilight when no one speaks. 
 She is happier in the woods than alone in her room. 
 Their great vastness suits her better than the weariness 
 of an easy-chair. One can understand her depression ;
 
 THE PRATER ON HIS KNEES. 133 
 
 sorrows are brooding on every side, stories of cruelties 
 and tortures ; her son away, her affairs in confusion. 
 " As for your poor little brother, I know not where he 
 has been hidden ; for these three weeks past he has not 
 written to ma . . . Every one believes him to be here. 
 In truth, his fortunes are sad." 
 
 Madame de Tarente, who treated her own children 
 with German severity, used to blame Madame de Se- 
 vigne for her indulgence to her son. It is true that 
 young Sevigne gave good grounds for complaint and 
 displeasure at times. For the present he had entirely 
 disappeared, and caused no little anxiety to his mother 
 by neither writing nor rejoining her, nor giving any 
 sign of existence. Here is a pleasant description of his 
 resuscitation : 
 
 " As I was walking on my terrace the day before yester- 
 day, what should I discover at the end of the mall 1 the 
 Prater, who, when he saw me, immediately knelt down upon 
 both knees, feeling so guilty at having been three weeks 
 singing matins underground that he dared not approach me 
 in any other way. I had resolved to speak seriously to him, 
 but I knew not where to find my anger, I was so glad to see 
 him. You know what a delightful companion he is. He 
 kissed me a thousand times ; he gave me the worst reasons in 
 the world, which I accepted as good ones. We talk a great 
 deal, we read, we walk together, and thus we shall finish the 
 year. . . . My letter was hardly gone," she says, " when 
 eight hundred men arrived at Vitre. The princess is ill 
 pleased. It is true that they are but passing, but they live, 
 by my faith ! as if they were in a conquered country. 
 
 Black fancies are flitting in and about her woods, al- 
 though, now that her son is home, her mind is relieved of 
 one great anxiety. But the state of Brittany is still full
 
 134 MADAME DE SE>IGNE". 
 
 of misery and consternation. The bishop the mitred 
 linnet, as she calls him has come back, transported with 
 delight at the king's goodness and the polite attentions 
 he has himself received, quite heedless of the ruin of 
 the province which he brings home so agreeably ; and 
 announcing that it is out of confidence and affection 
 that his Majesty is sending 8000 men to invade the 
 place. 
 
 " Thank you, my child, for remembering the paterno 
 nido" she writes again. " Alas ! our chateau en Espagne 
 would be to see you in this one. What joy ! and why 
 should it be so impossible 1 " Then she describes her 
 reading. Her favourite Nicole seems to have stood her 
 in good stead during this anxious time ; she divides her 
 life between the ' Essais de Morale ' and her daughter's 
 letters, of which the Bienbon is alloAved to hear choice 
 passages, which " transport him ; " so also is a " little 
 person" without a name, staying in the chateau, ad- 
 mitted to this privilege. She is but fifteen. She seems 
 to have been thought of as a suitable parti for the 
 Baron, but she is only a child, and the idea is aban- 
 doned. She eats " beurrees " so long as to reach from 
 January to Easter ; she enjoys three green apples with 
 her brown bread after dinner, and laughs and chatters, 
 and delights them all with her gaiety. So the time 
 passes. The whole party are thinking of a return to 
 Paris when evil days befall the poor lady.
 
 135 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 ILLNESS. 
 
 Now and then signs of weariness had begun to appear 
 in her letters. Madame de Sevigne quotes a friend's 
 saying "That which I do wearies me, that which I 
 leave undone wears me." She seems to have wandered, 
 restless and uneasy, along her alleys late into the even- 
 ing. Chill, and depression, and anxiety of mind may 
 have brought illness in their train. It was in February 
 1676 that she had her first illness that one which she 
 says destroyed in her the pleasant illusion of being im- 
 mortal. "Guess, my child, what is the thing in the 
 world which comes soonest, which goes away most 
 slowly, which brings you nearest to convalescence, 
 which drives you farthest from it ; which seems to 
 make you approach the most agreeable of conditions, 
 and then prevents you from enjoying anything in 
 the world." This state which the poor lady de- 
 scribes so gaily is nothing more nor less than rheu- 
 matic fever. "Since the fourteenth day," she says, 
 " the fever has left me without pain ; and in this blessed 
 condition, and feeling as if I were quite able to walk, 
 which is all that I desire, I find myself swelled in
 
 136 MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 
 
 every part my feet, my legs, my hands, my arms ; and 
 this swelling, which is in truth my cure, is the cause of 
 all my impatience, and would be that of my merit if I 
 were more good." 
 
 All through this cruel illness the Prater is the best 
 and most devoted of nurses to the poor patient in her 
 yellow bed in the alcove where she lies. He watches 
 her, comforts her, writes for her, has passages-at-arms 
 with his sister concerning her medicines. There are 
 two pages of such enthusiastic description as only a 
 Frenchman could write, of certain powders of M. de 
 1'Orme which the patient has been taking at his re- 
 commendation, and against which Madame de Grignan, 
 with characteristic jealousy, inveighs from her distant 
 province. The little person takes her share of the 
 nursing. She reads to the sufferer and writes for her, 
 and, above all, knows how to speak to her of Madame 
 de Grignan. 
 
 Between them they seem to have made a wonderful 
 cure of it, and Madame de Sevigne is actually able to 
 date from Paris on the following 8th of April, where 
 her friend and ally, the ponderous and philosophic 
 Corbinelli, now appears to take his share in the atten- 
 tions which the poor invalid requires. " I have just 
 arrived. I hasten to assist this shuddering hand. It 
 shall, when it so pleases, resume the pen," writes he. 
 One does not wonder that Madame de Sevigne preferred 
 "the little person" to a secretary with such imposing 
 periods. Corbinelli seems to have been very highly 
 thought of by all his friends, and it is perhaps absurd, 
 after two hundred years, to complain of being bored by 
 him. Nevertheless, his extreme reputation and morali-
 
 DAUGHTERS AND MOTHERS. 137 
 
 ties, and his elaborate platitudes, are certainly irritat- 
 ing. He seems to have clung on to the skirts of ad- 
 miring patrons. De Eetz and others pensioned him ; 
 for a long time he inhabited the Hotel de Carnavalet ; 
 and the 'Biographic Generale' states that he lived to 
 be over a hundred, by which time his wisdom must 
 have been something portentous. Meanwhile Madame 
 de Sevigne, as soon as she was able to do so once 
 more, wrote of him with the greatest veneration and 
 respect. 
 
 She did not recover the use of her hand for some 
 time, not indeed until after her visit to Vichy, whither 
 she went hoping for health from those healing waters 
 and douches ; and she also hoped for the possible pres- 
 ence of her daughter her best medicine, she says, and 
 her one infallible cure. Madame de Sevigne is not the 
 only woman who has felt this longing. Other mothers 
 there are, with daughters more like themselves, and with 
 hearts to carry them across every obstacle to the help 
 of those they love, who with greater sufferings have at 
 least found greater consolation than our poor Marquise. 
 Madame de Grignan did not come. She was reigning 
 in state, and unable to leave her southern kingdom ; 
 and although Madame de Sevigne writes one appeal 
 after another, no help reached her from Aix. 
 
 A friend, living in a beautiful garden herself, tells me 
 that the house in the garden where Madame de Sevigne 
 lived at Vichy is still shown. The garden is planted 
 full of tall white lilies, and the house is a low stone 
 house standing detached in its parterre. The waters of 
 Vichy sparkle right into the letters, which are written in 
 delightful gaiety and pleasantness of spirit. She de-
 
 138 MADAME DE SEVIGX& 
 
 scribes the pretty moor where the shepherds of Astrea 
 might still he seen, she thinks, if people were to look 
 hard enough. As for the waters, " Ah, how nasty they 
 are ! " cries the lady. 
 
 " By six o'clock one is at the fountain," she says. " Every- 
 body is there : one drinks, one makes wry faces ; for imagine 
 to yourself boiling water with a most disagreeable taste of 
 saltpetre. One wanders round, coming and going, and walk- 
 ing here and there ; one hears Mass ; one talks confidentially 
 of the effect of the waters. Nothing else is thought of until 
 twelve o'clock. Then at last comes dinner, and after dinner 
 one goes to some one's. To-day it was to me they came. 
 Madame de Brissac played at Jiombre with Saint Kerens; 
 Piancy the chanoine and I read Ariosto. . . . Some girls of 
 the country came with a flute, dancing a bourree to perfection. 
 Here it is that the gipsies flourish : they cut capers, to which 
 the priests object a little. At last, at five o'clock, one wanders 
 out into the delicious country ; at seven we sup lightly ; 
 at ten o'clock we go to bed. Now you know as much as 
 I do. 
 
 " Madame de Brissac gave herself out for ill to-day, and 
 remained in bed, beautiful enough and frizzed enough to 
 turn everybody's head. 1 I wish you could have seen the use 
 she made of her sufferings of her eyes, of her sighs, of her 
 arms, of her hands languishing on the counterpane, of the 
 situation and of the compassion she wished to excite. I was 
 overcome with tenderness and admiration as I gazed on the 
 performance, which seemed to me so fine : my riveted at- 
 tention must surely have given satisfaction, and remember 
 that it was for the Abbe Bayard, for Saint Kerens, for Mont- 
 jeu and Piancy, that the scene was got up. You seem to me 
 a mere bungler. When I remember with what simplicity 
 you are ill, the rest you give your pretty countenance, in 
 short, what a difference ! . . ." 
 
 1 " Coiffee a coiffer tout le monde."
 
 MADAME DE BEISSAC. 139 
 
 Then comes the cure : 
 
 "After that excellent performance the illness we are 
 now privileged to witness a convalescence full of languor, 
 which is so well arranged upon the stage that several 
 volumes would be requisite for me to describe all the merits 
 I discover in this masterpiece." 
 
 This lovely duchess was the sister of whom Saint 
 Simon writes with so much fraternal admiration and 
 affection. It is fortunate that family eyes do not look 
 through the same focus as strangers' eyes. The letters 
 go on to describe Madame de Sevigne's own symptoms 
 as a Frenchwoman only would describe them, and then 
 comes a reflection : 
 
 "Age and a little illness," she says, "give one time to 
 think a great deal. You ask me if I am devout. Alas ! no ; 
 but it seems to me that in some measure I am more divided 
 from what is called the world ; but then that which I take 
 from the public I give to you, so I advance little in the 
 realm of self-abnegation." 
 
 She gives a curious incidental description of Montes- 
 pan, the Cleopatra of those days, in her barge going to 
 meet her victorious lover at Fontevrault. The barge is 
 lined with crimson damask, with a thousand ciphers and 
 emblems of France and Navarre. Never was anything 
 more splendid. The expense must have been more than 
 a thousand ecus ; but it was all more than paid for by 
 a letter from the beauty to the king. Then comes an 
 idyl:- 
 
 " I found this morning by the fountain a good Capuchin 
 monk. He saluted me very respectfully. I also curtseyed 
 to him, for I respect the livery he wears. He began by
 
 HO MADAME DE SE>IGNE". 
 
 speaking to ine of Provence, of you, of M. de Roquesante, 
 of having seen me at Aix, of the sorrow my illness caused 
 to you. I should have liked you to see what this good 
 Father was to me from the moment he seemed so well 
 informed." 
 
 Some painter might, I think, make a pretty little 
 picture of the fountain, of the smiling lady, of the 
 humble monk, of the summer-time.
 
 HI 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 AT COURT AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 THE letters written after this bad illness are not those 
 which make us love Madame de Sevigne most, although 
 they are among the most brilliant and sparkling in the 
 collection. Her description of La Brinvilliers's death and 
 torture jars upon our modern (and let us hope our gen- 
 nine) sentimentalism. Madame de la Brinvilliers had 
 poisoned her father, her child, her husband, and con- 
 fessed to a score of others murdered. The good Mar- 
 quise went out with all Paris, and waited on the Pont 
 Neuf to see the wicked one led by to execution. All 
 she saw was a little white cap passing by in a tumbril. 
 Her next expedition was to the Court, where, as yet, no 
 echoes of heavy tumbrils were to be heard, and where 
 everything was splendid and supreme, the king, the 
 queen, Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle, all the princes 
 and princesses, Madame de Montespan, all her suite, the 
 courtiers, the ladies in the fine apartment of the king, 
 Avith the divine furniture. 
 
 " One is not crowded, one passes from place to place ; a 
 game of reversis gives countenance to the assemblage. The 
 king is by Madame de Montespan, who holds the cards,
 
 142 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 Monsieur, the queen, Madame de Soubise, Dangeau and 
 company, Langlee and company. A thousand pieces are 
 scattered on the cloth. There are no other markers. I 
 watched Dangeau play, and wondered at our own stupidity 
 compared to him. He is only thinking of his business, 
 winning while the others lose, neglecting nothing, profiting 
 by everything never distracted, in a word ; his excellent 
 conduct defies fortune. Thus 200,000 francs in ten days, 
 100,000 louis in a month all this is written in the. book of 
 his receipts." 
 
 Then she describes Montespan's wonderful beauty 
 eyes, lips, complexion : 
 
 " She is all dressed in French point-lace, with a thousand 
 ringlets, two falling low from her temples upon her cheeks. 
 She wears black ribbons in her hair, the pearls of the Mare- 
 chal de 1'Hopital among her curls, and diamond pendants 
 of the greatest beauty, two or three lappets, no coiffe in a 
 word, a triumphal beauty to dazzle all ambassadors. People 
 had complained that Madame de Montespan kept the king 
 away from those who had a right to enjoy his presence. She 
 has now given him back to France, to the joy of every one 
 to the delight of the Court. Every day, from three to six, the 
 king gives audience in an agreeable confusion, without con- 
 fusion of everything that is most select : this lasts from three 
 o'clock to six. When the couriers arrive, the king retires 
 for a moment to read his letters, and then returns. Music 
 is always sounding, which he listens to, and which adds to 
 the completeness of the whole. He talks to the ladies who 
 are used to this honour. At last the courtiers cease their 
 play. Finally, at six o'clock, every one goes off in carriages 
 the king, Madame de Montespan, Monsieur, Madame de 
 Thianges and the good D'Heudicourt on the step that is 
 to say, as if in Paradise. You know how these carriages 
 are built ; you do not see one another, all being turned one 
 way. The queen follows in another, with the princesses, 
 and every one troops after according to fancy. They float to
 
 ALCESTE. 143 
 
 music on the canal in gondolas ; they come back at ten to a 
 play ; midnight strikes ; the media-noce is served. Thus 
 Saturday was spent." 
 
 The courier's news was not what should have most 
 added to the king's enjoyment. One place after another 
 was being carried by the enemy, and the king's victo- 
 rious armies were cutting a sorry figure. Madame de 
 Sevigne follows the armies with interest. Her son and 
 the Chevalier de Grignan are both engaged, and both are 
 mentioned with honour. The Baron is distinguishing 
 himself, and bent on distinctions which never come. 
 He was present at the siege of Aire, which was carried 
 by the French ; and indeed its inhabitants do not seem 
 to have been heroes, according to the account of the con- 
 quering Baron. " The nerves of their backs which serve 
 to turn, and those which cause the legs to move and run 
 away, were not restrained by the desire for glory." A 
 little story of a conversation between the king and the 
 upright and outspoken Montausier is to the honour of 
 both of them. One morning the king read 
 
 " In truth I think we shall not be able to relieve Philips- 
 bourg, but I shall not the less be king of France." 
 
 M. de Montausier answered 
 
 " ' It is true, Sire, that you would still be king of France if 
 they had taken Metz, Toul, Verdon, and the Franchd Comte, 
 and several other provinces which your predecessors were 
 able to do without.' The courtiers all began to bite their 
 lips at this, and the king, with very good grace, said ' I 
 understand you very well, M. de Montausier : you mean that 
 you think my affairs are going ill ; but I find what you say 
 very good, for I know what a true heart yours is for me.' " 
 
 " This is a true story," says Madame de Sevigne,
 
 144 MADAME DE SISVIGNE'. 
 
 " and I think they both played their parts excellently 
 well." 
 
 The Baron came home from the wars somewhat in 
 disgrace, having turned his back wearily upon the fight- 
 ing, and brought with him no distinction, but a rheu- 
 matism for his mother to nurse. This she speaks of, 
 and of the dress of gold, upon gold embroidered with 
 gold, and fretted with gold, given to Madame de Monte- 
 span, &c. ; and of the serious illness of her cousin, 
 Coulanges' wife, all told in a bright succession of 
 flashing words, and sparkling sentences not unlike the 
 golden -gilt gold -embroidered stuff she describes. 
 
 The correspondence comes to a temporary end in De- 
 cember 1676. Madame de Grignan arrives in Paris to 
 find her mother waiting dinner, smoking broth, lighted 
 tapers, blazing fire, " and the person in the world who 
 loved her most tenderly " with arms open to receive her. 
 
 It was in 1677 that Madame de Sevigne 1 , to her 
 great delight, found herself installed in the Hotel de 
 Carnavalet, where there is room for all she loves, for 
 her daughter and her family above all (as she says) for 
 Pauline, the little granddaughter, whose poor baby fate 
 was then hanging in the balance. Madame de Sevigne 
 trembled lest the child should be sent after her sister 
 into the dim -Hades of convent life. Alas! we have 
 but one poor life in this world, she pleads. Here is 
 room for Pauline, and here is fine air, and a big court- 
 yard, and a beautiful garden. She will have to go with- 
 out parquets and little fashionable chimneys for the 
 present, but they will be all together, and at their ease, 
 in the beautiful home. Madame de Sevigne went to 
 stay with her cousin, Emmanuel de Coulanges, while she
 
 ARRIVALS. 145 
 
 furnished and made ready. The arrangement seems to 
 have given satisfaction to all parties. 
 
 " We hold her at last, that incomparable mother-beauty," 
 writes the little, fat, cheerful man. " She is more beautiful, 
 more incomparable than ever. Do you think that she came 
 to us tired ? Do you think she stayed in bed to rest after her 
 fatigues ? Nothing of the sort. She did me the honour to 
 land at my door more beautiful, more refreshed, more radi- 
 ant than I can describe ; and since then she has been in a 
 continual agitation, which does not in the least injure her 
 health. She is well in body. As for her soul, it is, by my 
 faith, altogether with you ; and if it chances to revert to its 
 beautiful shrine for a while, it is only to speak of that rare 
 Countess in Provence." 
 
 The poor old Abbe is less fortunate : he has a fever 
 and a cold, but he too shakes off his ills, and lives for 
 ten years more to enjoy the beautiful home. As yet 
 everything is chaos, " and the world and its elements are 
 being divided anew," the lady says. She receives her 
 friends in the courtyard, on the steps of their big car- 
 riages. La Eochefoucauld comes, the Princess de Tarente 
 comes, Corbinelli remains for good on a mysterious re- 
 gimen of melted gold and milk which has disagreed 
 with him. Then, finally, the Grignans arrive, daughters, 
 brother-in-law, young Marquis and attendants: one can 
 imagine them clattering in, under the big archway, 
 and settling down in the many apartments and corri- 
 dors. Some rooms open to the court; these are for 
 the Chevalier de Grignan, the generous, kind brother- 
 in-laAv, who is a martyr by gout. There is a quiet library 
 now in the room where the family assembled, a sort 
 of panelled quiet broods over the place. The closet 
 is shown where the letters were written a dark and 
 
 F.C. xm. K
 
 146 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\ 
 
 sunless little room opening from a bedroom. The par- 
 quets are now there which were wanting to Madame 
 de Sevigne's comfort, and the little fashionable chim- 
 neys she wished for. Were they added by her or 
 by those who have come after 1 Along with her, many 
 people inhabited the hotel at one time and another. 
 Mademoiselle de Meri, the sick cousin, seems for a 
 long while to have made her home there; the Che- 
 valier de Grignan and others spent many months in 
 the house ; Corbinelli, the philosopher, stayed for years 
 at a time. The jealous Madame de Grignan was 
 jealous of Corbinelli among other people, and seems to 
 have suspected him of wishing to deprive her of her 
 mother's affections. Did she fear him as a step-father ] 
 One has more sympathy with this phase of the belle 
 Madelonne's mind than with others less human, and 
 indeed the admiring way in which Madame de Sevigne 
 quotes her philosopher is certainly irritating to those 
 who love her memory. The son of the house was also 
 able to join the party for a time, Charles de Sevigne, 
 " the grey-bearded ensign," as he calls himself, much 
 discontented with his slow advancement, and little 
 caring for the life he had to lead. He was allowed but 
 a brief space to cultivate his home affections, and was 
 soon called away again to Luxembourg's army, which was 
 now near Mons, where not long afterwards the battle of 
 Denis was fought, in which the Baron greatly distin- 
 guished himself, though with small recognition. Not- 
 withstanding Madame de Sevigne's prayers and loving 
 entreaties, Pauline, the little granddaughter, was not 
 with them she had been left in the south in some con- 
 vent school ; but the two elder daughters of the house,
 
 CELESTIAL AND TEKKESTEIAL. 147 
 
 the Demoiselles de Grignan, daughters of the Count 
 by his first marriage, with Angelique d'Angennes, were 
 there making great friends (as who did not 1 ?) with 
 Madame de Sevigne". The young ladies were heiresses 
 in their own right : the eldest was Louise, the celestial 
 daughter, so Madame de Sevigne used to christen her ; 
 the second, Mademoiselle d'Aleyrac, as she was called, 
 was the terrestrial daughter, not so much occupied with 
 the joys of the next world as with present gaieties.
 
 148 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 FAMILY DISCUSSIONS. 
 
 FOR two years they were all together. Madame de 
 Grignan's health was precarious ; and Fagon, the great 
 doctor, forbade her to return to the keen air of her 
 home. The whole Grignan family seem to have spent 
 the time more or less at the Hotel de Carnavalet and at 
 Livry. Any one who knows anything of French family 
 life its gaiety, its vehemence, its pleasant sociability, 
 its sudden storms and tempests can imagine what sort 
 of home it was which all these people made in common. 
 That storms were not unknown is very evident from the 
 few letters which still exist dated from this time. There 
 is one from the mother at Livry, sending back some 
 carriage - horses, and commencing, " You should spare 
 me the horrible remembrance of the last words you 
 spoke if I do not love you if I am not glad to see 
 you. ..." And another to Bussy, in which the Mar- 
 quise comments somewhat sadly on old age, and says 
 she could correct herself of her faults if only she might 
 live two hundred years, so as to become an admirable 
 person. 
 
 Madame de Grignan may not have been altogether to
 
 TO THE FRONT. 149 
 
 blame. One of Madame de Sevigne's biographers well 
 describes her insatiable tenderness; but whatever her 
 unreasonableness may have been, a word, a return, a 
 caress, disarms her in an instant. 
 
 It is curious how, even now, two hundred years 
 after her death, biographers still fall victims to the 
 charm of Madame de Sevigne's personality. "VValcke- 
 naer writes with something like enthusiasm. M. 
 Mesnard is scarcely less fascinated by his heroine ; 
 and indeed it is impossible to resist her grace, her 
 goodwill. When she does that which we disapprove, 
 we feel personal pain and regret, as for a friend's 
 failing. 
 
 If the Baron her son was rheumatic, lazy, and dis- 
 graced in 1677, in 1678 he retrieved his character 
 brilliantly. Notwithstanding the declaration of peace, 
 the Prince of Orange suddenly fell upon the French 
 at Mons. After a brilliant engagement, in which an ex- 
 traordinary number of people were killed and wounded, 
 a conference between the leaders took place, in which 
 Marshal Luxembourg was asked which was that squadron 
 which had, during two whole hours, stood the fire of 
 nine cannon - mouths ? The Marshal replied that the 
 squadron was that of the Dauphin's men-at-arms, and 
 that it was commanded by M. de Sevigne". It is curious 
 to mark the shuffling of the cards as one watches them 
 dealt out again and again by Madame de Sevigne's 
 pretty white hands. It is not long after this that she 
 describes the great Luxembourg himself as arrested on 
 suspicion of witchcraft, and driven off in his own carriage 
 to the Bastille. 
 
 "When the Grignan family returned to Provence in
 
 150 MADAME DE SE~VIGNE~. 
 
 the autumn of 1678, Madame de Sevigne found herself 
 very lonely in her big empty house. She writes anx- 
 iously about her daughter's health about Pauline, 
 whom she loves so tenderly : 
 
 " The good Abb6 was telling me a little while ago that I 
 ought to ask you for Pauline : he says that she would cheer me 
 and amuse me, and that I am better able to bring her up well 
 now than I ever have been. I was delighted with this sug- 
 gestion of his. Let us put it by to ripen. We will think of it 
 one of these days. I have an idea that you would not give 
 her to me, that you have not a good enough opinion of me. 
 My child, hide this thought from me, if you have it ; for I 
 feel that it is unjust, and that you do not really know me. 
 It would be a delicious occupation to cherish all this little 
 creature's wonderful ways. Mesdemoiselles de Grignan, do 
 you not love her ? You should write and tell me a thousand 
 things, easily, without troubling yourselves ; and above all, 
 tell me how your dear step-mother is in health." 
 
 The pacific Sevigne' had come home after his fight- 
 ing, and made a journey to Brittany, by way of looking 
 after his tenants. He was weary of the profession, 
 of the distinctions once longed after, and he soon after- 
 wards gave up the army, to his sister's extreme in- 
 dignation. He also was thinking of marriage, not less 
 to her indignation. One of the complaints urged against 
 the poor young man is that he has a curious taste in 
 wives, and falls in love with dowdy unsuitable ladies. 
 His magnificent countess - sister and his aristocratic 
 mother are in despair at the badness of his taste. Is 
 it possible that he can appreciate m, they say, if he 
 takes such extraordinary fancies? 
 
 Charles finally, when he was no longer young, when 
 his chances of advancement were ended, when his
 
 POMPONNE IN DISGRACE. 151 
 
 mother had begun to give up all hope of a suitable 
 marriage, found a rich, high-born, and devoted young 
 lady ready to share his small fortune ; and although, as 
 usual, Madame da Grignan's demands were such as 
 almost to break off the match, Charles's sweet temper 
 and generosity carried the day. From this marriage 
 might be dated the happiness of his life. He loved his 
 wife tenderly, and she returned his affection. Her name 
 was Jeanne de Brehat de Mauron. 
 
 But this was long after 1679, when Madame de 
 Sevigne had many cares on her mind besides her son's 
 want of good taste in marriage. Not the least among 
 these are her daughter's difficulties and money embar- 
 rassments, and the load of debt and anxiety, which 
 added to Madame de Grignan's physical exhaustion. 
 Their all-powerful friend Pomponne, the Minister, was 
 to have come to their help, when lo ! Pomponne him- 
 self was disgraced. The account is curious. 
 
 " On Friday we had gone, as I have already said, to 
 Pomponne M. de Chaulnes, Caumartin, and myself. We 
 found him and the two ladies, who gave us a delightful 
 reception. The evening passed in conversation and at 
 chess. But ah ! what a checkmate was in store at Saint 
 Germain ! He set off thither, the first thing in the morning. 
 . . . As for us, we did not leave till after dinner. The ladies 
 remained at Pomponne ; and Madame de Vins in particu- 
 lar loaded me with endless kind messages to you. It was 
 thus necessary to send to tell them the bad news; and it 
 was one of M. de Pomponne's own servants who appeared 
 in the room at nine o'clock on Sunday morning. The 
 man's demeanour was so strange, he was so extraordinarily 
 changed, that Madame de Vins felt sure he had come to an- 
 nounce M. de Pomponne's death : on hearing that he was only 
 in disgrace, she revived. As she recovered, she was able to
 
 152 MADAME DE SE*VIGXE". 
 
 realise the misfortune, and went to break it to her sister. 
 They started at once, leaving those poor little boys crying ; 
 and reached Paris at two in the afternoon, overwhelmed 
 with sorrow. You can imagine their meeting with M. de 
 Pomponne, and what they felt at seeing each other under 
 conditions so different from what they had thought, only 
 the evening before, were theirs. For myself, I heard the 
 news through the Abbe de Grignan, and I own it cut me to 
 the heart. As soon as it was evening, I went to the house 
 for they were not visible to ordinary visitors. On going in, 
 I found them all there together. M. de Pomponne embraced 
 me, without being able to say a word. The ladies could not 
 check their sobs, nor I mine. If you had been there, my 
 child, you would have cried too. It was a pitiful sight ! 
 Our sympathies were the deeper for the accident of our 
 having said good-bye at Pomponne in so different a mood. 
 It is quite impossible to describe the state they were in. 
 Poor Madame de Vins, whom I had left so blooming, was 
 unrecognisable literally unrecognisable. A fortnight's 
 fever would not have changed her more. 
 
 " You can imagine that I often go to see him. I was 
 touched the other day when he appeared without any signs 
 of sorrow or dejection. Madame de Coulanges had begged 
 me to take her with me. He complimented her for re- 
 membering the unfortunate. But he did not dwell long on 
 that strain, but passed on to something that might lead to 
 a general conversation, which he made as agreeable as ever, 
 without any affectation of gaiety, but speaking in a manner 
 so manly, so simple, so exactly and happily touched by 
 everything that was sure to command our appreciation, 
 that he had no difficulty in attaining his end. It seemed 
 that at last we were once more going to see the same perfect 
 M. de Pomponne whom we knew of old. That first day, 
 however, affected me. He had nothing to occupy him, and 
 was beginning to realise life, and the true meaning of the 
 slowness of time. For, owing to the way in which his time 
 used before to be filled, life to him had been like a flow-
 
 PORT ROYAL. 153 
 
 ing torrent. He was hardly aware of it, as it rushed by, 
 without admitting a moment's pause." 
 
 Pomponne came of too good a stock not to show of 
 what stuff he was made in the hour of trial. The 
 energetic race of Arnaulds, whatever their varieties of 
 opinion, carried out their convictions with unflinching 
 courage and determination, in good and bad fortune 
 alike. The story of Port Royal, so intimately asso- 
 ciated with the Arnauld family its groAvth, its liberal 
 opinions, its final overthrow by the Jesuits, and the 
 courageous protest of its aged martyrs for conscience' 
 sake is one of the most moving histories imaginable. 
 Madame de Sevigne did not live to see these later per- 
 secutions, but her sympathy was openly avowed all 
 along, and is said to have materially affected her favour 
 at Court. She contributed to the Paris establishment. 
 Renaud de Sevigne, her uncle, was also one of the prin- 
 cipal benefactors of the institution, which he finally 
 joined. It was to him that the Mere Angelique, on her 
 deathbed, sent the touching message: "At length our 
 good Lord has seen fit to deprive us of all. Fathers, 
 sisters, disciples, children, all are gone. Blessed be the 
 name of the Lord. Grief and sorrow, indeed, abound, 
 but peace and resignation to His holy will abound yet 
 more." This was in 1656, at the time of the first perse- 
 cution. Pomponne was always faithful to his friends 
 and relatives, and was able to help them in some degree. 
 Some of them, when dispersed from Port Eoyal, 1 retired 
 to his estate, M. de Saci among others, Pomponne's 
 
 1 Sir James Stephen's account of Port Royal is so vivid as to carry 
 one there, and almost to enable one to see what Madame de Sevigne 
 saw with her own eyes.
 
 154 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 cousin, a man of wide influence and very holy 
 character. 
 
 In November 1664, Madame de Sevigne, writing to 
 Pomponne, mentions the story of poor Jacqueline Ar- 
 nauld's signing the formulary : 
 
 " I went to the Convent of Ste Marie, where I saw 
 Madame your aunt, who seemed lost in divine ecstasy. 
 She was assisting at the Mass, as if in a rapture. Madame 
 your sister seemed to me pretty, fine eyes, an intelligent 
 countenance. The poor child fainted this morning. She 
 is suffering very much. Her aunt is still kind as ever. 
 Monsieur de Paris gave her a certain sort of authorisation, 
 which won her heart : it was this which obliged her to sign 
 this device of a formulary. I did not speak to either of 
 them ; M. de Paris had forbidden it. But here is one more 
 instance of prejudice. The Sisters of Ste Marie said to me, 
 ' At last, God be praised, He has touched the heart of that 
 poor child. She has put herself in the way of salvation 
 and obedience.' From thence I go to Port Royal. I find a 
 certain great solitary whom you know, who begins to say : 
 ' Well, so the poor fledgling has signed. God has abandoned 
 her. She has taken the fatal leap.' As for me, 1 nearly 
 died of laughing as I thought of the effect of preconceived 
 ideas. This is indeed humanity in its natural condition." 
 
 The laughing philosophy of the lady is no less a 
 curious sensation than the more fervent feelings of the 
 others. 
 
 " This Port Royal is a Thebaide," she writes on a sxibse- 
 quent occasion, " a Paradise, a desert, where the devotion of 
 Christendom is collected together, and holiness spreads for 
 a league in circumference. There are five or six Solitaires 
 who live like the penitents of St John Climaques. The 
 nuns are angels upon earth. Mademoiselle de Vertus is 
 ending her life there with extreme resignation and incon-
 
 PORT ROYAL. 155 
 
 ceivable suffering. She will not be alive in another month. 
 Everything that serves to their necessities the carters, the 
 shepherds, the workmen all is holy, all is modest. I con- 
 fess to you that I was delighted to see this solitude, of which 
 I have heard so much. It is a frightful valley, quite suit- 
 able to work out one's salvation in. I slept at Mesnil on 
 my way back, and we returned here after again embracing 
 M. d'Andilly. I think I shall dine to-morrow with M. de 
 Pomponne, and it will not be without speaking of his father 
 and of my daughter."
 
 156 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 MADAME DE LA FATETTE AND OTHERS. 
 
 IN 1679 Madame de Sevigne was about fifty-four years 
 of age. From all accounts she seems to have been beauti- 
 ful still and blooming. Six years later even she received 
 an offer of marriage from the Due de Luynes, 1 which, 
 however, she could not be persuaded to accept. Her 
 heart, her interests, her sympathies belonged to her 
 children : her daughter's health already filled her with 
 anxiety, and her correspondence is overflowing with 
 most tender solicitude. 
 
 " If I had a heart of crystal," she writes, " in which you 
 could read the sad and deep-felt pain which pierced me 
 when you desired that my life should be composed of more 
 years than yours, you would know clearly with what truth 
 and ardour I also desire that Providence should not change 
 the order of nature which caused me to be born your mother, 
 and to come into this world very much before you. It is 
 rule, it is reason, my daughter, that I should go before 
 you." 
 
 Madame de Sevigne forbids her daughter to write, but 
 continues herself to give her news, honours, disgraces, 
 
 1 He also was a friend and benefactor to Port Royal.
 
 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 157 
 
 weddings, funerals, treats, tortures, Court scenes, and 
 gaieties the death of her old friend La Rochefoucauld, 
 after a life of cruel suffering 1 are all described in a 
 bright torrent of flashing words, at once matter of fact, 
 fanciful, brilliant, and amusing. Some part of it sur- 
 prises, and perhaps shocks one, in a woman so faithful, 
 so ready to weep with those who weep ; but her heart is 
 not the less warm because her pen runs away with her 
 words. 
 
 In March 1680 she writes from Paris : 
 
 " This is "Wednesday, and M. de la Rochefoucauld still 
 dead, and M. de Marsillac still afflicted, and so closely shut 
 up that it seems as it" he did not ever dream of leaving the 
 house." 
 
 Of her old, close friend, bound to La Eochefoucauld 
 by years of sympathy and devotion, she speaks with 
 more feeling. Where will Madame de la Fayette find 
 such a friend as he is again such a companion ! where 
 find such gentleness, such pleasantness, such confidence, 
 such consideration for her and for her sons 1 She is in- 
 firm ; she is in her room ; she cannot run the streets. 
 M. de la Eochefoucauld was also sedentary, and nothing 
 could be equal to the confidence and the charm of their 
 friendship. " Think of it, my child," the mother con- 
 tinues ; " you will find it is scarcely possible to experi- 
 
 i " I was there yesterday. I found him crying aloud, his pain had 
 reached so great a point. All his constancy was overcome. Not 
 one good remained to him. The extremity of his suffering was so 
 great, that he was beating the air in a violent fury. He filled me 
 with pity. I had never before seen him in this condition. He 
 begged me to tell you of it, and to assure you that people on the 
 rack do not suffer more than he does during half his life, and that he 
 longs for death as for a mercy -stroke."
 
 158 MADAME DE SEVIGX& 
 
 ence a greater loss one which time can do less to re- 
 pair. I have not left my poor friend all these days; 
 she did not join the crowding family ; she needed some 
 one to have pity on her." 
 
 In the many changes of life these two women were 
 ever faithful to one another. Madame de la Fayette, 
 ailing, suffering, faithful, and sincere, never changed in 
 her affectionate devotion to Madame de Sevigne. They 
 had known each other in their earliest youth; their 
 lives had run side by side ; they were well fitted to be- 
 friend each other. Madame de la Fayette loved Madame 
 de Sevigne as much as she hated writing to her : hers 
 was a silent heart, clear-sighted, not protesting over 
 much, not fearing to speak the truth, warmly interested 
 in the wellbeing of all those whose wellbeing concerned 
 her friend. To be true, to be real, was Madame de la 
 Fayette's aim in life ; and this aim she fulfilled simply, 
 somewhat austerely, but with a warm and generons 
 fidelity of heart. " Is it not enough to be ? " she used to 
 say. Besides the works by which she is known, she 
 helped La Rochefoucauld in his collection of 'Maximes.' 
 It may have been through her influence that he, year by 
 year, condensed them and simplified their form. Her 
 own works were widely read at the time. ' La Princesse 
 de Montpensier,' ' Zayde,' ' La Princesse de Cleves,' were 
 published in her lifetime ; after her death were printed 
 'Memoirs of the French Court' in 1686 and 1689, and 
 her ' History of Henrietta of England.' 
 
 For twenty-five years the affection of La Rochefoucauld 
 had lightened her life, already saddened and weighed 
 down by constant ill -health. After his death she 
 seems to have been very lonely. Madame de Sevigne
 
 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 159 
 
 complained that servants robbed Madame de la Fayette 
 as she lay helpless on her sick-bed. One other good 
 friend and her director, Father Duguet of Port Eoyal, 
 also assisted her in her last years. One hears little of 
 her sons, who, let us hope, did not entirely abandon their 
 mother. She died in 1693, three years before Madame 
 de Sevigne. 
 
 It is hard to reproach the chronicler with too much 
 brilliancy and vividness as one reads the account 
 of the events of the year which followed Madame de 
 Grignan's return to Provence. Here is a veil as it 
 were uplifted, a glimpse into the unknown, into that 
 which is no longer history : 
 
 " Yesterday I went to the great Carmelites," she says, 
 " with Mademoiselle, who had the good thought of bidding 
 Madame de Lesdiguieres to take me. We entered the holy 
 place. I was charmed with the wit of Mother Agnes, who 
 spoke of you, as knowing you through her sister. I saw 
 Madame Stuart, beautiful and content. I saw Mademoiselle 
 d'Epernon, who did not find me disfigured more than 
 thirty years had passed since we had met. She seemed to 
 me horribly changed. The little Du Janet did not greet me ; 
 since three days she wears the white veil. She is a prodigy 
 of fervent vocation. I am going to write to her mother 
 about her. But what an angel [Madame de la Valliere] 
 appeared in the end ! for M. le Prince de Conti had detained 
 her in the parlour. There, to my eyes, were all the charms 
 we have formerly beheld. She was neither changed nor 
 sallow. She is less thin, more happy ; the same eyes, the 
 same glances. Austerity, bad food, and little sleep have not 
 wearied nor sunk them. The strange dress takes nothing 
 from her grace nor her distinction. As for modesty, it is 
 not less than when she gave a Princess de Conti to the 
 world, but this is more than enough for a Carmelite. . . . M.
 
 160 MADAME DE SEVIGNE". 
 
 de Conti loves and honours her tenderly. She is his director. 
 The Prince is devout, and will be like his father. In truth, 
 this dress and this retreat are a great dignity for her." 
 
 Words more or less lively and indifferent seem to 
 matter little : one episode which occurs not long after 
 this, that of the Demoiselles de Grignan, is one which 
 did not end in words only. It is difficult to forgive 
 or explain. They were both rich, and to each of them 
 did their father owe great sums of money. When 
 Pauline, comparatively dowerless, was threatened with a 
 cloister, her grandmother most certainly helped to save 
 her from this condign fate ; but when a question arose as 
 to the vocation of the eldest daughter of the house, the 
 young step-daughter of Madame de Grignan, Madame de 
 Sevigne served God and mammon to the utmost of her 
 power ; there are no doubts, no protestations, only con- 
 gratulations : they may be somewhat satirical at times, 
 but there is no relenting, no hesitation. It is a happy 
 stroke of chance a lucky throw of the dice, by which 
 Mademoiselle de Grignan has been persuaded to retire 
 to pray for her family, and to bestow her dowry to fill 
 its empty coffers. Madame de Grignan has not a little 
 contributed to this happy result, so Madame de Sevigne 
 tells Bussy, who replies that his daughter is thankful 
 that she has not so able a step-mother as Madame de 
 Grignan, otherwise she too might be safely shut up in a 
 convent. Finally, when the poor young lady's health 
 failed, and she was obliged to leave the Carmelites, she 
 returned home indeed, but never resumed her place in 
 the world. She made a donation of all her possessions 
 to her father, and lived a semi-cloistral and religious life. 
 Sainte Grignan she is called by Madame de Sevigne, who
 
 IN BRITTANY AGAIN. 161 
 
 implies of herself long afterwards that the fault in 
 her life one which had rendered her hateful at times 
 was that she looked on blandly at wrong-doing in those 
 she loved, but which she should have resented, wrongs 
 to which she would never have stooped herself. The 
 vounger, the terrestrial daughter of the house of Grignan, 
 also left her father's home for her uncle's, and finally, 
 after going to law with her family, married to every- 
 body's disapprobation. 
 
 Madame de Grignan came to Paris about 1680, and 
 remained with her mother for eight years ; but before 
 her arrival Madame de Sevigne paid a visit to Brittany, 
 Avhere business again required her presence. She was 
 reluctant to go, but the wise old uncle urged her, and 
 notwithstanding his great age, this faithful guardian 
 prepared to accompany her. " My Eienbon desires me 
 to assure you that he is at your service," the mother 
 writes. " I am greatly taken up by the care of him. 
 Journeys are no longer for him what they formerly 
 were." She dates from Blois, that most enchanting 
 of old French towns, writing romantically, she says, 
 on the river-side. But though she has heard a thousand 
 nightingales on her way, she is listening for those which 
 her daughter can hear from her balcony in Provence. 
 
 From Nantes she writes : 
 
 " I begin this letter to-day, because we receive our letters 
 at ten o'clock in the morning, and the post goes out at six 
 in the afternoon punctually ; and now I am going to tell 
 you something which will amuse you it is, that the first 
 time I read your letters I am so agitated that I do not see 
 one half of what is in them. In reading them over again 
 more at my leisure, I find a thousand things that I want 
 to talk to you about. . . . 
 
 F.C. xill. L
 
 162 MADAME DE 
 
 " I am here in the midst of all the worry of completing 
 the whole accounts for nineteen years, of which my son had 
 only made a rough draft. They try to make letters which 
 I have written pass as receipts : it is pitiful to see the mean 
 shifts to which a bad debtor will have recourse for a balance 
 of 400. We are going to settle everything ; we are looking 
 to certain fines of alienation and sale of land held from us ; 
 we shall want 80 presently. We have plenty of people to 
 advise us ; the only thing that vexes me is to do harm : but 
 when I play at drowning, and I ask myself which of us shall 
 be drowned M. de la Jarie or myself I say without hesi- 
 tating that it shall be M. de la Jarie, and that gives me 
 courage." 
 
 She is at the end of her travels when she says, still 
 writing from Xantes : 
 
 " I am like Harlequin, who answers his letter before 
 receiving it. I was yesterday at the Buron. I came home 
 in the evening. I thought I must weep when I saw the 
 condition of the place. Those used to be the oldest woods 
 in all the world. My son during his journey caused the 
 last strokes of the hatchet to fall upon them and lay them 
 low. He even sold one last little copse which remained in 
 great beauty. He received four hundred pistoles for it all, 
 of which not one remained to him in a month. All those 
 sad dryads that I saw yesterday, those ancient sylvans no 
 longer knowing where to hide, those venerable crows estab- 
 lished for two hundred years in the depths of their woods, 
 the owlets in the gloom who announced by their cries the 
 troubles of mankind, all these poured out plaints which 
 touched my very heart. Who shall say that some of these 
 old oaks did not also speak, like that one in which Clarinda 
 was concealed ? .This spot also was a luogo d'incanto, if ever 
 one existed. I came home very sad. The supper which the 
 president and his wife had prepared did not cheer me."
 
 1G3 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV. 
 
 OLD AND NEW GENERATIONS. 
 
 IN these succeeding years there are few letters to quote 
 from. The marriage of Charles takes place, as we have 
 read, in 1683 ; and in the consequent divisions of pro- 
 perty, Madame de Grignan, as usual, grasps at the larger 
 share. Madame de Sevigne reluctantly enough seems to 
 have torn herself from her daughter to pay a motherly 
 visit to her daughter-in-law; but she seems afraid of 
 making the elder lady jealous, and apologises for her 
 journey and her visit to her son, and writes coldly of 
 her daughter-in-law, who, however, in the end won a 
 warm place in her heart. 
 
 The younger Madame de Sevigne' is described as a 
 delicate and nervous person, for whom the days were all 
 too long. She, however, suited her husband, whose 
 kindness and softness of heart specially fitted him for 
 taking care of others, most of all of those who depended 
 upon him. The young Marquise seems to have been 
 only anxious to make the mother of the husband she 
 loved feel at home in the old castle which had been 
 ruled by her so long and so ably. "It is not possible 
 to feel that there is any other mistress than myself in
 
 164 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 this house," Madame de Sevigne writes to her daughter 
 when describing the life at the Eochers. The Bienbon 
 is there too, quite well, and calculating all day long. 
 The days go by monotonously, though not unpleasantly. 
 
 " We are leading a quiet enough life here ; I do not think, 
 however, that more excitement would be any pleasanter for 
 me. My daughter-in-law is only cheerful at times she 
 changes her moods a hundred times a-day without finding 
 one to suit her. She is extremely delicate, she hardly takes 
 any exercise, she is always cold ; by nine o'clock in the 
 evening she is quite worn out. The day is too long for her, 
 and the necessity which she has for rest gives me my freedom, 
 so that I may leave her free : this is a great pleasure to me. 
 I cannot by any possibility feel that there is any other mis- 
 tress in this house than myself. Although I do not trouble 
 myself about anything, I find all my wants attended to as if 
 by invisible orders. I take my walks alone, but I dare not 
 go out in the twilight for fear of bursting out sobbing and 
 crying ; the dark would be bad for me in my present state. 
 Even if I had sufficient strength of mind to enjoy it, I would 
 sacrifice this mournful pleasure to the fear of vexing you. 
 At present my health forbids it ; then, again, it is you who 
 have told me to take care of myself, it is always you." 
 
 It was not until some years after Charles's marriage 
 that the good Abbe departed this life, in 1687, full of 
 age and honour. I have already quoted Madame de 
 Sevigne's grateful tribute to the uncle to whom she 
 owes the sweetness and the peace of her life. She 
 writes to Bussy : 
 
 " You too owe him any brightness I gave to your society; 
 without him we should never have laughed together. You 
 have to thank him for all my good-humour, my vivacity, 
 the gift I had of sympathising with you, the intelligence 
 which made me understand what you said, and guess at
 
 DEATH OF THE BIENBON. 165 
 
 that which you were going to say : in a word, the good Abbe, 
 in withdrawing me from the abysses in which M. de Sevigne 
 had left me, has rendered me that which I was, that which 
 you found me, worthy of your friendship and your esteem. 
 I have deeply felt the loss of this beneficent source of the 
 repose of my whole life. He died in seven days of a con- 
 tinued fever, as if he had been a young man with very 
 Christian sentiments, which touched me deeply. His life 
 lasted eighty years. He lived with honour ; he died as a 
 Christian. May God grant us the same grace ! It was 
 towards the end of August that I bitterly lamented his loss. 
 I never should have left him if he had lived as long as I 
 myself; but about the 15th or 16th of September, finding 
 myself only too free, I determined to go to Vichy at least to 
 cure my imagination." 
 
 Further on she describes giving up the pretty old Abbey 
 de Livry, to which all her life she had returned, and 
 always with new pleasure. 
 
 The good old Abbe went to his rest in 1687; in 1688 
 the whole of Europe was in arms against Louis XIV. 
 The Prince of Orange was uprousing the land against 
 the invader. The Protestants were crying out against 
 the cruelty with which they were assailed. The revoca- 
 tion of the Edict of Nantes brought indignation, which 
 had long been smouldering, to a crisis. Among other 
 places, Philipsbourg, which had been taken by the Ger- 
 mans, was now again attacked by the French. The 
 young Marquis de Grignan, Louis Provence, who was 
 then sixteen years of age, was sent there at the head 
 of a company, carefully chosen and equipped by his 
 mother. Madame de Sevigne may have judged of her 
 daughter's anxieties by her own. It is certain that 
 while the danger lasted she would not leave Paris, but 
 day by day despatched letters, with what comfort she
 
 166 MADAME DE SE"VIGNl 
 
 could collect, to the absent and terrified mother. Did 
 she sleep at the post, as Madame de Coulanges declared, 
 in order to get news the sooner ? Perhaps she contented 
 herself by remaining in Paris until the 1st of November, 
 when she writes a joyful letter of good news. " Philips- 
 bourg is taken; your son is safe." The little Marquis 
 was safe, with a slight wound in the thigh, which 
 only added to his newly gained distinctions. He now 
 appears constantly in the letters, and is seen in his own 
 person respectfully kissing his mother and his grand- 
 mother's hands. He is feted, caressed, and welcomed 
 by his friends and relations, and by Monsieur le Cheva- 
 lier his uncle, so long an inhabitant of the ground-floor 
 rooms in the Hotel de Carnavalet. The little Marquis's 
 presence must have brought much life and interest to 
 the household of people whose own lives were growing 
 sad and dreary. His grandmother and the suffering 
 Chevalier seem to have enjoyed his brilliant youth. 
 His grandmother throws herself with delightful gaiety 
 into his adventures, and amusements, and ecstasies. 
 Perennial Coulanges also seems to have been amusing 
 himself, and attending a great Court ceremony at Ver- 
 sailles an investiture of blue ribbons. The letter is 
 one often quoted : 
 
 "He told me that they began on the Friday: the first 
 took their oaths with Court dresses and with collars on. Two 
 marshals of France stayed over for Saturday. Marshal de 
 Bellefonds was perfectly ridiculous, partly from modesty 
 and partly from indifference. He had neglected to put 
 bows at the knees of his page's costume, so that it had an 
 air of veritable bareness. The whole troop were magni- 
 ficent, M. de la Trousse among the best ; but there was a 
 tangle in his wig which obliged him to push what ought to
 
 THE INVESTITURE OF BLUE RIBBONS. 167 
 
 have been at the side far away behind, so that his cheek was 
 all uncovered. He was always pulling at that which em- 
 barrassed him, and which would not come, and this caused 
 him no little vexation. But along the same line M. de 
 Montchevreuil and M. de Villars entangled themselves one 
 to the other so furiously the swords, the ribbons, the laces, 
 the tinsel hangings were all mixed, confused, jumbled ; all 
 the little crooked atoms so perfectly interlaced, that no 
 human hand could separate them ; the more people tried 
 the more they seemed to entangle them, like the rings in 
 Roger's coat of mail. At last the whole ceremony, all their 
 salutations, the whole performance coming to a standstill, 
 it was necessary to separate the two by main force, and the 
 stronger carried the day. But that which entirely discon- 
 certed the gravity of the ceremony was good M. d'Hocquin- 
 court's negligence, who is so accustomed to be dressed like 
 the Provenals, or even Bretons, that his page's breeches being 
 less commodious than those which he is accustomed to wear, 
 his shirt would not remain in place, however much he 
 wished it to do so. Knowing his condition, he tried con- 
 stantly to put order to it, but always in vain, so that 
 Madame la Dauphine could no longer contain her burst of 
 laughter. It was deplorable ; the majesty of the king itself 
 was nearly shaken, and never in the history of the Order was 
 such an adventure known." 
 
 There is another pretty account of the King of France 
 going with true courtesy to welcome the Queen of Eng- 
 land flying from her country, and a pleasant description 
 of the little girls at St Cyr acting " Esther " before the 
 Court. The king's remarks are chronicled. He came 
 up to Madame de Sevigne : l " Madame, I am certain 
 that you have been pleased," he said. She, without 
 
 1 " It is to be remarked that Madame de Sevigne does not forget her 
 prejudice against Racine, even in the king's dazzling company. In lit- 
 erature, as in politics and religion, she is always half a rebel." J. A.
 
 168 MADAME DE 
 
 surprise : " Sire, I am charmed ; tliat which I feel is 
 beyond words." The king replies, " Racine has great 
 cleverness." " Sire, he has much cleverness ; but so, in 
 truth, have these young ladies. They throw themselves 
 into a subject as if they had never done anything else." 
 To which the king replies, " Ah, yes, that is true ; " and 
 leaves Madame de Sevigne the object of universal envy. 
 " My small prosperities," says Madame de Sevigne, 
 speaking of these events. But all this magnificence, 
 and all the dignities bestowed, and the blue ribbons, 
 did not go far to fill the empty coffers of the needy 
 family of Grignan, whose difficulties had grown more 
 and more uneasy to surmount.
 
 169 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI. 
 
 NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY. 
 
 THE end of a life would be only sad to write and sad 
 to read of, if it were not for certain redeeming things 
 which in some degree perhaps make good the loss of the 
 brightest and best treasures of existence. Youth and 
 strength, hope, fervent aspiration, are the first flowers of 
 a healthy natural life ; then when these are over comes 
 fruition, and then follows the seed-time ; and old age, to 
 those who have lived in some sympathy with the people 
 and the things around them, should be the good and 
 pregnant seed-time width of understanding, tranquillity 
 of soul, charity and fearlessness, and the knowledge of 
 human weakness and its pathetic possibilities and im- 
 possibilities, all these are good seeds bearing priceless 
 fruit. The brilliant, laughing, beautiful young woman, 
 in her glittering coach with the six prancing horses, is 
 not a more delightful figure than the gentle, generous- 
 hearted mother, aged, impoverished, failing in health, 
 softened, still devoted, still absorbed in her children's 
 welfare, still planning, hoping, devising, living only for 
 their wellbeing, and with what strength remained still 
 shielding them to her utmost, as we have all seen young
 
 170 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'. 
 
 leaves in the spring-time and early summer covered and 
 protected from the cold by the last year's leaves as they 
 wither on their stalks. 
 
 " You are old," wrote Madame de la Fayette in a 
 letter full of heart and tender affection, urging Madame 
 de SeVigne" to consent to a certain plan which had been 
 devised by two or three of her faithful old friends for 
 subscribing together to bring her back to Paris to be 
 among them all. But she would not hear of their 
 scheme she was with her son, she was happy, she 
 could not be indebted to any of them. Madame de la 
 Fayette's appeal fell strangely on her ears. " You were 
 struck, as I was, by Madame de la Fayette's sentence. 
 I own I was surprised, for as yet I feel no failure to 
 remind me of this truth, which I should not forget." 
 Speaking of her friends' alarm at her country winter, 
 she describes the woods all penetrated with sunshine 
 when there is any ; the dry soil, the " Place Madame " 
 facing the south, the end of a great avenue where the 
 west works wonders. " When it rains," she says, " there 
 is a comfortable room with a big fire. There is some 
 company here, which, however, does not disturb me. 
 I go my own way. When we are alone, everything is 
 better still" This was written in 1689, when she was 
 about sixty-three. No one has written of old age more 
 touchingly and with greater wisdom : 
 
 " In reality it is not at all what one expects. Providence 
 leads us with so much goodness through the different stages 
 of our life, that we hardly are conscious as they pass by. 
 This loss is effected with such gentleness that it is impercep- 
 tible : it is the hand on the dial which we do not see moving. 
 If at twenty they were to give us the position in the family,
 
 OLD AGE. 171 
 
 and to show us in a looking-glass the countenance which 
 we have or should have at sixty, comparing it with that of 
 twenty we should be quite overcome and horrified at that 
 face ; but it is day by day that we grow older : to-day we 
 are as we were yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day ; and thus 
 we go on without feeling it, and this is one of the miracles 
 of that Providence that I adore." 
 
 Elsewhere she says : 
 
 " How foolish it is not to enjoy with gratitude the conso- 
 lations which God sends us, after the afflictions which He 
 sometimes causes us to feel ! There is, it seems to me, great 
 wisdom in enduring storms with resignation, and in enjoying 
 the calm when it pleases Him to restore it to us, for this is 
 to follow the ordinances of Providence. Life is too short to 
 halt too long in one frame of mind ; one must take the days 
 as they come, and I feel that I am of this happy tempera- 
 ment." 
 
 And she expresses her whole life in these few words. 
 
 There is something pleasant and useful in reading of 
 the rest and tranquillity for others even two hundred 
 years ago. I think this is the secret of the extreme 
 popularity of certain books describing very simple mon- 
 otonies, which go through as many editions as the most 
 startling of sensational novels. Madame de Sevigne's 
 life at this tune was of this tranquil nature, and she 
 seems to have stayed on nearly two years with her son 
 and her daughter-in-law. Her life with them was a 
 strange contrast to the life she spent with her daughter. 
 She was economising as well as enjoying her children's 
 society. Her house in Paris was shut up, her living 
 cost little. Charles owed her moneys which he was glad 
 to return in kind, as he owed her a duty and affection 
 which he never failed to pay to the uttermost. He was
 
 172 MADAME DE SEVIGNE". 
 
 perhaps a better son than this mother deserved, who 
 divided her love in two such unequal shares. " We lead 
 a somewhat dull life," she writes. " I do not, however, 
 imagine that more racket would be agreeable." And 
 then, when Madame de Grignan exclaimed, and de- 
 lighted her mother's heart by complaining, that she was 
 not with her 
 
 " You ask me, my best one, why I am not with you ? 
 Alas ! how easy it would be to tell you why, if I chose to 
 tarnish my letters with the reasons which oblige me to this 
 separation ! The misery of our country, all that is owed to 
 me, the little wliich is paid that which I owe to others, 
 and the way in which I should have been overwhelmed and 
 choked by my affairs if I had not, with infinite annoyance, 
 taken this resolution. I cannot hazard hazardous conduct. 
 That which I possess is no longer mine." 
 
 And she goes on to say that the time has come for her 
 to render up her account to her children. 
 
 So she lingers on in the old house where she had 
 come as a bride half a century before, where her children 
 had grown up and grown to her heart, where for her 
 all she had ever loved and hoped for, as she looked 
 around, must have crowded into the silent rooms, along 
 the pretty green walks of the old parks. She looks 
 around for the last time, and then starts off, crossing by 
 country roads and byways to the south, leaving the stem 
 but reviving country where so much of her life had been 
 passed, descending by degrees into the warmth and glow 
 and overflowing abundance of a southern life, and is 
 not her daughter at the journey's end?
 
 173 
 
 CHAPTER XXY1I. 
 
 THE LAST. 
 
 " WHEN you see the date of this letter, my dear cousin," 
 Madame de Sevigne writes to Bussy, " you will take me for 
 a bird. I have passed courageously from Brittany to 
 Provence. If my daughter had been at Paris I should 
 have gone there ; but knowing that she was spending the 
 winter in this beautiful country, I resolved to spend it with 
 her, and to come and enjoy her glowing sunshine." 
 
 Then she describes the sunshine, her arrival, the 
 beautiful house, her welcome. This is a charming letter, 
 which space prevents our giving in its completeness. 
 .She speaks of the death of Colbert's son. " It seems 
 to me that splendour is dead," she says. Then she 
 winds up with gentlest words of old affection. " Love 
 me always," she says ; " it is not worth while to change 
 after all these years." Old as she is, according to 
 Madame de la Fayette, she is writing her best. Some 
 of her most striking and original passages occur in 
 these latest letters. She was often ill during these last 
 few years. Her rheumatism troubled her greatly, and 
 she suffered in other ways. Years may have taken from 
 her strength of body, but her mind did not fail, nor her
 
 174 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE". 
 
 vividness and "brilliance of intellect. Her letter on the 
 death of Louvois is very striking and eloquent. She 
 was near seventy when it was written. 
 
 " I am so entirely bewildered by the news of the sudden 
 death of M. de Louvois, that I know not how to begin to 
 speak of it to you. So he is dead, this great Minister, this 
 eminent man, who held so great a place, whose self, as M. 
 Nicole says, was so widely spread, he who was the centre 
 of so many things. What businesses, what designs, what 
 profits, what secrets, what interests to disentangle, what wars 
 to carry on, what intrigues, what a grand game of chess 
 to play and to conduct ! Ah, my God ! give me a little 
 time : I should like to give checkmate to the Due of Savoy, 
 checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no ; you cannot 
 have one instant, not one single instant. Is it possible to 
 reason upon this strange event ? No, in truth ; it is only to 
 be thought over alone in one's closet. This is the second 
 Minister we have seen die since you have been at Rome. 
 Nothing can be more different than their deaths, nor more 
 equal than their fortunes." 
 
 So she writes of the Minister " formed by Louis " not 
 many years before her own last year. 
 
 Here is a piece in still life that her contemporary, 
 Eachel Ruysch, or Van Huysum himself, might have 
 envied : 
 
 " Our partridges are all fed on thyme, on sweet marjoram, 
 and upon all the perfumes of our sachets : there is nothing 
 to choose between them. I may say as much for our fat 
 quails, whose thighs must part from their bodies at the first 
 summons (they never fail to do it) ; and the turtle-doves are 
 all quite perfect too. As for the melons, the figs, and the 
 muscat grapes, they are marvels. If by some strange whim 
 we were to try and find a bad melon, we should be obliged 
 to send to Paris for it : there are none to be found here.
 
 IN THE SOUTH. 175 
 
 The figs are white and sweet ; the muscats are like drops of 
 amber, only delectable ; and they would soon go to your 
 head if you ate without measure, because it is as if you were 
 drinking little sips of the most exquisite wine at Saint 
 Laurent. My dear cousin, what a life ! You know it 
 under less sunny aspects. It does not in any way recall 
 that of La Trappe. See what details I have gone into. It 
 is chance which guides our pens ! " 
 
 She seems to have "been happy and at peace in this 
 broad southern sunshine, as ever, absorbed in her 
 daughter's interests. The children were children no 
 longer. Pauline was of marriageable age. The young 
 Marquis was looking out for a wife, divided between 
 stones and bread, it is said, between money to retrieve 
 their ancient state, and empty honours to add to their 
 dignities. Madame de Sevigne's own health was still 
 good, but she felt, as M. Mesnard justly says, that the time 
 was come for her to give up her own life and share her 
 children's. Time was too short now for separations to 
 be possible. All her interest had centred in one person. 
 One last tender mother's office she rendered to the child 
 she had borne in her youth. Madame de Grignan fell 
 ill, and for months lay in a most critical condition, 
 nursed by her mother and daughter. It was about this 
 time that Pauline was engaged. Her wit and grace 
 stood her in place of the dot to which she had so nearly 
 been sacrificed. The Marquis de Simiane, the son of a 
 neighbour, was the approved suitor. 
 
 Another less sentimental but extremely useful mar- 
 riage was that of the young Marquis de Grignan with 
 the daughter of a rich M. de St Amand. They hesitated 
 between stones and bread, as I have said. The sensible
 
 176 MADAME DE 
 
 Couianges strongly urged the money marriage. Madame 
 de Grignan is described by Saint Simon as winking and 
 blinking, and shrugging her shoulders, and saying confi- 
 dentially to her friends that it was necessary from time 
 to time to manure one's fields ! 
 
 M. de St Amand was naturally very indignant with 
 the haughty lady, and seems also to have had just reason 
 to complain of her conduct respecting money. It is very 
 difficult to be honest when the wherewithal does not 
 exist. Becky Sharp's ,3000 a-year would have gone a 
 very short way with Madame de Grignan. 
 
 Of these marriages the grandmother writes to the 
 President de Moulceau : 
 
 " You have perhaps heard of the marriage of the Marquis 
 de Grignan with Mdlle. de Saint Amand. You have seen her 
 often enough at Montpellier to know her person. You may 
 also have heard of her father. You may perhaps not be un- 
 aware that this marriage was solemnised with great prepara- 
 tions in the castle you are acquainted with." 
 
 To her son she goes into further details : 
 
 " As for the complaints of Monsieur de Saint Amand, of 
 which he has made so much noise at Paris, they are founded 
 on the fact that my daughter having actually proved, by ac- 
 counts which she has showed to us all, that she had actually 
 paid nine thousand francs to her son out of the ten thousand 
 she had promised him, and consequently having only sent 
 him the remaining thousand, M. de Saint Amand declared 
 that he was being cheated, that everything was being put upon 
 him, and that he would give nothing more. All this passed 
 off. M. de Saint Amand reflected that it would be unpleasant 
 to quarrel with his daughter. He came here meek as any 
 lamb, only wishing to please and to take back his daughter 
 to Paris. The advantage of being there with her husband,
 
 GRANDCHILDREN'S MARRIAGES. 177 
 
 comfortably lodged in that fine house of Monsieur de Saint 
 Amand's, well furnished, well fed, at no expense, induced 
 unhesitating consent to her enjoyment of all these advan- 
 tages. We did not see her go without tears, for she is very 
 amiable. She, too, melted when she took leave of us, so 
 that it did not seem as though she were in truth leaving us 
 to commence a life full of agreeableness in the midst of 
 abundance. . . . Believe me, my son, no Grignan had 
 any intention of deceiving you. You are loved by all ; and 
 if this trifle had been a worthy thing, we should have been 
 sure that you would have sympathised as you always do." 
 
 There are compliments and motherly recommenda- 
 tions to the young Marquise de SeVigne in this letter. 
 She is ill, she must take care and be wrapped in cotton. 
 She promises to send for some books which he has re- 
 commended. There is a significant allusion to two 
 papers by M. de la Trappe. Charles had a great leaning 
 towards an ascetic and contemplative life. He and his 
 wife eventually joined a religious community in Paris, 
 where he died not a very old man. 
 
 Of Pauline's marriage she writes to the President de 
 Moulceau : 
 
 " I take to myself the compliments which are my due, sir, 
 on the marriage of Madame de Simiane. I only deserve the 
 praise of having extremely approved that which my daughter 
 had long since planned in her own mind. Nothing could be 
 better. Everything is noble, convenient, and advantageous 
 for a daughter of the house of Grignan, who has found in 
 her husband and his family those who prize her merit, her 
 person, and her name, and who care nothing for her fortune. 
 And we have profited with pleasure of so rare and so gen- 
 erous a sentiment." 
 
 When Pauline was married in the chapel of the 
 Chateau de Grignan, her mother was too weak to be 
 F.C. XIIL ii
 
 178 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE*. 
 
 present at the ceremony. She had been suffering from a 
 long and trying illness which, so it is said, killed, not 
 Madame de Grignan, who recovered, but her tender and 
 devoted mother. 
 
 " For three months," Madame de Sevigne writes, " my 
 daughter has been overwhelmed with a sort of malady 
 which is, they say, not dangerous, but which I find the sad- 
 dest and most alarming of all those which can be endured. 
 I confess to you, my dear cousin, that it kills me outright, 
 and I am scarcely able to support the terrible nights this 
 causes me to pass. . . . You must love your friends with 
 all their failings, and it is a great one to be ill. God pre- 
 serve you from it." 
 
 Madame de Se"vigne's strength kept up while her 
 daughter's illness still threatened danger : then when this 
 was over for Madame de Grignan, the mother's strength 
 must have failed her. One of the curses of those days 
 was the smallpox, strangely fatal to the Sevigne family. 
 Madame de Sevigne, exhausted by anxiety, caught the 
 infection, without strength to resist its ravages. From 
 the first she knew that her case was hopeless. May we 
 not believe that this tender woman, true to her early 
 and generous impulses, forbade those about her to let 
 her daughter suspect her danger 1 Madame de Grignan 
 still lay slowly and with difficulty recovering to life, 
 while the aged and devoted parent was dying. Not- 
 withstanding the terror which the illness inspired, the 
 Marquise was devotedly nursed, so we are told, by two 
 of her daughter's attendants, one of them being the 
 faithful Mdlle. de Montgobert, of whom mention is often 
 made in the letters. Madame de Sevigne died on the 
 10th of April 1696. Most of her generation had gone
 
 THE LAST LETTER. 179 
 
 before Her, Bussy, the fierce cousin ; Madame de la 
 Fayette, the gentle and faithful ; D'Haqueville, the 
 untiring friend, and now her OAVII hour had come. " A 
 brave woman facing death, which she foresaw from the 
 first day of her illness, with firmness and surprising 
 resignation. This person, so tender, so feeble where 
 those she loved were concerned, only found courage and 
 religion Avhen she felt that she had but herself to think 
 of." So writes her son-in-law 1 to little, laughter-loving 
 Coulanges, who was almost the only one of her early com- 
 panions left to mourn her loss. But a few days before 
 she had been writing to him herself, writing wearily 
 and sadly enough, as if with a presentiment of sorrow- 
 ful separation. The letter the last of all her letters 
 is dated March 29, 1696. A few days more and the 
 writer is at rest for ever. 
 
 1 The letter is so cordially expressed, and so truly felt, that it is 
 worth giving here : 
 
 " You, sir, will understand, perhaps better than any other person, 
 the greatness of the loss we have experienced, and my most just regret. 
 You well knew the high merit of Madame de Sevigne. It is not only 
 a mother-in-law I mourn such a title does not always impose upon 
 one ; it is an amiable and faithful friend, a delicious companion. But 
 she is still more worthy of our admiration than of our regret, as a 
 brave woman facing death, which she foresaw from the first days of 
 her illness, with firmness and surprising resignation. This person, 
 so tender, so feeble, where those she loved were concerned, only found 
 courage and religion when she felt that she had but herself to think 
 of. We could not help observing how useful and of what importance 
 it is to fill GUI- minds with good things and holy readings, for which 
 Madame de Sevign6 had a taste, not to say an avidity that was truly 
 surprising, when we realised the good use she knew how to make of 
 these wise provisions in the last moments of her life. I tell you all 
 these details, sir, because I am certain of your sentiments and of 
 the affection you felt for her whom we mourn ; and I own to you 
 that my mind is so full of them, that it is a relief to me to find a 
 man so well able as you are to listen to me."
 
 180 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE". 
 
 " All other things ending, I weep and loudly bewail the 
 death of Blanchefort, that amiable fellow whom we held up 
 as an example to all our young men. His reputation was 
 made, his valour well known and worthy of his name, his 
 humour admirable for others and for himself (for ill humours 
 torment), "but his was good to his friends, good to his family, 
 good to his mother, good to his grandmother ; he loved and 
 he honoured them, he knew their worth and took pleasure 
 in making them feel his gratitude, thus repaying the excess 
 of affection. He had good sense with his good looks, nor 
 was his head turned by his youth, as is the case with so 
 many of our young fellows, who seem to be possessed. . . . 
 And this amiable boy disappears in one moment, as a flower 
 blown away by the wind, without war, without reason. . . . 
 My dear cousin, how am I to find words either to tell you 
 what we here feel concerning the anguish of those two 
 mothers, or to tell them how much they are in our thoughts ? 
 We do not dream of writing to them ; but if at any oppor- 
 tunity you find the moment to name us, my daughter and 
 myself, and the MM. de Grignan, this is our feeling con- 
 cerning this irreparable loss. Madame de Vins has lost 
 everything, I own ; but when the heart has chosen between 
 two sons, it sees one only : I can speak of nothing else. I 
 bow to the holy and modest sepulchre of Madame de Guise. 
 And Madame de Miramion, that mother of the Church, hers 
 will he a public loss. Farewell, my dear cousin, I cannot 
 change my tone. You have had your jubilee ; your charm- 
 ing St Martin journey followed quickly upon the ashes and 
 cinders of which you spoke to me, and the delights which 
 Monsieur and Madame de Marsan now enjoy deserve that 
 you should witness them and put them away in your wallet ; 
 and as for me, I deserve that I should he put into that one 
 where you place those who love you ; but I fear that for 
 these you have no wallet." 
 
 And so she ends her long life's flow of written 
 thoughts. The last few letters seem tired, the sentences
 
 CONCLUSION. 181 
 
 labour more heavily, the hands have held the pen so 
 many years that it is time for them to lay it down ; 
 the sparkling stream runs slowly, it no longer dances, 
 bubbles, ripples, flashes back the thousand lights and 
 twinkling points along the shore. Has it already met 
 the salt waters of the sea ? is it losing itself in the great 
 waters ? 
 
 END OF MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM ELACKWOOD AND SONS.
 
 Pq 
 
 A? 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482
 
 A 000 793 627 1