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THE QUEEN OF
LETTER WRITERS

MARQUISE DE SEVIGNE
DAME DE BOURBILLY
1626-1696

BY

JANET ALDIS

AUTHOR OF
‘““MADAME GEOFFRIN, HER SALON AND HER TIMES”

‘Quelle femme aimable! quel adorable écrivain!
Nulle, parmi les femmes frangaises, n’a possédé
a ce degré l'imagination et l’esprit”

SAINTE-BEUVE

New Yorx: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Lonpon: METHUEN & CO.

1907
fu
PREFACE

ADAME DE SEVIGNE, said Sainte-Beuve, wrote
her Letters “during twenty-seven years of the most
delightful period of the most agreeable French society”;
and no other writer gives so complete a picture of that vivid
and fascinating epoch as the famous Marquise. It was the
Augustan Age of France, when modern manners and modern
culture passed swiftly from their bright dawn to a brilliant
noontide. In literature, there were Corneille, Moli¢re, Racine,
La Fontaine, Madame de Sévigné, and La Rochefoucauld ;
the rivals Mignard and Le Brun were painting their wonder-
ful portraits; Pascal was stirring society with his anonymous
Lettres provinciales; Bourdaloue and Bossuet were pouring
forth to crowded congregations their eloquent thunders of
denunciation, and the funeral orations which have since become
classics; Saint Francis de Sales was founding convents and
monasteries, and preaching and living the holy life; while
the humble Saint Vincent de Paul was steadfastly devoting
his energies and talents to the service of the unregarded poor,
and by the example of his simple and sincere enthusiasm,
making it fashionable for high-born ladies to minister with
their own delicate hands to the sufferers in prison and in the
Hétel Dieu.

We can only realise the charm of that wonderful century
by comparing it with the arid century that followed; by con-
trasting its spontaneous and fertile flow of genius, its natural
romance and colour, its genuine religious ardour, with the
stultified and absurd self-consciousness of straining mediocrity,
the formal picturesqueness and paraded infidelity which were
so conspicuous in the more sophisticated eighteenth century.
The people of Madame de Sévigne’s day lived and breathed

& v
vi THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

romance. Duelling and abductions, deeds of high daring, and
pious self-renunciation were in the air. The city was gay with
frequent religious processions, when, mingling with priests and
people, friars in their brown, white, and grey habits marched
through the streets barefoot or in sandals, and devout citizens
draped windows and balconies with their choicest carpets and
tapestries, and lent their most valuable pictures and treasured
articles de virtu to decorate altars in the public squares where
the Host rested when the priest was wearied with its weight.
On Midsummer Day, Saint John’s fire flared up from the
Gréve, and those whose name was John lighted his fire on
their doorsteps with superstitious precaution, for fear of mis-
adventure. Brutal and frequent executions took place, not
only on the Gréve, but in the public streets; and by night,
in those same dark and narrow streets, bands of mysterious
figures in mask and domino swept silently by, or played
tricks on gay cavaliers with clanking swords, or on the
humbler citizen going home from tavern or wineshop. The
Seine was then the principal highway of traffic for the city,
and ponderous barges, laden with oil and wood and wine, glided
slowly into the capital; the Champs Elysées were veritable
and delightful fields, a fashionable rendezvous where the gay
promenaders along the Cours-la-Reine might walk or meet
their friends; and the Bois de Boulogne was a dense wood
outside Paris, through which people usually travelled in com-
panies as a protection against the brigands who made their
haunts in its deep recesses.

And in the Letters of Madame de Sévigné we get brilliant
and detailed descriptions of all this life and glow and colour;
truthful and impressionist pictures of the moment, which, written
to amuse her idolised daughter in Provence, have delighted
countless thousands in the centuries that have followed. The
Marquise did not dream that she was writing for posterity.
Though some of her letters were handed about among friends,
and admired during her lifetime, it is evident that she and her
daughter made a compact before they parted that their letters
to each other should be private. When, occasionally, she
showed a part of her daughter’s letters to Madame de la
Fayette, she assured the Comtesse de Grignan that she was
PREFACE vii

not indiscreet, that she knew exactly how much to show, and
to what friends to show it; and once, when she had greatly
enjoyed one of her daughter’s letters, she exclaimed: “Bon
Dieu! my dear child, how charming your letters are! There
are passages in them that deserve to be printed; one of these
days you will find that a treacherous friend will betray
you ”—with no thought that her own letters would eventually
be given to the world by her granddaughter Pauline, the
Comtesse de Simiane.

But no author, writing for a large and appreciative public,
could have given more care to his work than did Madame de
Sévigné, writing only for the eyes of her daughter, for whose
amusement and pleasure she was never tired of giving her best.
There was nearly the length of France between Madame de
Sévigné and the Comtesse de Grignan, but in spirit the
Marquise was always with her daughter, and whatever happened
in Paris or Brittany, Livry or Vichy, or wherever she chanced
to be, she always sent an account of it to Provence. She
wrote almost daily those vivid and life-like chronicles of the
gossip of the Court, the news of the town, interesting details
concerning intimate friends, her own thoughts, aspirations,
religious sentiments, and philosophy of life, and all in such
graceful, easy, piquant and varied phrases, that there is
amazingly little repetition throughout the two thousand letters.
These letters were the chief occupation of her days. It is
noticeable that when she was with her daughter, she wrote
to her other friends much more frequently; but when she was
separated from Madame de Grignan her first care was always
to write to Provence, and if, as occasionally happened, there
was not enough of interest to fill her letter, she would lay down
her pen and “run round the town” to see if she could gather
any news to send her.

“T give you,” she once told her daughter, “the top of the
basket ; that is to say, the flower of my head, of my eyes, and
of my mind.”

It has not been attempted in the present volume to give
a resume of her complete correspondence. It has been written
mainly with the idea of giving the personal history of the
Marquise in its relation to her times, and of showing how
viii THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

intimately she was connected with the great events of her
day, and how closely she came into contact with the great
personages who were, consciously or unconsciously, occupied
in making history: her uncle the Cardinal de Retz, the
Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Foucquet, Maréchal Turenne, and
many others. The letters have, however, been freely used
in this endeavour to picture the private life of a grande dame
in Parisian society and at Versailles, at the Baths and at her
country-house, or travelling in France two centuries and more
ago.

a By a fortunate chance, the chief houses in which Madame
de Sévigné lived have been spared by Time and the Revolu-
tion. The house where she was born in the Place des Vosges
still stands, marked by a tablet in her honour; only a few
paces away, in the Rue de Sévignéd, is the fine Hétel de
Carnavalet, which she occupied for the last twenty years of
her life; her beautiful country-house Les Rochers, in Brittany,
is almost untouched by time, amid the park and gardens which
she planted, and loved with such a genuine passion; and at
Gargan-Livry, a few miles from Paris, may still be found the
grey old Abbaye where she spent her tranquil girlhood with
the good Abbé de Livry.

Among the many authorities which I have used, I am
especially indebted to Monmerqué’s valuable edition of the
Lettres, with Mesnard’s Notice biographique, in the Collection
des grands écrivains de la France; Walckenaer’s Mémoires
touchant la vie et les crits de la Marquise de Sévigné; Mémoires
of the Comte de Bussy, Madame de Motteville, Cardinal de Retz,
and La Grande Mademoiselle; Journal du Voyage de deux
Jeunes hollandais 4 Paris en 1656-1658, publié par A. P. Faugére;
and Dr. Martin Lister’s account of his visit to Paris in 1698.

For the place of Madame de Sévigné’s birth, and the date
of her daughter’s birth, I have followed Mesnard, who has given
a copy of the acte de baptéme in each case.

J. A.

CAMBRIDGE, July 9, 1907
CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

The duel on Easter Sunday morning at the Porte Saint-Antoine—The scandal
in Paris, and its consequences—The birth of Madame de Sévigné—Her
celebrated grandmother Sainte-Chantal, the disciple of Saint Francis de
Sales—A twofold inheritance ; F 7 : : ‘

CHAPTER II

A family council—The Abbé de Livry chosen as guardian of Marie de Rabutin-
Chantal—Her life at the Abbaye—Walpole’s ‘‘ Notre Dame de ay 7
An amorous tutor—A shabby man of letters 3 .

CHAPTER III

Her ‘‘ portrait” by the Marquise de la Fayette—The young Burgundian heiress
is betrothed to Henri, Marquis de Sévigné—The bridegroom fights a
duel and is dangerously wounded—An old chateau in Brittany—The
furniture of Madame de Sévigné’s room—The birth of Francoise
Marguerite de Sévigné z 3 : . ‘ :

CHAPTER IV

The Hétel de Rambouillet, the pioneer of Parisian salons—The Marquise
de Rambouillet—A lady’s bed-chamber in the seventeenth century—Julie
d’Angennes—ZLa Guzrlande de Julie—A polished society of précceux et
précieuses—The Duchesse de Longueville—Mademoiselle de Scudéry ,

CHAPTER V

The dissipated young Marquis de Sévigné openly neglects his wife—The birth
of Charles de Sévigné—Madame de Sévigné has many admirers—The
Comte de Lude, Segrais, the Abbé de Montreuil, the Comte de Bussy-
Rabutin—A daring abduction . . . : . .

ix

PAGE

13

24

35

49
x THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

CHAPTER VI

A visit to the Bishop of Chalon—The Marquis and his wife return to Paris—
The beginnings of the Fronde—The flight of the Court to Saint-Germain—
Paris besieged by the Queen—‘‘ Mazarins” and ‘‘Frondeurs ”—The
Duchesse de Longueville at the Hétel de Ville - . =

CHAPTER VII

The ‘Princes’ Fronde”—The Sévignés give a supper-party to the Duchesse
de Chevreuse—The afpartement of the crippled poet Scarron—The
Marquis de Sévigné and Ninon de !’Enclos—An intercepted letter—The
Marquis conducts his wife to the solitude of Les Rochers—The diamond
earrings—The Marquis de Sévigné is killed in a duel 7

CHAPTER VIII

Madame de Sévigné’s widowhood at Les Rochers—She returns to Paris and
gradually re-enters Parisian society—Rival suitors—The quarrel between
the Duc de Rohan and the Marquis de Tonquedec in her rzelle—A
haughty Duchess—The battle of Saint-Antoine . :

CHAPTER IX

The Comte de Bussy pays court to the Marquise—He gives a féte in her
honour in the Temple Gardens—Madame de Sévigné at the height of her
charm and popularity—A period of temptation—Dangerous gallants—The
Prince de Conti; Nicolas Foucquet ‘i

'

CHAPTER X

The escape of Cardinal de Retz—His relative, Madame de Sévigné, acts as
intermediary—A letter to her old tutor Ménage—The Comte de Bussy

leaves Paris to go to camp—A lively correspondence between the two
cousins ‘ a ‘< .

CHAPTER XI

The Queen of Sweden visits Paris—Her impression of Madame de Sévigné—
An infant prodigy—La Fontaine’s verses on the Marquise—A ball in her
honour—Wax-candles carried off by the maskers

CHAPTER XII

The Comte de Bussy in difficulties—He desires to borrow money of the
Marquise—A misunderstanding —Madame de Montglas pledges her

diamonds—Bussy’s mean revenge on his cousin—Moliére gives Les
Précieuses Ridicules .

* * .

PAGE

61

71

83

93

105

114

124
CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIII

The last féte at Vaux—A startling arrest—Letters from Madame de Sévigné
found among the private papers of Foucquet—A Parisian scandal—The
Comte de Bussy defends his cousin’s good name

CHAPTER XIV

Foucquet’s trial—Madame de Sévigné writes u daily account of it to the
Marquis de Pomponne—The Chancellor Séguier—A period of suspense—
Foucquet is sent to Pignerol under the escort of d’Artagnan and his
famous Musketeers . . .

CHAPTER XV

Madame de Sévigné introduces her daughter at Court—‘‘ A beauty who will
set the world on fire” —Mademoiselle de Sévigné dances with the King—
Verses in her honour : : :

CHAPTER XVI

A reconciliation between the Marquise and her cousin Bussy—Letters of
explanation—The Marquise writes a clear summing-up of his offences—
The Comte finally sues for mercy, and is pardoned by his cousin

CHAPTER XVII

Suitors for the hand of Mademoiselle de Sévigné—A vain young beauty—
The Duc de Caderousse—The Marquis de Mérinville—‘‘ The prettiest
girl in France” unmarried at twenty-three—She is betrothed to a widower
with two young daughters .

CHAPTER XVIII

Mademoiselle de Sévigné is married to the Comte de Grignan—An ancient
and honourable family—An imprudent mother—Charles de Sévigné—His
campaign in Candia against the Turks a : : a

CHAPTER XIX

The Comte de Grignan is appointed Deputy-Governor of Provence—Madame
de Sévigné’s grief and disappointment—Model letters from a mother-in-law
—The Comtesse de Grignan remains « year in Paris with her mother—
The Bishop of Marseilles

CHAPTER XX

A celebrated letter—La Grande Mademoiselle and M. de Lauzun—A royal
love-story—Madame de Sévigné visits the Tuilleries, and is the confidante
of La Grand Mademoiselle—A Princess in tears

PAGE

131

140

151

161

169

178

185

193
xii THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

CHAPTER XXI
PAGE

A bitter parting—The perilous journey to Provence—A tender mother—‘‘ A
pretty pagan”—Spring at Livry . . . 7 . » 202

CHAPTER XXII

Baron de Sévigné—His dissipated life in Paris—‘‘He wears the chains of
Ninon”—An actress’ love-letters—‘* A fool in heart but not in head”
—Description of a féte at Chantilly—The death of Vatel . . » 211

CHAPTER XXIII

The Marquise and her household go to Brittany for the delle saison—Her
cavalcade of carriages, pack-horses, and postilions—The tenantry assemble
on the wrong day to welcome the young heir—Dancing Bohemians—
Sévigné leaves for the camp in Lorraine . . F : + 22

CHAPTER XXIV

The States of Brittany—A seventeenth-century town—The Duchesse de
Chaulnes visits the Marquise at Les Rochers—A humorous criminal—
A grand banquet at the Castle of Vitré—A doorway heightened to admit
pyramids of fruit—Guests at Les Rochers—A collation in the garden + 229

CHAPTER XXV

The ‘‘Féte de Marie” at Vitré—A drinking province—The Marquise takes
refuge at Les Rochers—An exhausted hostess—Madame de Sévigné is
escorted back to Vitré by the Governor’s guards. - ‘ - 239

CHAPTER XXVI

Wolves in the woods at Les Rochers—The birth of a grandson—The Marquise
and her household return to Paris—A warm welcome given to the mére-
beauté—A charming society—A brilliant group of writers . . - 247

CHAPTER XXVII

The Marquise visits her daughter in Provence—Madam de Sévigné at
Marseilles—Her return to Paris—A midnight walk with Madame Scarron
—The death of Turenne . s 5 5 . » 256

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Marquise has an attack of rheumatic fever—She is tenderly nursed by her
son and the Bien-Bon—Rival beauties at the Carmelites—The Marquise
CONTENTS

goes to Vichy for the waters—A coquette at the Baths two hundred years
ago—Appalling remedies ee, by rea eal ee of a
countess. .

CHAPTER XXIX

The Marquise at Versailles—Madame de Montespan at cards with the King—
The Hétel de Carnavalet-—The reckless extravagance of the ooo.
A clever stepmother—A sarcastic letter : ‘ ;

CHAPTER XXX

The Marquise visits Les Rochers with the Bien-Bon—The rough roads of
Brittany—Madame de Grignan comes to Paris for a long stay—Company
at the Hétel de Carnavalet-—The marriage of Charles de ee
death of the Bien-Bon in 1687 . - 2

CHAPTER XXXI

The young Marquis de Grignan at Philipsburg—Madame de Sévigné at the
performance of Esther by the young ladies of Saint-Cyr—Her last visit to
Les Rochers—The marriage of the Marquis de Grignan—The marriage of
Pauline—The death of Madame de Sévigné % ‘

INDEX

xiii

PAGE

268

279

289

298

309
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE MARQUISE DE S£vIGNE . . “ : . Frontispiece

By permission of Messrs. Hachette, Paris

FACING PAGE

PLACE DES Vosczs (Place Royale), PaRis . , : : .
From a Photograph by Mons. Sauvanaud, Paris

THE ABBAYE DE Livery 3 : ‘ : ‘ ‘ 3

HENRI, MARQUIS DE Sévicnt ; r - ‘ ; i

By permission of Messrs. Hachette, Paris

CHRISTOPHE DE COULANGES, ABBE DE LIVRY ‘i ‘ ‘ ‘
By permission of Messrs. Hachette, Paris

THE COMTE DE Bussy j :
From an Engraving after the Original Portrait at Veesailiee

NicoLas FoucqueT . ‘ a
From an Engraving after the Sisal Boreal at Versailles

CHARLES DE SfévIGné - ‘ : 5 i F ,
By permission of Messrs. Hachette, Paris

THE CoMTESSE DE GRIGNAN (Francoise de Sévigné) ‘i ‘ :
By permission of Messrs. Hachette, Paris

HENRIETTE, DUCHESSE D’ORLEANS . . . - : ‘
From a Miniature by Petitot in the South Kensington Museum

THE DUCHESSE DE MONTPENSIER (‘‘La Grande Mademoiselle”) . F
From a Miniature by Petitot in the South Kensington Museum

THE COMTESSE DE GRIGNAN . . : :
From the Portrait by Mignard in the Musée ‘Garavaler, Paris
From a Photograph by Mons. Moutet, Paris

Les RocHERS, MADAME bE S£vicn#’s HoME IN BRITTANY - 2

Mar&cHAL TURENNE 7 3 . 3 5 $
From an Engraving by Nunteuil, after Champaigne in the Bibliothéque

Nationale, Paris
XV

6

18

30

84

100

118

152

194

194

206

222

260
xvi THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

FACING PAGE

THE MARQUISE DE MAINTENON 5 é 5 , i «272
From a Miniature in the South Kensington Museum

THE MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN ‘ : i F + 272
From a Miniature by Petitot in the South Kensington Museum

Tue H6TEL DE CARNAVALET, COUR D’ENTREE . ‘ - 282
From a Photograph by Mons, Moutet, Paris

THE MARQUISE DE SE&VIGNE 3 5 : . : - 204

From a Portrait at Versailles
From a Photograph by Messrs. Neurdein, Paris
THE QUEEN OF LETTER
WRITERS

CHAPTER I

The duel on Easter Sunday morning at the Porte Saint-Antoine—The scandal
in Paris, and its consequences—The birth of Madame de Sévigné—Her celebrated
grandmother Sainte-Chantal, the disciple of Saint Francis de Sales—A twofold
inheritance

T was the morning of Easter Day of the year 1624, and the
devout and faithful of the parish church of Saint Paul in
the Marais, the most fashionable quarter of Paris, had gathered
together to “make their Easter.” The priests in gorgeous
vestments, with little white-robed acolytes in attendance, were
celebrating High Mass to a great congregation, for the Church’s
festivals were at this period strictly observed by almost the
whole population.

Among the crowd was the young Baron de Chantal, after-
wards the father of Madame de Sévigné, who had come with
his recently married wife, Marie de Coulanges, and her family.
The Baron had just communicated, when a lackey, hurriedly
entering the church, found his way to where the young noble
sat, and gave him a message from his friend, Bouteville de
Montmorency.

“ Monsieur le Marquis,” whispered the servant, “ was waiting
for Monsieur at the Porte Saint-Antoine, where he was about to
fight a duel with Monsieur Pont-Gibaud, and he begged him to
come immediately and act as his second.”

It might have occurred to some people that church-going
clothes with black velvet slippers made scarcely a suitable

» costume to wear as second, but this ardent duellist did not give
I
2 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

a thought to such trifles. Without hesitating an instant, he left
his wife and her relatives——who doubtless wondered what had
called him away so suddenly,—and, traversing the short distance
along the Rue Saint-Antoine, in a few minutes reached the
Porte, where the combatants were awaiting him in hot, impatient
anger.

Chantal was eagerly welcomed by his friend, and so fierce
was the quarrel that they did not even wait to send for swords.
Knives were borrowed from a neighbouring tavern, and in the
shortest possible time principals and seconds were fighting with
the reckless bravery and practised skill of that duelling age,
under the grim shadow of the Bastille.

Fortunately- no one was killed, but such an extraordinary
affair was not likely to remain a secret. It was a choice piece
of gossip for Easter Day, and before night the news had spread
over court and town, and everyone was talking of the scandalous
occurrence. It reached the ears of Richelieu, the powerful
minister of Louis XIII, who had determined to suppress duelling,
which, it was said, was yearly robbing France of more of the
bravest of her young nobility than, the most disastrous wars.
The minister was gravely offended. Was his famous Edict to
be regarded as a dead letter? To be set aside as an idle form?
The Church, too, was scandalised. A duel on Easter Day!
Such sacrilege and profanation were unheard of! And Church
and State united their clamours for punishment for this out-
rageous defiance of civil and ecclesiastical laws.

Swift retribution followed the offence. Shortly after, on
the 24th of April, the Parlement of Paris in solemn conclave
declared that Bouteville de Montmorency, Pont-Gibaud, and
their seconds were convicted of /ése-majesté both human and
divine. A decree pronounced them to be “ignoble, vulgar, and
infamous,” and condemned them to be hung and strangled on a
gallows in the form of a cross, which must be erected in the
Place de Gréve. Furthermore, the same decree ordained that
their houses were to be razed to the ground and their goods
confiscated.

But laws that could sanction such stringent and brutal
sentences had necessarily to be slackly administered—at least
in the case of nobles who had powerful friends to avenge them
A HANGING IN EFFIGY 3

—and before this terrible sentence was pronounced the young
men had promptly taken flight. The Baron de Chantal was
forced to leave his wife, to whom he had been married only a
few months, and to take refuge in Burgundy, his native
province, where for some time he hid in the house of his
brother-in-law, the Comte de Toulongeon.

The law had to take its course, however, notwithstanding the
non-appearance of the culprits, and a gruesome little farce was
enacted for its satisfaction. As the condemned had disappeared,
vengeance was wreaked on them by means of their effigies. A
gallows was duly erected in the Place de Gréve, and figures
representing the four duellists were hung in front of the Hétel
de Ville. What followed reads like an incident from a romance,
but was nothing more than a common occurrence of the time.
The Mercure Francois records that on that same night, as dark-
ness fell, a company of lackeys, well protected by a band of
horsemen, came stealthily to the Place de Gréve, and while
some kept a keen lookout for the watch, others hurriedly cut
down the gruesome caricatures of their masters and carried
them off.

Gradually the scandal died down, and no further efforts
were made to punish the culprits. Their goods were not con-
fiscated, their houses were not razed to the ground, and by
cautious degrees the young men began to appear among their
friends and at Court again, though Richelieu kept an eye on
their conduct that was by no means friendly. But their peril
had not taught them a great deal of wisdom! Bouteville de
Montmorency was a born swordsman, with such a passion for
duelling that nothing could keep him from it long; while the
Baron de Chantal was one of those brilliant young men,
endowed with all the talents, who by some trick of inherent
perversity take pleasure in offending those people they ought
to conciliate.

His nephew, the Comte de Bussy, who figures so largely in
Madame de Sévigné’s life, has left a slight pen-sketch of him
which gives a suggestion at least of his charm and varied
accomplishments ; which indicates also that his daughter must
have inherited not a little of her wit, fascination, and delight
in life from her reckless and ill-fated father.
4 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“ He became,” writes Bussy, “one of the most accomplished
cavaliers of France, not only for the graces of his person, but
for those of his mind also. He danced with an incomparable
grace, he fenced well, and his courage was of a rare quality.
He was very lively and animated, giving to every word he said
such an original and graceful turn that it was a pleasure to hear
him converse. But he did not charm by this alone; it was by
the air and grace with which he spoke; in him all was playful.”

Unfortunately this young cavalier, in addition to his other
accomplishments, had a habit of plain-speaking which by itself
was sufficient to gain him many enemies. Madame de Sévigné,
more than half a century later, briefly referred to an incident in
her father’s life which throws an illuminating flash on his whole
career, and makes it easy to understand why this brave and
witty young noble, of good birth and powerful connections,
never gained preferment at Court. When Schomberg, one of
his friends, was made Maréchal de France in 1625, the Baron
de Chantal wrote this laconic note of congratulation—

“ MONSEIGNEUR,—Qualité, barbe noire, familiarité.”

Madame de Sévigné thus explains to her daughter this sole
item of her father’s correspondence that had been preserved.
“You understand that he wished to say to M. de Schomberg
that he had been made Maréchal de France, because he was a
man of quality, because his beard was black like the King his
master’s, and because he was admitted to familiarity with the
King.

For a time the Baron settled down quietly in his house in
the Place Royale with his gentle young wife, Marie de Coulanges,
who was the daughter of Philippe de Coulanges, Conseiller du
Roi, and Marie de Béze, “people of great honour and virtue”
said their aristocratic connection the Comte de Bussy, “ though
not of noble birth.” But it seemed impossible for this rash and
impetuous young man to keep out of mischief long. Six short
months after he had been hung in effigy with his friends, he
again arranged to fight another duel as second to his fire-eating
friend Bouteville, but, by a fortunate chance, the King “was
warned of the affair in time to prevent it,

Louis x1, who had always found this witty young noble
THE BIRTH OF MARIE DE CHANTAL 5

amusing, began to look coldly on him when Richelieu pointed
out that he was an intimate friend of the Prince de Chalais, who,
for high treason, was beheaded in 1626, and of the Marquis de
Toiras, who had also offended the powerful and vindictive
Richelieu. Indeed, the Baron had the misfortune to displease
the great Cardinal, which was infinitely worse than displeasing
the King, as he was soon to discover in a most startling fashion.

Some two years after his marriage, on February 5, 1626, a
little’ daughter was born to the Baron and his wife—not the
first, for a child who died at birth had preceded her—a daughter
who afterwards, as the Marquise de Sévigné, brought more fame
to her house and race by her pen than all her valiant fighting
ancestors had brought by their swords, For a year after her
birth all went well with the household in the Place Royale; we
may even suppose that the young Baronne, with her bright
baby and her handsome and fascinating husband, enjoyed for a
brief space a semblance at least of that domestic tranquillity of
which she had experienced so little during her short wedded life.

But this tranquillity was not of long duration. On the 12th of
May 1627, Bouteville de Montmorency, the incorrigible duellist,
arranged a meeting with Beuvron; and their two seconds—
seconds always fought in those days—were Bussy d’Amboise
and des Chappelles.

The affair took place in the Place Royale, that fine square
which is now called the Place des Vosges, the very heart and
centre of the Marais Quarter. Strangely enough, though
eighteenth-century Paris has been so effectually swept away
by civilisation and Baron Haussmann, this spacious “ Place” of
red-and-white brick mansions, after three hundred years of
natural and political storms, looks not very different from when
it was built by the bluff Henri Quatre, and considered one of
the finest squares in Europe.

Standing in the Place des Vosges, we are back again in the
seventeenth century. In that corner mansion lived the haughty
des Rohan; near by, the beautiful intriguing Duchesse de
Chevreuse kept the watchful Mazarin on the gud vzve with her
ceaseless plottings; under those quaint, cool arcades, some of
France’s greatest men have paced, deep in earnest converse on
the burning questions of their day,—Sully, Richelieu, Corneille,
6 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Moliére, La Rochefoucauld, Turenne; and, so strange is the
fortune of war, in those same arcades horses were stabled
during the Fronde! Here, in the square, the favourite game of
“running the ring” was played by gallant young nobles; on
féte days those long straight windows were gay with rare carpets
and priceless tapestries; .lackeys and waiting-women gossiped
in those attics with mansard roofs, or quarrelled in the “ Place”
below as they waited for their masters. But chance and in-
evitable change have metamorphosed those shady promenades
into sordid little shops, now given over to menders of broken
china, dealers in second-hand clothes, and vendors of iced drinks ;
there is the inevitable cheap sweet-store, and an emporium of
tawdry garnitures for humble funerals; while the panelled and
decorated rooms above, where Court beauties swept in and out
in trailing garments of silk and brocade, attended by gallants in
plumed hats and richly embroidered mantles, are now let out in
suites of rooms or business offices.

The Baron de Chantal lived with his wife and little daughter
Marie in the house which is now number one, where a tablet
records the fact that Madame de Sévigné was born there. One
may be quite certain that, on the day of the fateful duel, the
young Baron was either looking from an upper window or
standing near his friend in the square while the fight was pro-
gressing. Indeed, there is little doubt that faces were peering
from most of the many windows giving on to the “ Place,” all
keenly interested in a duel of any kind, but especially a duel
in which the notorious Bouteville de Montmorency was a
principal.

It was a day of disaster for this young noble and his friends.
One of the seconds, Bussy d’Amboise, was killed by Bouteville’s
second des Chappelles. Bouteville, knowing that he could
" expect no mercy from Richelieu, fled hastily across the square to
the house of his friend Baron Chantal. The latter had horses
in waiting, and the two offenders galloped hastily away by one
of the narrow back streets, hoping to escape into hiding till the
affair should be condoned, if not forgotten.

But there was to be no farce of hanging in effigy this time!
Richelieu, whose consistent policy was to bring lawless nobles —
under the law, determined to make an example that should
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SRS ETE

 
DEATH OF THE BARON DE CHANTAL 7

effectually deter others from disobeying his edict. The fugitives
were followed up at once and arrested at Vitry-le-Bralé, where,
with the least delay possible, they were beheaded by Richelieu’s
command, amid the astonishment and fervent execrations of the
French nobility.

This duel and its fatal consequences had a serious effect on
the fortunes of Madame de Sévigné’s father. The Baron found,
to his consternation, that, in the warrant of arrest issued
against Bouteville, the unfortunate duel of Easter Day two
years before was recalled; and worse, his name was mentioned
as being concerned in it!

It was a sinister omen to be thus distinguished by Richelieu
in such a connection; it was something of a warning, or even,
it might be, a threat, and he felt that his head would be safer if
he removed from Richelieu’s near neighbourhood for a time.
So, bidding good-bye to his wife and baby daughter, who was
then a little more than a year old, he set out to join his friend
the Marquis de Toiras, at that time governor of the Isle of Rhé.
Toiras gladly welcomed the Baron as a gentleman volunteer,
and when news of this reached his mother, the Blessed Chantal,
she wrote to her daughter-in-law in the Place Royale—

“Oh, my dearest daughter, {I do not doubt that your poor
heart must be in pain at the thought of your husband exposed
to the chances of war. ... I pray that God may preserve you
with your dear little one. . . .”

The forsaken young Baronne needed all the support that
Sainte-Chantal’s prayers could give her. A few weeks after her
husband had joined the army of the Marquis de Toiras, the
Duke of Buckingham landed with two thousand English troops
on the Isle of Rhé. The Baron de Chantal, at the head of his
company of volunteers, was soon in the midst of the fight, where
among brave men his bravery was conspicuous. Three horses
were killed under him, and during the engagement, which lasted
six hours, he received twenty-seven wounds. He. lingered for
two hours in mortal pain, then, having received the sacraments,
—a sad consolation to his mourning wife and mother,—this
gallant young noble died at the early age of thirty-one.

This was the first of that series of deaths which left his
little daughter, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, so peculiarly an
8 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

orphan. The Marquis de Toiras, grieving for the loss of his
friend, sent the Baron de Chantal’s heart home to his young
widow, who placed it in the Church of the Minims, which has
since been destroyed. It is said too, that, after her years of
mourning were over, he offered himself to her in marriage,
but that the gentle, heart-broken Baronne resolved to devote
her life to her little girl.

She did not, however, long survive her husband. She
moved from the house in the Place Royale, so full of bitter-
sweet memories of her short and anxious wedded life, and
for the six years of her widowhood lived with her parents,
Philippe de Coulanges and his wife, sometimes at their mansion.
in the Place Royale, sometimes at Sucy, the country-house
which her father had built a few years before. Then she too
died, and her bright and lovely little daughter was left to the
care of her grandparents de Coulanges.

The Blessed Chantal, fully occupied with the cares of her
new Order, wrote to thank Philippe de Coulanges and his wife,
not only for the incomparable love which they had for her
son, “but for the care which they had lavished on ‘cetie pauvre
petite pouponne.” “But what can be said when God speaks?”
she writes on the death of her daughter-in-law. “Let us hope
that His sweet goodness will be father, mother, and all things
to the little one that the dear departed has left.”

Madame de Coulanges was a gentle guardian to her
daughter's little girl She taught her herself, she gave her
wise and constant care, and we learn from one of Sainte-
Chantal’s letters that, at the early age of eight, she was pre-
sented for her first communion,

“The news you give me of that poor little orphan consoles
me greatly,” she writes to Philippe de Coulanges. “How
happy she will be if God preserve you and my poor, very
dear sister, to continue your wise and pious guidance! In
truth I love that child as I loved her father, and all for God.
I am rejoiced to hear that she is to communicate at Easter.
I shall keep it well in mind, and pray God that at the re-
ception of our sweet Saviour it will please Him to take entire
possession of that little soul.”

Scarcely two months after her first communion—that great
A RELIGIOUS CONFESSION 9

epoch in the life of a Roman Catholic child—little Marie de
Chantal lost her pious and wise grandmother de Coulanges,
who died in May 1634, at the age of fifty-seven, and was
buried beside her daughter, the Baronne de Chantal, at the
Convent of the Visitation in the Rue Saint-Antoine, one of
those founded by the Blessed Chantal. Two years and a
half later, Philippe de Coulanges, then an old man of seventy-
five, was taken also, and Marie de Chantal, not yet eleven
years old, was robbed by death of all her nearest kin.
There was her paternal grandmother, Sainte-Chantal, it is
true, but that holy woman, who had abandoned her own
children for the love of God, was too absorbed by the duties
of her Order to undertake the care of a young granddaughter,
and never even saw her, though she came to Paris in 1641,
at the command of Anne of Austria, while Marie de Chantal
was a young girl.

Many years afterwards, Madame de Sévigné wrote to her
daughter a brief confession of her spiritual difficulties. “1
desire to be devout, but my mind is naturally worldly. ... I
am neither of God nor of the devil, and this state troubles me,
though between ourselves I find it the most natural state in
the world. One does not belong to the devil, because one
fears God, and at bottom has the principles of religion; one
does not belong wholly to God, because His laws are so strict,
and no one loves self-denial.”

In these days, when we place so much to the account of
heredity, when we do not consider genius as a “sport” but
regard it rather as the choicest flower of racial tendency,
it is interesting to trace in two of Madame de Sévigné’s im-
mediate ancestors those well-defined, but opposing strains of
devotion, and an intense joy in all the good gifts and pleasures
of life. It is clear that from her father, the handsome, witty,
gay and gallant courtier, she derived much that was brightest
and most arresting in her genius, the qualities to which she
herself gave the generic term, Radutinage. But there was
another side to her character that charmed the circle of friends
who knew her best, a side which gives a peculiar cachet to
her letters, which attracts the sympathy of her readers, which
shows her to be truly human, most truly woman, as no mere
10 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

hard brilliance of wit or felicity of phrase could ever have
revealed her; which gives a softening, an atmosphere so to
speak, to her letters and her life; that half mystic, half de-
votional instinct which she probably inherited from her famous
grandmother, the “ Blessed Chantal.”

This well-known saint had a strange story. Jeanne
Francoise Frémyot was the daughter of President Frémyot
of the Parlement of Burgundy, a man of staunch moral and
physical courage, who had been a valiant supporter of the
King during the troublous times of the League. Christophe
de Rabutin-Chantal, the grandfather of Madame de Sévigné,
a Burgundian noble of ancient race, married her in 1592.
Like all the Rabutins, he was brave, sarcastic, free of speech
and life, with the habit of answering all adverse questions with
the sword. He fought eighteen duels, but, strangely enough,
he escaped all the perils of his numerous affairs of honour,
to die, while out hunting, from a blow given accidentally by a
friend. He was only thirty-seven when he died, leaving his
widow with four children; three girls and one boy, Celse
Bénigne, the youngest, who was then four years old.

Madame de Chantal went to live with her husband’s father,
Guy de Rabutin, and gave all her leisure to good works. At
Bourbilly, a castle and estate which was part of Madame de
Sévigné’s inheritance, there is still shown a large oven where
the’ pious widow used to bake the bread which she made for
the poor with her own hands. At another place she was
called the Saint of Monthelon, and there is no doubt that, but
for her children, she would have become a rveligiewse on the
death of her husband.

After some years of widowhood, Madame de Chantal had
a vision in which she saw an ecclesiastic in soutane and
rochet, who, she divined, was to be her spiritual director and
guide.

Singularly enough, Saint Francis de Sales, while in retreat,
preparing for his Lenten course, had a vision also, in which
it was revealed to him that he was to be the founder of a
new Order, and that a widow and certain others whom he
saw were to be its first members,

When Madame de Chantal was at Dijon, staying with her
THE BLESSED CHANTAL Il

father for the Lenten season, she heard Saint Francis de Sales
preach for the first time in her life, and immediately recognised
him as the ecclesiastic who, in her vision, had been indicated
as her spiritual guide. At the same time, Saint Francis, seeing
the Baronne among his congregation, at once saw in her the
widow who was to be the head of his new Order.

Could there be any doubt after this as to what would be
the result? Her children were still young, and for some years
longer she stayed with them. But in due time one of her
daughters was married; the two other daughters took the
veil; and her only son, Celse Bénigne, who was afterwards the
father of Madame de Sévigné, was then fourteen. Madame
de Chantal, all this time under the spiritual influence of Saint
Francis, ever drawn with a more potent attraction towards
the holy life, finally resolved to leave her son and her relatives,
to found the new Order which the Bishop of Geneva had
dreamed of years before.

She told her father of her intention, and the President asked
her mildly, as he shed bitter tears—

“What, my dear daughter, does a father who has always
loved you so well count for nothing? At least let me die before
you go, then do as you will.”

Her young son, the Baron de Chantal, did not take the news
so calmly. He implored her with all the strength of his
passionate nature not to desert him.

But the pious widow was firm. Doubtless she thought it
more meritorious to establish convents for the glory of the
Church than to stay in the world with her young son, and such
a matter was between herself and God, however it might appear
to human eyes and hearts.

The lad of fourteen, however, could listen to no reasons,
could not be persuaded that any call, however holy, could take
precedence of his crying need for his mother, and, beside him-
self with hot-hearted, boyish grief, he threw himself across the
threshold, passionately declaring that if she went she would
have to step over his body, vainly hoping that he might thus
prevent her going. Her mother’s heart must surely have been
torn with anguish, but she did not swerve from her purpose.
She left the house with her son’s cries ringing in her ears, and
12 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

from’ that time onward she cut herself adrift from her family,
and steadfastly set her face towards the religious life. Under
the direction of Saint Francis de Sales, she founded eighty-seven
convents of the Order of the Daughters of the Visitation of
Saint Mary.

Madame de Sévigné never saw her famous grandmother,
but she always wrote with reverence and affection of her saintly
and illustrious relative, and occasionally in jesting mood would
refer to Saint Francis as her “spiritual grandfather.” When-
ever she was in grief or trouble, she would retire to the Convent
of the Visitation in the Rue Saint-Antoine as to a home, and
wherever she stayed as she travelled in France, she would
always visit the Convent of the Visitation of Saint Mary if
there happened to be one in the town. The Sisters, who
respected her for her connection with their revered fcunder,
called her “the living relic,’ and always gave her a cordial and
affectionate welcome.

Madame de Chantal died at Moulins in one of the convents
she had founded. Soon after her death a selection of her letters
was published, and just one hundred years later she received
the honours of canonisation and beatification.
CHAPTER II

A family council—The Abbé de Livry chosen as guardian of Marie de Rabutin-
Chantal— Her life at the Abbaye—Walpole’s ‘‘Notre Dame de Livry”— An
amorous tutor—A shabby man of letters

HE little Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, now about ten
years old, and “a beauty who attracted all hearts,”
as Madame de Guette tells us in her Mémoires, was orphaned
indeed by the death of her grandfather. A family council
was held for the: purpose of choosing a guardian for the
young Burgundian heiress, and it was then that her cousin,
Roger de Rabutin, afterwards too well-known as the Comte
de Bussy, played his first part, so to speak, in the drama of
her life, in which he was so frequently and not always creditably
an actor. His father, Léonor de Rabutin, was prevented by
his affairs from attending the meeting of relatives, and Roger,
then a handsome youth of eighteen, was sent as his repre-
sentative.

Christophe, the second son of Philippe de Coulanges and
consequently her mother’s brother, was chosen as the child’s
guardian. He was the Abbé de Livry, a staid, grave young
man of twenty-nine, as complete a contrast to her brilliant
and reckless father, who would have been her natural protector,
as could possibly be imagined. There was not a sparkle of
wit, not a glint of humour among the whole range of his
virtues. He had, in fact, not one of those dangerous and
glittering qualities which were so conspicuous in the Rabutin
ancestry, but the child could not have had a better guide
and adviser, or one who was more wholly devoted to her
interests. From that time forward, to the day of his death
some fifty years later, he was her truest friend, her most
reliable counsellor, and always an actively beneficent influence

in her life. Circumstances had made him an abbé, vowed
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14 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

to the Church, but nature and inclination had surely destined
him to be, like so many of his ancestors, “a gentleman of
the long robe.” He had an inborn passion for calculation,
an intuitive caution in all business dealings, an innate probity
of character, qualities which made him an excellent trustee
of the property of the young heiress; indeed, he managed his
niece’s affairs so skilfully during her minority, that her wealth
had increased considerably by the time she married.

Besides nursing her estates during her girlhood, and
giving her the best advice on money matters after her
marriage, he taught her to pay her debts with as much
care and rectitude as if she had been nothing but a good
and honest bourgeoise; he cultivated her intelligence so that
she had a thorough knowledge of all business relating to
her property ; and he showed her how to regulate her expenses,
and how to manage her own and her children’s fortunes, in
such a capable fashion, that her spendthrift cousin the Comte
de Bussy sneered at her as being “too good a woman of
business for a lady of quality.”

Madame de Sévigné’s wit, and genius, and charm came
to her direct from nature, but there is little doubt that the
wise guidance and counsel of the “Bien-Bon,” as she always
called her uncle, trained her faculties in the direction of
prudence and wisdom, and instilled into her from youth that
rectitude and probity which, in the Marquise, is so greatly
a part of her many-sided, amazing charm. She often mocked
affectionately at her uncle’s love for es beaux yeux de la cassette,
at his continual calculations, at his love for arithmetic; but
she recognised nevertheless what a great part these very
unromantic qualities had played in procuring the happiness
of her life.

But his affectionate care was not all expended on her
material interests. It is probable that for some time he
educated her himself; then, as she grew older, he engaged
two excellent masters, Chapelain and the Abbé Ménage, both
men of high literary reputation, who gave her that solid and
thorough education which proved a staunch support to the
genius which afterwards found such matchless expression in
her letters.
“NOTRE DAME DE LIVRY” 15

She studied Latin sufficiently “to be able,” as she wrote, “to
read Virgil in all the dignity of the text.” “Italian,” she says,
“TI have learned very well; thanks to the good masters I have
had.” And Ménage, who was a clever linguist, taught her
Spanish, which was a quite fashionable language among the
nobility, for was not the Spanish princess, Anne of Austria,
Queen of France? Marie de Chantal also learned dancing,
though, to the Rabutins, dancing was almost a natural instinct ;
and her voice was so well trained, that besides taking an in-
telligent interest in music, she sang “little Italian songs,” which
she loved for their passionate fervour. She acted delightfully
in private theatricals; she composed little chansons ; she had a
keen and vivid interest in all current literature as well as in the
works of the dead masters; and by her manners, as well as
by her accomplishments, she grew up to be one of the most
charming and distinguished women in a polished and world-
renowned society.

It was, one cannot doubt, a new and absorbing interest in
the life of the young and serious Abbé to watch the development
of the mind and to train the amiable character of his lovely and
intelligent little niece. The Abbaye de Livry still stands,
hardly touched save by Time’s defacing fingers, and it is
not difficult to imagine the bright-eyed, fair-haired little
Marie de Chantal, playing, studying, and laughing in the
meadows and woods which lie around it, during the happy
and healthful girlhood which she spent under the wise care of
the Bien-Bon.

Horace Walpole, whose passionate admiration for the letters
of Madame de Sévigné provoked the jealousy of his letter-
writing friend Madame du Deffand, wrote to George Montagu,
in 1766, describing a visit to this early home of “ Notre Dame
de Livry,” as he calls the Marquise de Sévigné. It is of especial
interest to those who have seen the Abbaye as it exists to-day,
for the little pavilion that he mentions as having been built by
the Abbé for his niece is no longer there.

«|, Livry is situated in the Forét de Bondi,” he writes,
“very agreeably, on a flat, but with hills near it, and in prospect.
There is a great air of simplicity and rural about it, more regular
than our taste, but with an old-fashioned tranquillity, and
16 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

nothing of colifichet. Not a tree exists that remembers the
charming woman, because in this country an old tree is a traitor,
and forfeits its head to the crown; but the plantations are not
young, and might very well be as they were in her time. The
Abbé’s house is decent and smug ; a few paces from it is the sacred
pavilion built for Madame de Sévigné by her uncle, and much as
it was in her day ; a small salon below for dinner, then an arcade,
but the niches now closed, and painted in fresco with medallions
of her, the Grignan, the Fayette, and the Rochefoucault. Above,
a handsome large room, with a chimney-piece in the best taste
of Louis the Fourteenth’s time ; a Holy Family in good relief over
it, and the cipher of her uncle Coulanges; a neat little bed-
chamber within, and two or three clean little chambers over
them. On one side of the garden leading to the great road is
a little bridge of wood, on which the dear woman used to wait
for the courier that brought her daughter’s letters. Judge with
what veneration and satisfaction I set my foot upon it! If you
will come with me to France next year, we will go and sacrifice
on that sacred spot together.”

This was written by Walpole about eighty years after the
death of the Abbé de Coulanges, before the Revolution began
its work of devastation among religious houses. Even now,
more than two hundred years since Madame de Sévigné had
any connection with Livry, this spot, where she spent some of
the happiest hours of her life, is practically unchanged in all its
broader aspects. The village of Livry, and the beautiful Forest
of Bondi, have, it is true, in these days of easy communication
become suburbs of Paris, and are now portioned out into
gardens and smart villa residences, all asleep behind close-
shut fersiennes during the white glare of the burning summer
sun. The tiny lake, in compliment to Walpole’s “Dame de
Livry,” is called the Lac de Sévigné; the Abbé’s house is
alluringly but mistakenly described for the benefit of literary
pilgrims as the “Demeure de Monsieur de Sévigné”; even the
hostess of the little wine-shop a few yards from the lake gives
voluble misinformation concerning the haunts of the illustrious
lady whose memory bestows such distinction on the suburban
village.

But happily the Abbaye, with its adjoining chapel, is some
THE ABBAYE DE LIVRY 17

distance away, and remains undisturbed in solitude and the
peace of desolation. It is approached by a long avenue of
trees, in which a tall crucifix stands half-hidden among the thick
foliage. At the end of the avenue is the long, low house, with
no striking architectural features, dismantled, falling into ruin,
with nothing but painted wainscot walls and dusty floors to be
seen through the closed windows, though, annexed to the east
wing, is the chapel, kept in good repair and used for village
service.

The pavilion mentioned by Walpole, to which she often came
with her daughter and her dear friends, the Marquise de la
Fayette and the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, as a refuge from the
summer heat of Paris, has entirely disappeared ; gone, too, is the
little bridge of wood on which “the dear woman used to wait
for the courier that brought her daughter's letters.” Some
straight and formal chestnut walks, however, remind one of her
home at Les Rochers, and look as if at some time she may have
planted their early predecessors; and though fruit-trees and
fertile fields have taken the place of the lovely gardens that
used to abut on the Forest of Bondi, the old house, set in its
green solitude, is still eloquent of the presence of the serious
Abbé and his beautiful young ward.

We hear strangely little of the Brothers who inhabited the
Abbaye, and their days were probably too occupied with their
devotions, too monotonous in their religious calm, to take much
place in the life of the young girl whose thoughts and desires
were trending towards the great world she was so soon to enter,
But we get a glimpse of one Brother many years after this,
which is almost the only indication we find that there was
actually a Brotherhood of monks living in the Abbaye. In
May 1672 the Marquise writes to her daughter: “Here is a
very tragic story from Livry. Do you remember that pretended
devotee who dared not turn his head? I said that it seemed as
if he were carrying a glass of water on it. Devotion has turned
his brain. One fine night he gave himself five or six stabs with
a knife, and then fell on his knees in the middle of his room,
naked, and covered with blood. Someone went in and found
him in this state. ‘Ah! Mon Dieu! brother, who has treated
you thus?’ ‘My father, he replied coldly, ‘I am doing

2
18 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

penance. He then fainted, and was put to bed, and his wounds,
which were dangerous, were dressed. With much care and
attention he recovered at the end of three months, when he was
sent back to his relatives at Lyons.”

It was by no means a solitary life that the young girl led
with her uncle the Abbé. Her aunt, Madame de Coulanges,
would often visit Livry with her son, the little cousin Emmanuel,
just eight years younger than Marie de Chantal, who was
afterwards so witty, so gaily irresponsible, so incurably frivolous,
that his friends all agreed that he never grew up to the end of
his days. Other relatives came to visit the charming young
orphan, and there were neighbours, too, who remained her friends
all her life. Among these was Denis Saint-Pavin, whose father,
the Prévét des Marchands at Paris, was the seigneur of Livry.
This young man, unfortunately a hunchback, was an intimate
friend and welcome guest at the Abbaye, and as Marie de
Chantal grew older he celebrated the young beauty in frequent
verses. Both were young and gay-hearted, and evidently found
much pleasure in the companionship; but Saint-Pavin had no
hope of ever being any dearer than a friend. “I am her friend,
but not her lover,” he writes, and then whimsically points out
the contrast between them. He extols her charms, and
enumerates his own defects; his dwarf-like body, his long
arms and legs, which, he says, cause him to be taken fora
windmill.

Here too, to Livry, came Ménage and Chapelain, her tutors
in languages and literature. The young Abbé Ménage, then in
the early thirties, did more than give her lessons in Spanish and
Italian, more than point out to her the beauties of the Italian
poets; he lost his heart to his lovely young pupil, who, in
addition to her complexion of cream-white and roses, her eyes
sparkling with youth and genius, her shining masses of wavy
fair hair, had a joyous wit and a brilliant intelligence that, by
themselves, would have been a sufficiently dangerous charm.
It is not surprising that the Abbé should be the humble and
persistent worshipper of this young girl, just merging into the
woman who was to fascinate and charm some of the bravest
and wisest of the men of her generation ; but his laughing pupil
would never take his passion seriously. Perhaps, with those
AMAIT UG AAVAIV AHL

 
AN AMOROUS TUTOR 19

clear-seeing eyes of hers, that put sucha just value on most of
the things that came across her vision, she divined that Ménage
was one of those men—they are not all dead to-day !—who
bring their worship to shrines that throw reflected glory on the
devotee. Mesnard has truly said of him—

“It was the habit of Ménage to adore his pupils. He sighed
by turns for Mademoiselle de Chantal and for Mademoiselle de
la Vergne (who afterwards became Madame de la Fayette). He
sang the praises of both in all languages. He loved them before
and after their marriage, he loved them when they became
widows.”

Sometimes, as she grew older, there were little misunder-
standings between master and pupil, and from two of her early
letters to Ménage we gather that the Abbé had written her a
sarcastic and wounding letter. But in her reply she shows such
a frank amiability, such a desire of keeping his friendship, that
he would have been a churl indeed to have resisted such friendly
overtures,

“Once again,” she writes, “I say to you that we do not
understand each other. You have the good fortune to be
eloquent, otherwise all that you have written to me would not
be worth much, though it is wonderfully well put. I am not
alarmed, however, and I feel my conscience so clear of all that
you accuse me, that I have not lost the hope of compelling you
to acknowledge my innocence. But this will be impossible if
you will not visit me for half an hour, and I cannot understand
why you so obstinately refuse to do this. I beg you once
again to come and see me; if you will not come to-day, I
entreat you to call to-morrow. If you will not come here,
perhaps you will not close your door to me, and I shall follow
you up so closely that you will be forced to admit you are in
the wrong. You wish to make me appear ridiculous by saying
that you have only quarrelled with me because you are sorry at
my departure. If such were the case I should deserve des
Petites-Maisons and not your hatred ; but it is so different, and
I cannot understand why, when losing a friend and regretting
her, one should, because of that, treat her at the last interview
with the utmost coldness. It is a most extraordinary way of
20 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

behaving, and as I am not accustomed to it you must excuse
my surprise. However, I beg you to believe that there is not
one of the old or new friends of whom you speak that I esteem
and love as I do you; this is why, before losing your friendship,
that I beg you to give me the consolation of proving you to be
in the wrong, and of saying that it is your affection that has
ceased, CHANTAL”

Though this letter is signed “Chantal,” it is thought by her
biographers that it was probably written soon after her marriage,
when the circle of her friends considerably increased, and that
Ménage, accustomed to a very large share of her time and
interest, was piqued at the division of his pupil’s regard. The
vanity of the Abbé was well known; has not Moliére cruelly
preserved him for all time as Vadius? but his pupil knew that
beneath all his affectations there was a true and loyal heart,
and she writes to him again on the same subject—

“It is you who have taught me to speak of our friendship
as dead; as for me, caring for you as affectionately as I do, I
should never have supposed it. Accuse yourself then of those
disagreeable words which have so displeased you, and believe
that I can have no greater joy than to know, that you still feel
for me the friendship which you promised me, and that it has
had a glorious resurrection.—Adieu, CHANTAL”

But the young lady was not always so sweet and humble in
her dealings with her tutor. Doubtless they were both fully
aware of the wide social gulf between her rank and that of the
man who had climbed into the great world up the ladder of
literature. There was always in her treatment of Ménage a
disregard of him as a possible lover, a sisterly and familiar
attitude in which one might imagine her replying to any
remonstrance, “Why, it is only Ménage!” an attitude that must
have been peculiarly irritating to the vain young Abbé, whose
weakness it was to pose as the adorer of charming ladies of rank,
and who allowed neither her nor his friends to be ignorant of
his passion for his lovely pupil.

The Comte de Bussy relates that one day after her
A WITTY RETORT 21

marriage, when she was driving out to make some purchases,
her maid-companion was unable to come, and as it was not the
custom then for a lady to drive out alone, she asked Ménage to
accompany her, adding that she did not suppose anyone would
remark on the circumstance.

The Abbé was deeply wounded at being treated so dis-
dainfully, but Madame de Sévigné replied with scant ceremony—

“Get into my carriage, and if you are troublesome I shall
come to see you at your house!”

Tallemant tells the story, that once, soon after her marriage,
she kissed Ménage in the presence of several young gallants.

The young men were surprised, for though manners were
very free at that period, and it was the usual custom to kiss the
hostess and maids on arriving at an inn, this, they thought, was
carrying the habit of kissing to an unusual limit.

Madame, seeing their astonishment, gaily explained her
action.

“It was thus that they kissed in the primitive church!” she
laughingly told them as she turned to go.

She was not even invariably submissive to him in his
character of tutor, and on one occasion, having asked him how
he was, Ménage replied, “ Madame, je suis enrhumé.”

“Je la suis aussi,” answered Madame de Sévigné.

Ménage, who could not forget that she had been his pupil,
conscientiously pointed out that, according to the rules of the
language, she should have said “ Je Ze suis.”

“You may say it if you wish,” she retorted with vivacity, “ but
if I said it like that I should think I had a beard on my chin!”

In spite, however, of her little impertinences to her tutor,
which were usually the outcome of her vigorous and buoyant
spirit, she had the utmost confidence in him, and sometimes told
him of her most private affairs. Once, after a conversation of
this kind, the Abbé, always anxious to edge in a little word of
his devotion, remarked sentimentally—

“Tam indeed your confessor, and have been your martyr.”
“And I your virgin!” she promptly retorted.

It was during the first years of Madame de Sévigné’s
married life, when she was a popular and brilliant beauty in
Parisian society, that Ménage was more than ever anxious to
22 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

show his world on what familiar terms he was with his late
pupil. He relates with a good deal of satisfaction that one day,
at the Hétel de Rambouillet, “I held one of Madame de
Sévigné’s hands in mine, and, when she had retired, M. Peletier
said to me, ‘There goes the finest work that ever came out
of your hands !’”

Well might Madame de Sévigné treat his passion lightly,
for he was evidently of the type who feel it a pleasing duty to
be gallant to any lady in whose company they find themselves,
But he had so advertised his passion for Madame de Sévigné
that he occasionally received a lesson from ladies who were
amused at his pretensions.

When the Marquise de Lavardin and he were both travelling
in the same carriage to Brittany, on their way to visit Madame
de Sévigné, Ménage, hoping to make himself agreeable, took
one of her hands to kiss, doubtless adding some gallant little
speech.

“ Monsieur Ménage,” said the Marquise laughingly, while
drawing her hand away, “are you rehearsing for Madame de
Sévigné?”

These anecdotes of Madame de Sévigné and her tutor
indicate her greatest fault at this youthful, unformed period of
her life, the only fault that even Tallemant des Réaux, the
society spy, who set down all the failings, and faults, and
mischances of his friends and enemies with such appalling
industry, could find in the beautiful young Marquise,—a habit
of brusque and thoughtless speech, which probably the wise
and careful guidance of a mother might have pruned into
gentleness. This want of a woman’s training was, however,
made up in some measure when she came under the influence
of one of the most extraordinary women of her day, the
Marquise de Rambouillet.

Her other tutor, Chapelain, was an entire contrast to the
vain young Abbé Ménage, who dressed neatly and well in
becoming black, and endeavoured to make the most of his
personal charms in the eyes of the ladies he desired to please.
Chapelain was an excellent scholar; he was in correspondence
with most of the savants of Europe; and, as a literary guide,
the young Mademoiselle de Chantal could not have had a better
A SHABBY MAN OF LETTERS 23

master. But his appearance was almost ludicrous; his chief
passion was saving, and he probably thought good money
wasted on clothes. Tallemant declares that he made a veritable
sensation when he first visited the Hétel de Rambouillet,
wearing garments that looked as if they must have been
purchased at the Marché de Friperie, a great gallery near
the Halles, where second-hand finery was sold on Wednesdays
and Saturdays by the Jews. His boots, said Tallemant, never
matched each other, and were laced with string; his hand-
kerchiefs were terrible, and his wigs were fit for nothing but to
crown scarecrows. “I believe,” wrote Tallemant with convic-
tion, “that Chapelain never had anything absolutely new.”

His long intercourse at the Hétel de Rambouillet had
probably taught him a few elementary lessons in the art of
dress before he became the tutor of Mademoiselle de Chantal, but
to the end of his life he always had the miser’s deep-rooted
objection to squandering money on clothes. In spite of this,
however, he gained much respect by his literary attainments,
and was held in honour by the habituds of the Hétel de
Rambouillet; and for twenty years at least he was looked on
as a great poet, who, when he should publish his poem, La
Pucelle, would be celebrated wherever the French language was
spoken. Unfortunately, he was one day persuaded to publish
La Pucelle, and then the lovely Duchesse de Longueville, who,
for no especial reason except her beauty perhaps, was considered
quite an authority on literature, said out loud the heresy that
others only dared to whisper: “It is doubtless a charming
poem,” said the young Duchesse, “but isn’t it rather weari-
some?”
CHAPTER III

Her “‘ portrait” by the Marquise de la Fayette—The young Burgundian heiress
is betrothed to Henri, Marquis de Sévigné—The bridegroom fights a duel and is
dangerously wounded—An old chateau in Brittany—The furniture of Madame de
Sévigné’s room—The birth of Frangoise Marguerite de Sévigné

OR eight happy years Marie de Rabutin-Chantal had been
the cherished ward and companion of her uncle at Livry,
when he decided to give her in marriage to a suitable husband.
So many of the young girls of her day were married at sixteen,
or earlier, that one may consider it part of the wisdom of the
good Abbé in all that concerned his niece that he had not
chosen to establish her sooner. It certainly was not because
of a lack of suitors. Marie de Chantal was not faultlessly
beautiful, with regular features and perfect contours, but she had
in full measure that first exquisite bloom of girlhood which the
French, with their love of paradox, so falsely call beauté du
diable.

Years afterwards, her cousin Bussy, when describing her in
a fit of pique, gave a detailed list of her imperfections, with a
searching after malicious truth that would have been fatal to
any but the most mathematically correct beauty of feature.
He dwelt at length on her nose, which was “ square at the tip” ;
he pointed out that her eyelids were “mottled”; that the pupils
of her eyes were of different colours; that, like her forehead,
her jaw was too square; but he was compelled in honesty to
acknowledge that “she, had the most beautiful complexion in
the world, fresh and rosy lips, an exquisite figure, and thick
wavy fair hair.”

But how misleading is a catalogue of a woman’s perfection
or imperfection of feature! Is it not a truism that the elusive
quality called “charm ” can irradiate a plain face into something
more alluring than beauty, while the lack of it leaves perfect
A PEN-PORTRAIT 25

features a mere dull mask of cold inanity? Contemporary
evidence assures us repeatedly that Madame de Sévigné, with-
out regular beauty, was one of the most singularly charming
and attractive women of her day. She herself, with too much
good sense to be vain, makes one light allusion to her appear-
ance, when in after years, as a grandmother, she might speak of
her attractions in the past tense. “People used to say I was
very pretty,” she once wrote to her daughter, which was an
exceedingly modest way of referring to the numberless flattering
things that had been said and sung of her.

Her defects might be catalogued, but it was more difficult
to translate adequately her charm into words, it was so much
the inexpressible attraction of innate grace of mind and
joyousness of spirit, in addition to her distinctive personal
beauties, Fifteen years later, when she was thirty-three, her
friend the Marquise de la Fayette wrote this pen-portrait of
her, and from it we gather at least an impression of her vivid
and lovable personality. Madame de la Fayette, wishing to
mystify her friend, sends her the portrait, pretending that it is
from “l’Inconnu,” the Unknown Gentleman.

“ All those who attempt to paint pretty women take infinite
pains to flatter them in order to please, without daring to
mention a single word of their defects. But I, Madame, thanks
to the privilege of being unknown to you, shall paint you with
a bold hand, and tell you the truth without fear of incurring
your anger. ...

“T do not wish to overwhelm you with compliments, or to
waste time by telling you that your figure is admirable, that
your complexion has a bloom and beauty which assures us you
are only twenty; that your mouth, your teeth, your hair are
unrivalled. I will not point out these things to you, because
your mirror will tell you them equally well, but as you do not
fritter away your time in consulting it, it cannot tell you how
charming you are when you speak, and this is what I must
reveal to you.

“Know then, Madame, if by chance you do not know it
already, that your mind so greatly adorns and beautifies your
person, that there is nothing on earth so charming as you when
you are animated by conversation from which constraint is
26 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

banished, All that you say has such a charm, and is in such
harmony, that your words attract the smiles and graces round
you; the sparkle of your wit gives such a brilliance to your
complexion and to your eyes, that though it appears that wit
should reach only the ears, it is certain that yours dazzles the
eyes, so that as we listen to you we forget that your features
lack regularity, and we declare that you are the most perfect
beauty in the world. ...

“Your mind is great and noble, formed to dispense wealth,
and incapable of the baseness of hoarding it. You love glory
and ambition, and you love pleasures equally well; you seem to
have been born for them, and they appear to have been made
for you; your presence adds to diversion, and diversion in-
creases your beauty. In short, joy is the natural state of your
soul, and nothing is more contrary to you than sorrow....
You are by nature tender and passionate; your heart, Madame,
is doubtless a treasure that no one could deserve; never: was
there one so generous, so true, and faithful. ... You are the
most courteous and obliging person that ever was known, and
by the frank and sweet manner which is shewn in all your
actions, the simplest compliments of good-breeding when said
by you have the air of protestations of friendship ; and all who
leave your presence are persuaded of your esteem and good-
will without being able to explain what proof you have given
them of either. In short, Heaven has endowed you with charms
such as have never been given to any other person, and the
world is under an obligation to you for having exhibited so
many agreeable qualities which were never before known. I
will not begin to describe them, else I should be breaking my
resolve not to overwhelm you with praise, and furthermore,
Madame, to say of you what is worthy, [ought to be your lover,
and that I have not the honour to be!”

Under the somewhat tedious formality of the “portrait” we
gather an impression, at least, of Madame de Sévigné’s unusual
charm, and if this is how she appeared in the eyes of her friends
at the age of thirty-three, can we not imagine something of the
brilliance of her presence when heightened by the exquisite
unconsciousness of dawning womanhood, the freshness and deli-
cate bloom of eighteen? In addition to her dazzling complexion,
A WEALTHY HEIRESS 27

her perfect mouth and teeth, her masses of shining fair hair, and
blue eyes that sparkled with goodwill, wit, and gaiety, her whole
personality was tingling with joyous life to the finger-tips, and
she possessed an extraordinary charm of manner “which per-
suaded everyone of her esteem and goodwill,” a social gift in
itself of the first importance.

Besides these attractions of mind and person, she had other
charms which often count for so much in marriage, and in French
marriage especially. Her do¢ amounted to one hundred thou-
sand crowns, equal in modern money, it is said, to £24,000, in
addition to which she had valuable expectations that ultimately
came to £16,000 more. This Burgundian heiress had, in truth,
“all the attractions,” for she was also of an ancient and honour-
able race. Near Samur was Bourbilly, an old castle which she
inherited, with the title of Dame de Bourbilly, from the Rabutin
family, who could trace their ancestry back to the twelfth century.
“T yield to the Montmorenci for honours, but the family is not
of earlier date than ours,’ wrote Bussy de Rabutin with his
inflated pride, at which her nobler spirit was occasionally a
little scornful.

It has been thought a little strange that Bussy should not have
at least asked for his cousin in marriage. He frankly tells us
in his memoirs that his father was anxious for him to marry
the young heiress, as her wealth would have been particularly
welcome to his impoverished branch of the Rabutins. The
gasconading Bussy gives us clearly to understand that though
he was poor his personal attractions were of no mean calibre.

“Roger de Rabutin,” he writes of himself, apparently without
a blush, “had large soft eyes, a well-formed mouth, a large and
nearly aquiline nose, a pleasing expression, and fair waving
light hair.” Though he could so minutely analyse his cousin’s
shortcomings, there was not a word of any defect in his own
“ portrait,” but he might with truth have added that an absolutely
unscrupulous disposition, allied to the most shameless hardihood,
marred not only his character, but even the expression of his
handsome face.

Notwithstanding his father’s wishes, he made no offer for his
cousin’s hand. Long after, it pleased him to write that “he
thought her the most charming woman in the world to be the
28 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

wife of another.” And he may have been quite sincere when he
says that her light-hearted gaiety, so attractive to other men,
would have been a source of disquiet to him had he married her.
It is to be feared that to faithless husbands like himself no
attractions, save those of the most dove-like domesticity, would
have been entirely safe from suspicion. It is quite probable, also,
that their very similarity of tastes, wit, and intellect made the
two cousins unsuited to each other, for does not perfect marriage
always demand dissimilarity? It might be, too, that the Bien-
Bon, so watchful of his niece’s interests, so clear-sighted in all that
concerned her well-being, did not encourage the Comte de Bussy,
who, just a year before Marie de Chantal’s marriage, was united
to another cousin, Gabrielle de Toulongeon.

_While the Abbé de Coulanges was looking for a suitable
alliance for his niece, Paul de Gondi, the Coadjutor of the
Archbishop of Paris, and afterwards so notorious as the Cardinal
de Retz, made overtures to the Bien-Bon on behalf of his young ~
nephew, Henri, the Marquis de Sévigné. After due considera-
tion, the Abbéjthought it would be a suitable marriage. The
connection with a powerful noble like Gondi counted for much,
and de Sévigné was young, good-looking, with a substantial
inheritance, and a descent that was entirely satisfactory. When
Bussy, in exile, was occupying his leisure in making a family-tree,
Madame de Sévigné sent these concise facts of her husband’s
ancestry— 4

“Fourteen contracts of marriage from father to son; three
hundred years of chivalry; the fathers sometimes of consider-
able importance in the wars of Brittany and of distinction in its
history ; sometimes living at home as good Bretons; sometimes
having great wealth, sometimes with only moderate possessions,
but always making great and good alliances. In three hundred
and fifty years, beyond which we can only find their Christian
names, are du Quelnec, Montmorency, Baraton, and Chateau-
giron, These are great names, and the women of these families
married des Rohan and des Clisson. Since these four there are
des Guesclin, des Coetquen, des Rosmadec, des Clindon, and
des Sévigné of their own house. .. . ”

Documents remain which show that the young Marquis
owned considerable property; and when he came to sign the
MADAME DE SEVIGNE’S MARRIAGE 29

marriage settlement at the house of d’Ormesson, the family
lawyer, who was also a connection of the bride through the de
Coulanges, her relatives, greatly interested in the future husband
of their charming young connection, remarked that “he was a
fine cavalier of good figure, and apparently witty as well.”

The arrangements for the marriage were interrupted by an
occurrence that was not particularly auspicious for the bride’s
future happiness. The marriage contract was drawn up on the
27th of May 1644, but the signing of it was postponed by a
quarrel, in which the hot-headed young Marquis was the chief
offender. Henri de Sévigné, on the eve of his wedding, so to
speak, whilst walking on the Pont Neuf met a young Breton,
Paul Hay;du Chastellet, who, he had heard, had been saying
certain things to his discredit. Without a moment’s thought
of his position as bridegroom, he struck du Chastellet with the
flat of his sword. In any place there would have been but one
answer to such an insult, but on the Pont Neuf, one of the most
public thoroughfares of Europe, crowded like a daily fair, the
affront was peculiarly irritating, and a meeting was at once
arranged. They met soon after, and de Sévigné was wounded
in the thigh, so severely that his life was for some time in danger,
and it was not till the month of July that the marriage contract
could be signed.

On the 4th of August 1644 the religious ceremony took
place in the church of Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais at two
o'clock in the morning. The ceremony was performed by a
relative, a nephew of Sainte-Chantal, Jacques de Neuchéze,
Bishop and Count of Chalon-sur-Saéne, who gave the bride a
wedding-gift of ten thousand crowns.

Shortly after the marriage the Marquis took his young wife
with him to Les Rochers, his estate in Brittany, which was to
become such a dearly-loved home of the Marquise. In these
days of swift and luxurious travelling we can only with an effort
realise what discomfort and impedimenta were inseparable from
a long journey in the seventeenth century. There were com-
paratively few inns in provincial France, and these were almost
inconceivably bare of furniture and the necessaries of life.
When the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria, was wandering in
the provinces with the young King during the upheayal of the
30 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Fronde, she came to an inn where there was no bed, and as her
own had not arrived, she had to sit on the only chair the place
could provide, her aching head supported by one of her ladies
of honour! Every person of quality in those days carried his
own bed while travelling, and this was generally strapped upon
a pack-horse or mule. In addition to the travelling carriage
for the seigneur and madame his wife, another carriage had to
be provided for dependants and waiting-women, so that, with
postillions, the whole cavalcade made quite a gay procession
as it whirled swiftly along through the dull country villages and
provincial towns.

The young Marquis and his wife were probably about eight
or ten days on the road to Les Rochers, the nearest town to
which was then, as now, the quaint little Vitré, which: still
contains several streets whose houses remain apparently un-
touched since Madame de Sévigné saw them as a bride, though
probably they were then in better repair. The four and a half
miles from thence to the chateau has not been greatly changed
since her day, though on each side there were dense woods and
plantations where there are now cultivated fields, bordered by
cider-apple trees and chestnuts.

The Chateau of Les Rochers is situated in a thickly wooded
country, sloping away in dark green hollows and rising again
in green crests. The tiny church on a distant hill,—where
Charles de Sévigné was baptized,—looks like a toy building
half smothered in foliage. The chateau was already three
hundred years old when Madame de Sévigné was first taken
there, and in externals, at least, is not greatly altered to-day.

Did those gloomy forests, where wolves and other wild
animals had their haunts, look somewhat savage and forbidding
to the eyes of the young girl who had been brought up amid the
gracious and cultivated beauty of the gardens and meadows of
Livry? There is no record of her first impressions, but we
know that it became one of her greatest pleasures, almost a
passion indeed, to lay out gardens and to plant allées. “I have
bought land, to which I have said, as usual, I shall convert you
into a park,” she once wrote to her cousin Bussy; and in her
letters from Les Rochers she makes constant reference to her
improvements on the estate; her labyrinth, her mall, and the
 

HENRI, MARQUIS DE SEVIGNE
MADAME DE SEVIGNE’S BED-CHAMBER 31

many walks to which she gave the names of her best loved
friends.

Fortunately for the literary pilgrim who finds a satisfaction
in seeing the extourage of Madame de Sévigné, her bed-chamber
at the chateau has been left as it was when she occupied it, and
passing over the threshold we step at once into the seventeenth
century. On entering, the eye is struck by the date 1644 in
brass letters over a door, which reminds us that this was the
year in which she was brought here as a bride. A portrait of
her father hangs just above the date; not a good painting, but
it gives an indication of the wild and reckless spirit of that
dashing cavalier, with just a soupcon of wistful regret under-
lying the painted bravado, as if his better self were conscious of
wasted opportunities.

The bed, which is a half-tester, is especially interesting, for
the faded hangings of biscuit-coloured silk, and the coverlet
to match, are said to have been embroidered by Madame de
Grignan, the idolised daughter of the Marquise; and the pale-
tinted, delicate arabesques, leaves, flowers, and birds, carry us
back to the far-away days when patient stitchery was the chief
outlet for woman’s talent of every kind. Opposite to the bed
is the huge open fireplace with big brass dogs and irons, and
in the slab of polished granite forming the arch of the mantel
are three large Roman capitals in mosaic, M. R. C. (Marie
Rabutin-Chantal.)

As we look at the appointments of the room, we are reminded
how scarce and costly was furniture in the days when Louis
Quatorze was king. Not only did private individuals carry
their beds and toilet necessaries from town to country house,
but even the royal family, when they journeyed from the Louvre
to Saint-Germain, carried beds and cooking utensils; guests,
though of the most exalted rank, were expected to bring their
own; and when, after a time, the natural taste for luxury and
ostentation of Louis XIV caused him to provide furnished rooms
for certain privileged courtiers, his thrifty minister Colbert felt
very serious at this unheard-of extravagance!

For a marquise, a lady of great position, with wealth and
large estates, the little draped toilet-table looks singularly
unpretending, The toilet set, too, of red lacquer, painted, not
32 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

very artistically, with groups of flowers, is modest to the point
of shabbiness; the looking-glass, in red-lacquer frame, would
hardly be considered adequate for the waiting-woman of a
marquise to-day ; and the two upright brass candlesticks remind
us of the semi-gloom in which people of the seventeenth century,
in the provinces at least, passed the dark ‘months of the year.
On a tall chest of drawers are all that remain of her washing
accessories—most probably all there were—a pewter ewer
holding perhaps two pints of water, and one of those quaint
porcelain vessels of beautiful old Breton pottery—rarely seen
even in museums to-day—the front part barrel-shaped, the back
flat for hanging close to the wall, holding perhaps a gallon or
so of water. A shallow, stoup-like basin beneath served for
washing bowl, into which the water was turned from the upper
part of the vessel by a rudimentary tap.

A few old chairs of beautiful forms are standing about the
room, most of them covered with tapestry whose colours are
fresh and vivid; her ink-stand is kept in a glass-case, and near
it is an account-book, very neatly kept, of some of her gardening
expenses, but it is not in her own handwriting. Perhaps the
most interesting part of the whole room is the deep recess near
the window, in which she so often sat while she was penning
those charming letters to her daughter and her many friends.
We know, too, that she must frequently have laid down her pen
to step out on to the terrace among the fragrant orange trees
which still stand as they were in her day, or to wander yet
farther among those formal gardens laid out by Le Noétre,
which she loved with such a genuine passion; or to muse,
perchance, by her sun-dial on the happy hours it once recorded
for her. “There are some pleasant recollections,’ she once
wrote of Les Rochers, “but there are some so vivid and tender
that one can hardly bear them.”

But she had no mournful musings, no painful memories when
her young husband brought her to his ancestral home as its
mistress, The future was all theirs, a bright alluring future in
tints of gold and couleur de rose. Both were young, of a joyous
and happy disposition; they had wealth, a great name, and
good health to enjoy the gifts with which Fortune had so
generously dowered them. For the first two years after their
THE BIRTH OF FRANCOIS DE SEVIGNE 33

matriage they rarely visited Paris, spending most of their time
in the solitude of Brittany, perhaps planning improvements and
alterations, as is the custom of the newly wed; and, besides
visiting their friends and country neighbours, making the ac-
quaintance of their retainers and peasantry—those uncouth,
primitive Bretons whose very language she did not understand,
but to whom she was, one cannot doubt, a kind and gracious
Lady Bountiful.

The first definite news we get of them is in March 1646,
when her cousin Bussy and his friend Lenet, just preparing for
a campaign, wrote a joint letter, in verse, imploring Sévigné
and his wife not to waste the best years of their life among
country neighbours, and begging them to come to Paris to
their many friends again. In the autumn of the same year
the Marquis and his wife did return to Paris, to their house
in the Rue des Lions, where, on the 1oth of October 1646,
about two years after their marriage, their first child was born,
Francoise Marguerite de Sévigné, the daughter to whom the
Marquise wrote those wonderful letters which have gained for
her a place among the world’s men and women of genius. .

The de Sévignés were kept in Paris for some time by a law-
suit, but they were quite willing and eager to enjoy the delights
of the capital after their long sojourn in Brittany. The
Marquise had indeed, till then, seen very little of the gay town
since her marriage.

These were the few halcyon years before the storm of the
Fronde. Anne of Austria, guided by the clever Mazarin in her
state policy, brought up with pious care the handsome boy-king
and his little brother the Duc d’Anjou. Never was the idle world
of Paris more tranquil, more gaily devoted to simple pleasures.
Daily drives along the Cours-la-Reine, the excitements of the
Foire Saint-Germain from Epiphany to Lent; suppers, balls, and

_ occasional comedies; these formed the amusements of wealthy
aristocrats; and the Marquis and his young wife, then scarcely
more than twenty, were welcomed in the best society. Besides
their many friends, two of their relatives were influential officials
in the great world: Gondi the Coadjutor, who was on the eve of
greater power and notoriety, the relative of the Marquis; and
the brusque Hughes de Rabutin, the Grand Prieur of the

3
34 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Temple, the uncle of Madame de Sévigné, whom her husband
used to call, presumably in private, “my uncle the Pirate.”

“It was the time of polished conversation, of gallantry, and,
in a word, of that which they called the ruelles,’ wrote Saint-
Simon of this period ; and it was in this atmosphere of old-world
gallantry and polite conversation that Madame de Sévigné’s
talent was developed, that her mind and manners were formed.
It was then that, as a young married lady, she was first
introduced to a salon famous in the history of French literature,
famous, indeed, in the polite society of Europe, the world-
renowned salon of Madame de Rambouillet.
CHAPTER IV

The Hétel de Rambouillet, the pioneer of Parisian salons—The Marquise
de Rambouillet—A lady’s bed-chamber in the seventeenth century — Julie
d’Angennes— La Guirlande de Julie—A_ polished society of précieux et
précteuses—The Duchesse de Longueville—Mademoiselle de Scudéry

“ T HAVE still something remaining of that fine manner

which made me a précieuse,” once wrote Madame de
Sévigné to her daughter from Les Rochers in the depths of
Brittany, to prove that she had not lost all the polish of Paris
by living for some time in the provinces.

This title of Précieuse, which, after Molitre had delighted
Paris with Les Précieuses Ridicules and Les Femmes Savantes,
became a word for scorn and laughter, was, in the early days
of Madame de Sévigné’s married life, the highest commendation
that could be bestowed on a woman. It represented delicacy
of mind, of manners, of morals; the polished ease which can
only be acquired in good society; and an extreme refinement
of language and expression, which afterwards, in the mauvaises
vruelles, as Madame de Sévigné called them, degenerated into
affectation and all the mincing absurdities recognised under
the name of “ preciosity.”. When Scarron praised Mademoiselle
de la Vergne to her mother, he called her toute lumineuse, toute
précieuse; Mademoiselle de Mancini was called fa perle des
précteuses; and Madame de Sévigné was, as we have seen, like
many another of her contemporaries, proud of her claim to
the title.

At this time the headquarters, so to speak, of these préczeuses,
was the Hétel de Rambouillet, in the Rue Saint-Thomas du
Louvre, not far from the Tuilleries. It was the pioneer of
Parisian salons, and without question the most celebrated in
French social history. From 1630 till the year 1648, when
the Fronde practically closed its doors, it was the centre, not
36 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

merely of the literary and artistic life of Paris, but of its most
polished social intercourse; and its mistress, under a sweet and
exquisitely cultivated grace of manner, ruled her subjects with
a charming and imperious power to which they were all
willingly submissive.

The salon of the Hétel de Rambouillet is so singularly
interesting because of the coarse and dark background of
manners and morals from which it gleams like a picture of
fine-woven, many-coloured tapestry. In its early beginnings
France was only just emerging from the primitive days of
chivalry. Almost every gentleman was a soldier, more -ac-
customed to life in camp than in court, with an absolute
scorn for all intellectual accomplishments. An “ Academy”
then meant a riding-school; and the sons of gentlemen were
taught how to ride well, to be adepts in the use of the sword,
to play at running the ring, at mall, or at tennis, and if they
excelled in these accomplishments their education was thought
to be complete. The Prince de Condé, nephew of Henri 1v,
was considered quite exceptional, because, in addition to all
these bodily exercises, he had his two young sons taught
Latin ; educated well, in short, especially the Prince de Conti,
who was brought up at the College of Clermont.

But civilisation was gradually evolving by its usual and
natural processes, and while the great Richelieu, under Louis
XII, was devoting his energies to the curtailment of the
feudal power of the turbulent nobles, the salon of Madame
de Rambouillet became the centre of an intellectual and
social influence whose far-reaching effects it would be im-
possible to calculate. It was the splendid dawn of a recog-
nised homogeneous society in Paris which reached its zenith
in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It must not
be forgotten that though Paris under Louis xIv was foremost
among the cities of Europe in all the elegancies and arts of
refined civilisation, yet, in the early days of the seventeenth
century, Italy and Spain were far ahead of her in these respects.
Spain had already formulated its code of strict and immutable
etiquette, and Italy was the home of art and letters, and of
a polished delicacy in matters of gallantry as yet unknown in
France.
THE MARQUISE DE RAMBOUILLET 37

And it was from Italy that the young Marquise de
Rambouillet brought her inherited taste for letters, art, and
all the refinements of civilised life. Catherine de Vivonne
was the only daughter of the Marquis de Pisani, who, while
ambassador at Rome, married Julia de Savelli, a lady of
the illustrious house that had given popes and cardinals to
the Church, Their daughter was born at Rome, and in 1600,
at the age of twelve, was married to Charles d’Angennes,
Marquis de Rambouillet.

Her life in Paris that followed, fashioned in a large measure
by herself, reads like that of a princess in some impossible
fairy-tale. By the time she was twenty she had grown tired
of tHe coarse and licentious society of the Court of Henri rv,
and with that determination which was not the least con-
spicuous of her remarkable qualities, she decided to withdraw
herself in a measure from the world, to devote herself to her
family, and to the cultivation of art and letters in a society with
tastes similar to her own.

As a beginning, the young Marquise built for herself a
beautiful dwelling. She had inherited the Hétel de Pisani
from her father, and as this was dilapidated and falling into
ruin, she had the old house pulled down and another mansion
erected on its site from her own designs. In this new building
the stairs were placed in an angle, suites of rooms opened from
one into the other, and windows of the pattern that we now
call French windows let in light and air in a manner that had
hitherto been unimagined in Paris, The grounds stretched
away to the Tuilleries, and, though they were in the midst of
Paris, were so large that the neighbouring gardens did not
disturb the privacy of the Hétel de Rambouillet.

The furniture of this remarkable house was the choicest
that could be designed or procured. Just as in our own dark
days red rep curtains represented the highest height of the
upholsterer’s imagination in draperies, so, in the dawn of the
seventeenth century, brown. or red hangings were considered
the only possible mode in France. But the original young
Italian lady changed all that in her own house at least. The
Blue Salon of the Hétel de Rambouillet became nearly as
celebrated as its beautiful and cultivated mistress. The Blue
38 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Chamber was the bedroom of the Marquise (the “sanctuary
of the Temple of Athene” her visitors called it), who, suffering
from a malady that made excessive heat, whether of sun or
fire, unbearable, was obliged to spend a great part of the day
in the cool seclusion of her room; and on this, which was her
reception chamber also, she lavished the costliest and most
elegant decoration. Blue silk draperies shaded the windows,
for, as a poet of the time remarked, ladies had discovered that
the clear, untempered light of day was not too becoming to
their complexions ; the arm-chairs, the chairs without arms, and
the stools or tabourets, were upholstered in blue velvet ; finely-
worked inlaid cabinets, wrought perhaps by those cunning
Italian artificers whom Marie de Medicis had brought to Paris,
made a dignified decoration for the room; and rare tapestries,
Venetian lamps, pictures, and fresh flowers in exquisite crystal
vases, gave to the salon an elegance and distinction that had till
then been undreamed of in Paris.

A lady’s bedroom in the seventeenth century was a singularly
important part of the house. It was there that she often re-
ceived her visitors, not necessarily in bed, though if she had
the slightest ailment, or even only a fit of indolence, she would
welcome her friends of both sexes from among her pillows with
as little embarrassment as if she were receiving them in the
garden. These bedrooms were frequently divided into two
parts by a balustrade, in the fashion that may still be seen in
the chamber of Louis xIv at Versailles. The bed, placed in
the middle of the wall, had thus a space on each side—spaces
that were called ruelles, a word in constant use during the
seventeenth century. On one side, ladies interviewed their
servants, or persons who came on business; the other was
reserved for their closest intimates, or people they most
delighted to honour. Occasionally the rwelle would be formed
into an “alcove,” Spanish fashion, by means of columns that
reached from floor to ceiling, which made a still more private
bower than that enclosed by the mere balustrade; and frequently
in contemporary literature the ladies who received in their bed-
rooms are referred to as “alcdvistes.” People who gossiped
were said to be talking @ /a ruelle, for all the news of the town
circulated through the ruel/es, just as, a century later, current
THE CELEBRATED BLUE ROOM 39

events were discussed in the salons. Madame de Sévigné, as
we shall see, had her vwel/e, and she was a constant visitor to
that of La Grande Mademoiselle, who, because she was a
Princess of the Blood, had her bedstead raised on an estrade,
and ladies who came to pay their respects knelt on the
steps leading up to her bed, “to kiss hands” as the phrase
went.

The celebrated Blue Room was divided by gilded columns
which reached from floor to ceiling, The vault of this alcove
was decorated with allegorical pictures representing Love,
Marriage, Summer, and Study. The blue draperies, the
elegant furniture, the unusual adornments of the room, gave
Madame de Rambouillet’s guests a naive surprise, it was all
so new, so delightfully unlike anything they had ever seen
before; and we must not forget that society was then in
its fresh, early youth, and had neither lost the faculty of being
surprised, nor adopted the worn dictum of Solomon that nothing
is new under the sun.

There is no picture remaining of the mistress of this “ Temple
of Honour,” as Bayle called it, but we gather from the evidence
of her guests and friends that, besides being a beautiful and
graceful woman, born for social empire, she had a singularly
well-balanced mind, which so harmonised her various gifts that
there is nothing distinctive by which to remember her; she
remains a gracious presence, an inspiring influence, an embodi-
ment in her own person and life of the beauty she so passionately
worshipped with her beauty-loving, Italian nature. “She was
revered, adored,” said Madame de Motteville, “a model of
courtesy, wisdom, knowledge, and sweetness.” Segrais, a poet
who was very intimate with Madame de Sévigné, writes of her:
“ She was amiable and gracious, of a sound and just mind ; it was
she who corrected all the bad customs which were common before
her time. She taught politeness to all those of her period who
frequented her house. She was also a good friend, and kind to
everyone.” Mademoiselle de Scudéry tells us, in one of the
rhapsodical “portraits” brought into fashion by her facile and
sentimental pen, that Madame de Rambouillet “is tall and her
figure is excellent; all the features of her face are perfect ; the
delicacy of her complexion cannot be expressed, the dignity of
40 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

her person is worthy of admiration, and from her eyes beam I
know not what fire, which imprints respect in the mind of all
those who behold it.”

The Marquise de Rambouillet had seven children, but of
these only two were associated with her in her salon, These
daughters, Julie and Angélique, shared their mother’s social
duties and pleasures, while adding to the many attractions of
their home. The more celebrated of these was Julie, the elder,
who was, says Cousin, “without being absolutely beautiful, the
most perfectly finished feminine type of the period.” No
woman, said a contemporary, had been so praised or sung since
Helen of Troy. Her manners were so sweet, so amiable, so
caressing, that all the many minor poets who frequented her
mother’s salon were inspired to write chansons or madrigals on
the fair Julie. She charmed women as well as men, The
Marquise de Sablé, herself a clever and remarkable woman,
said that she could imagine no greater happiness on earth than
to spend her life with Julie d’Angennes. The beautiful Anne
de Bourbon, sister of the great Condé, and afterwards so well
known as the Duchesse de Longueville, was her intimate and
affectionate friend, and when she had the small-pox it was the
courageous and devoted Julie who nursed her. But this graceful
and winning girl refused the many suitors who sighed in vain
forher. It was her opinion, and that of many others, that there
was nowhere such a paradise on earth as the Hétel de Ram-
bouillet. One, however, among her suitors, persistently refused
to take no for an answer. The Marquis de Montausier met her
when she was in the full bloom of her beautiful girlhood, at the
age of twenty-four, and for long years he urged his suit in vain.
Eventually she accepted him, at the age of thirty-eight, when the
fairest bloom of her youth was long past, because urged to do
so by her mother, who probably thought it was time for her
daughter to be established in life. It was to this patient,
adoring suitor that the world of book-lovers owes that literary
curiosity, La Guirlande de Julie, It is composed of nineteen
leaves of parchment, and on each is a flower exquisitely
painted by Robert, with a verse beneath written in praise of the
fair Julie by the Marquis de Montausier and other gallants who
frequented her mother’s vuwel/e, It is interesting to note that
“PRECIEUX ET PRECIEUSES” 4l

Angélique, the other daughter of Madame de Rambouillet who
remained “in the world,” married the Comte de Grignan, who
afterwards married as his third wife the daughter of the
Marquise de Sévigné,

How interesting would have been a glimpse into this famous
salon at the time when the young Marquis and Marquise de
Sévigné were introduced there after their marriage! In the
mornings — for it was then that Madame de Rambouillet
frequently received—the most distinguished ladies and gentle-
men of the Court, as well as the most clever and famous men of
letters, would assemble in the celebrated Blue Room. The
ladies, clustering round their hostess in the beautifully decorated
alcove, would be seated according to their rank on arm-chairs,
chairs without arms, or tabourets, all toying with tiny canes,
which, let it be whispered, was a little affectation @ la précieuse!
The gentlemen, in embroidered coats, with curls falling on their
lace collars, would throw their rich cloaks on the floor, and,
seating themselves in the most approved attitudes of gallantry,
would trifle with the big plumes in their hats, while they gaily
repeated the last new story from Court, criticised the last new
play, or made an impromptu chanson, epigram, or bon mot, which
would be quickly repeated from mouth to mouth with laughter
and approval. Beyond the balustrade the less intimate or less
important visitors walked about or sat on tabourets; abbés,
poets, literary men, who held no brevet of rank save the
uncertain and fluctuating rank bestowed by intellect. Chief
among the visitors was the beautiful Princesse de Condé, who,
though a Princess of the Blood, and forbidden by Court etiquette
to visit anyone beneath the rank of duchess, made an exception
to this rule in favour of Madame de Rambouillet. She had
brought her lovely daughter Anne de Bourbon since girl-
hood, and this royal lady, world-renowned afterwards as the
Duchesse de Longueville, was, among those fair women, the
most supreme, triumphant beauty. She had been married only
a year before Madame de Sévigné, and was then in the most
brilliant prime of her dazzling loveliness, which Voiture poetic-
ally declared was made of “stars and pearls and flowers.” Her
large eyes of turquoise blue, the extraordinary white fairness
of her complexion, her masses of silvery blonde hair, gave an
42 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

ethereal look to the young Duchess who became so celebrated
in the Fronde, and all her loveliness was heightened by a
languorous grace which was one of her most potent charms. A
few years before, she had passionately desired to vow herself to
a religious life; all her thoughts were turned towards devotion,
till one evening she was induced to go to a ball. She wasa
vision of loveliness on that, for her, fateful evening ; and as she
entered the room all eyes were turned towards the young beauty
who looked so ethereal, so angelic in her brilliant fairness; and
as she danced it may be safely assumed that more than one
cavalier found the courage to tell her so, When she left the
ballroom that evening, she trod on air, she was intoxicated
with the new-found power of her beauty. Nothing more was
said of a life of devotion ; all such thoughts and aspirations were
choked and hidden under the most worldly ambitions, till, years
later, after having sinned and suffered, and wrought incalculable
harm to her country, she strove to expiate her sins among the
Carmelites.

Her husband was more than twice her age, but his rank was
only one degree below that of the Condé family, and by a
special privilege it was arranged that the young Duchess should
keep all the prerogatives of her position as Princess of the Blood.
It mattered not at all that hers was a loveless marriage, from
which a host of evils to herself and others was to be the result,
for rank was the most superlatively important question of the
day, as may easily be gathered from the memoirs of Saint-
Simon,

She was not the only victim in her own family of this arrogant
pride of position. Even the great Condé, her elder brother,
who everyone declared was a modern Cesar; who vanquished
the enemies of his country at Rocroy when a mere youth;
before whose wonderful military genius armies fell defeated and
dismayed; even he was forced to yield to his father in the
matter of marriage. It was probably in the salon of Madame
de Rambouillet that he met the gentle and charming Made-
moiselle du Vigean, whom he learned to love with the ennobling
and worshipping passion that comes only once in a lifetime.
But there was such a wide, impassable gulf between the Duc
d’Enghien, a Prince of the Blood, and one who was merely a
A TACTFUL ANSWER 43

lady, with charm, beauty, and intelligence, it is true, but no rank
to speak of! And the Prince de Condé, the shabbily-dressed,
astute old noble, with unkempt beard and slovenly habits,
forgetting the hot-headed, tumultuous days of his own young
passion, when in terror he had carried off his fair princess from
the covetous eyes of his licentious uncle, Henri Quatre, decided
that the marriage must not be dreamed of. There was a heart-
rending separation, when the brave young Duc d’Enghien, the
greatest hero of his age, fainted as he bade good-bye to the
gentle girl whom he desired with all his being, and who, not long
after, hid her broken heart among the Carmelite Sisters.

The Prince de Conti, the youngest of the Condé family,

was also a visitor to the ruel/e of the Marquise, and he may
have met Madame de Sévigné there, for a few years later we
find him among those who were especially attracted by her
brilliant social charms.
- But what a crowd of other visitors was welcomed at this
hospitable salon! In Richelieu’s time, some years before, it
had become such a social centre that the suspicious Cardinal
once suggested to Madame de Rambouillet that she should
report to him any adverse comments on himself or his policy.
With supreme tact the Marquise assured him that her guests
needed no such espionage; her sentiments towards him were
too well known, she said, for any of them to speak a disparaging
word of him in her presence!

As in all such gatherings, some faces, some names, some
personalities stand out conspicuously, forcibly arresting attention ;
while others are mere phantoms, powerless to stir even the most
passing interest. Prominent among the dainty dames who
fluttered in and out the Blue Room was Mademoiselle Paulet,
the honorary secretary to the Marquise, whose mane of thick
tawny hair, brilliant eyes, and fearless character, gained for
her the title of da Lionne. La Lionne often entertained the
company by her singing; which was so exquisite that nightin-
gales were once found dead by a fountain where she had sung
the night before—at least so said one of the many poets of the
salon !

There was Voiture, too, poet and ambassador, the son of a
wine merchant. Like Ménage, he was always affecting to be
44 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

dying of love for some great lady, and always thirsting to fight
duels—on paper! In spite of his absurdities, however, he was
a clever linguist and man of affairs, and was frequently sent on
foreign missions, which probably helped to foster his pretty
talent for letter-writing. Madame de Sévignd, supreme in
that art, greatly admired Voiture’s letters, and often recom-
mended them to her granddaughter. He wrote verse too,
and very impertinent verse it sometimes was, but he was the
darling of the Hétel de Rambouillet, and everyone, even Anne
of Austria, excused his audacities merely because he was
Voiture. The men, probably, were not always so indulgent, for
the Prince de Condé one day remarked, “If he were one of us
he would be intolerable,’ and he was probably intolerable to
some people as it was.

But he must have had his good and interesting qualities, or
how could he have so charmed those clever, discerning ladies
of the Hétel de Rambouillet? He was neither tall nor hand-
some, his hair and beard were grey, and more than one
gentleman, better endowed with personal attractions, wondered
wherein his charms lay. One of them said so one day to
Madame Saintot.

“Ah!” she replied, “if you only knew how agreeable he
can be to women when he chooses!”

When the young Bossuet, then only seventeen, was taken to
the salon of Madame de Rambouillet, he was asked to preach
an extempore sermon. It was evening, and the young heaven-
born orator, carried away by his own eloquence, held his
audience interested and charmed till midnight.

Voiture did not lack the witty word for the occasion. “I
have never heard a preacher begin so early, or end so late,”
said he.

Sarrazin, another poet, was the buffoon of the company,
who lives to-day in Moliére as Triboulet. Sometimes Madame
de Longueville would say to him, “ Preach like a cordelier, or
a capuchin”; and Sarrazin would imitate these friars so well,
that it was said of him that if he had only lived till the
time of the eloquent Bourdaloiie, he would have preached like
Bourdaloiie.

Balzac, scarcely remembered to-day, eclipsed in fame by his
A LITERARY WOMAN 45

greater namesake of the Comédie Humaine, was also a visitor at
the salon, What a glimpse of the condition of the porte-plume,
that expressive synonym for a literary man! we get in Richelieu’s
annoyance at not having one of Balzac’s books dedicated to
him. The independent Balzac had, in fact, not dedicated it to
anyone.

“Does he imagine himself grand seigneur enough to
dispense with a dedication?” asked the Cardinal in haughty
displeasure.

As one calls to mind those interminable, basely flattering
“dedications” to the grands seigneurs, who looked on them as
payment for the support they gave to the literary man, the
humble being who only lived, so to speak, in the smiles of
their countenances, it is not surprising that George de Scudéry,
impoverished descendant of a noble house, should proudly
declare that though adverse circumstances had made him a
porte-plume, the only plumes his ancestors carried were worn in
their hats !

But George de Scudéry is hardly remembered to-day, except
as the gasconading brother of his wonderful sister, Madeleine
de Scudéry, that unmitigated literary woman. A descriptive
phrase from Tallemant brings her vividly before us, the “tall
dark person with the very long face,’ and Madame de Cornuel
finishes the sketch with her witty soz, “She was destined by
Providence to blot paper, for she sweated ink from every pore.”
Why is it that Mademoiselle de Scudéry, with every virtue under
the sun, and not one of them hidden under a bushel, awakens
an instinctive protest? Is it that her virtues are too terribly
blatant, her accomplishments too obvious and paraded? Her
attainments are almost appalling ; in their universality one is
inclined to wonder “how one small brain could hold so much.”
Conrart, who was her great friend, and a regular attendant at
her samedis, writes that “she had a prodigious imagination,
an excellent memory, an exquisite judgment, with a natural
disposition to understand everything curious that she saw done,
and everything praiseworthy that she heard of.” She learned
about agriculture, gardening, housekeeping, cooking, and a life
in the country; she also turned her attention to the causes and
effects of maladies, and the composition of an infinite number of
46 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

remedies; she distilled perfumes and scented waters; and in
addition to all these housewifely arts she learned to play the
lute, to talk Spanish and Italian, and, more important than all,
she wrote a number of novels, the chief of which is the Grand
Cyrus, where she represents all the principal society of the
time of the Fronde.

Here too, in this salon, the young Marquise de Sévigné would
often meet her former tutors, the Abbé Ménage and the thrifty
Chapelain; and the latter, with his absurd dress and miserly
habits, not infrequently served as a target for the wits, one of
whom, conscious of his own correct costume, once scornfully
declared that the philosopher in his many-coloured garments
looked like a mackerel !

The Duc de la Rochefoucauld, then the Prince de Marsillac,
met at the Hétel de Rambouillet both the famous women with
whom his name is chiefly associated; the lovely Duchesse de
Longueville, to whom he paid assiduous court more from interest
than from any deeper feeling; and Mademoiselle de la Vergne,
then a child of twelve or thirteen, who, some twenty-five years
later, as Madame de la Fayette, became the supreme interest of
his declining, gouty age; while Madame de Sévigné was the
intimate and affectionate friend of both.

How impossible it is to give any idea of the numberless
visitors who each thought it a great distinction to be admitted
to this famous circle! But one at least must not be overlooked,
the brilliant Madame de Cornuel, “who could never open her
mouth without some sparkle of wit escaping.” She is an
abstraction of clever sayings. “Every sin she confessed was
an epigram,” said one of her friends, and almost every remark
she made possessed some germ of originality that caused it to
be repeated with delight. Of the ill-mannered Duc de Rohan
she said, “He is very well-born, but he has been very badly
whipped”; while of the devout James 11 of England she shrewdly
remarked, “ The Holy Spirit has eaten his understanding.”

One of her lackeys fell down in her presence “on all fours.”
“T forbid you to rise,” said his mistress, “ you were intended by
Nature to walk like that.”

There was generally a quite perceptible sting in her wit,
though perhaps it was fortunately not always apparent to the
THE WITTY MADAME DE CORNUEL 47

victim. Madame de Sévigné was delighted with the retort she
once made to the somewhat foolish little Comtesse de Fiesque,
who declared of a friend that he was not so stupid as he was
said to be. “Why,” said Madame de Cornuel pointedly, “ you
are like those people who have been eating garlic!”

Madame de Sévigné’s intercourse with the Marquise de
Rambouillet and those who visited her famous salon must have
been of invaluable service to the young married lady who had
not long made her début in Parisian society. Madame de
Sévigné, like all daughters of Eve, was not free from faults, and
those who admire her to-day as a sweet and fascinating woman,
with almost every feminine grace, cannot but admit that in
early youth her wit was somewhat boisterous. It was a kind of
flamboyant joyousness, the outcome of magnificent health and
high spirits, which now and again overflowed into imprudent
speech; never, the most scandal-loving of her contemporaries
agree, into imprudent action. Tallemant says leniently, “She
had the habit of saying everything she thought was pleasing,
though it was often a little free”; but even this industrious
scandal-monger could find nothing worse to say of her. Indeed,
with this exception, he has nothing but sincere praise. “She was
one of the most amiable and worthy people in Paris,” he declares,
and such praise from Tallemant may be considered praise
indeed. Her cousin Bussy, seeking carefully for defects, writes
that, “For a woman of quality her character was a little too
playful and sprightly,” which may have been a fault in a
grande dame, but it unquestionably added an ingredient of
perennial charm to the famous Letters by which her memory
lives.

To correct this fault, which was probably the result of having
missed a mother’s training, for it is not generally men who
teach the “ prunes and prisms ” of life, she could not have gone
to a better school than the vmel/e of Madame de Rambouillet.
Here she found the insensible correction by example which her
quick, sensitive mind would not be long in applying. In this
brilliant society, the final polish was added to her natural
wit and cultivated intelligence, and the result was such a
combination of graces of heart and mind and character as is
rarely to be seen. We get one little glimpse of her exquisite
48 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

personal charm at this period, in an epigram, made by the
Abbé Montreuil, “On seeing Madame de Sévigné play Blind
Man’s Buff”:

“De toutes les fagons vous avez droit de plaire,
Mais surtout vous savez nous charmer en ce jour:
Voyant vos yeux bandés, on vous prend pour |’Amour ;
Les voyant découverts, on vous prend pour sa mére.”
\
CHAPTER V

The dissipated young Marquis de Sévigné openly neglects his wife—The birth
of Charles de Sévigné —Madame de Sévigné has many admirers —The Comte de
Lude, Segrais, the Abbé de Montreuil, the Comte de Bussy-Rabutin—A daring
abduction

ESIDES being a frequent visitor at the Hétel de Ram-
bouillet, Madame de Sévigné had many visitors at her
own ruelle, and it was not long before the brilliant and charm-
ing young Marquise, so full of unspoiled, fresh delight in life,
gathered round her a group of friends as gay and vivacious as
herself. After her secluded girlhood in the country as the ward
of an abbé, it was only human and natural that, with her joyous,
pleasure-loving nature, she should desire to join in every new
diversion, to enjoy each novel entertainment that Paris had to
offer. Her husband, more eager in the pursuit of pleasure
than herself, and lacking the good sense and inherent virtue
which was her safeguard among the pitfalls of that lax society,
was soon drawn into a whirl of vice and dissipation, and,
without misgiving or scruple, thoughtlessly left her to her own
occupations and engagements.

In France, at this period, ladies rarely drove or walked out
alone. Sometimes they were accompanied by a companion,
who was one of the many poor gentlewomen for whom, in
those early days of society, the day-star of women’s higher
education had not yet dawned. Frequently, however, two or
three ladies would pay their visits together, and one of Madame
de Sévigné’s intimates at this period, with whom she visited the
Duchesse de Chevreuse, the Duchesse de Chatillon, the Marquise
de Rambouillet, and other mutual friends, was the Comtesse de
Fiesque. This little lady was so frivolous, so light of head and
heart, that the witty Madame de Cornuel in after years said of
her that “she never grew any older because she was preserved

4
50 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

in folly,” and, in these veritable days of her youth, she was a
quite irresponsible madcap, and not the wisest friend the
Marquise could have chosen.

As one of the distinguished précieuses, Madame de Sévigné
soon attracted a little court of gallants, wx m7lle honnétes gens,
as one chronicler puts it, with the exaggeration that must be
allowed for in most chronicles. These, after the fashion of the
time, had no objection to posing as the devoted gallant of a
pretty woman, and at the Foire Saint-Germain, along the Cours-
la-Reine, or in the fashionable promenade of the Luxembourg
Gardens, would gather round the lady whose society was most
pleasing to them, and, hat in hand at her carriage door, or
riding beside her on the promenade, would advertise to their
world which lady they honoured by their preference.

The Foire Saint-Germain was an institution, a feature of
Parisian life which emphasises, as much as most things, the
difference between the ‘society of that period and the society
of to-day. La Grande Mademoiselle, when she was exiled to
Saint-Fargeau for her conspicuous share in the Fronde, declared
that of all the pleasures of Paris she most regretted the Foire
Saint-Germain. The Foire began at Epiphany and ended at
Shrovetide, and for the two months it lasted the fashionable
world of Paris went there almost every evening to find amuse-
ment. All the rarities that could be procured were on sale;
valuable and dainty laces, choice perfumes, Spanish gloves,
faience, pictures, pocket looking-glasses, apricot paste, bon-bon
boxes, and other costly articles were to be bought at the Foire;
and it was the custom—a custom at which the poorer gallants
occasionally grumbled ruefully in private—for gentlemen who
accompanied a lady to the Foire to buy her any trifle she most
desired as a “fairing.” But then the trifles of the Foire were so
expensive! A set of lace collar and cuffs, English point it is
true, cost six louis, and the other bagatelles were proportion-
ately dear. There were shows, of course; lions, performing
dogs, two-headed wonders ; and Madame de Sévigné mentions
having been to the Foire to see a “Monster Woman”; raffling
was carried on at almost every shop, and the gambling, dancing,
and drinking saloons were always well attended. There was,
too, the excitement of going in masks and dominos when the
THE COURS-LA-REINE 51

opera or play was over. It would scarcely have been convenable
for the Marquises, Comtes, and Ducs, and their ladies, to have
rubbed elbows with the Parisian crowd in usual recognisable garb ;
so the liveries of their servants and carriages were of a uniform,
non-committal grey, no distinctive heraldic bearings were in
evidence, and from behind the disguise of the /oup or black
velvet mask—a fashion brought from Italy—ladies and
their gallants might look on, and join in the diversions of
the multitude, or prosecute intrigues, without the least fear of
detection.

The Cours-la-Reine was a meeting-ground of a totally
different character. The name, affixed to the wall of a street
to-day, even though some avenues of trees still remain, gives
very little suggestion of this superb promenade, which, bounded
by the meadows and woods of the Champs Elysées on one
side and the Seine on the other, extended from the heart of
Paris to the village of Chaillot. It consisted of four fine avenues
of trees, planted some years before by Marie de Medici, with a
grand circular sweep in the centre, and a superb gateway at each
end, Day after day—from Toussaint, when the winter Parisian
season began, to the de//e saison commencing in May or June,
when the Court went to Fontainebleau and most of the wealthy
inhabitants of Paris retired to their country houses—all the
fashionable world of Paris drove daily along the Cours after
the midday dinner till supper, to see and to be seen. No grey
liveries were visible here; the carriages were generally rather
small and open, lined with velvet and silk of brilliant hues,
gilded and decorated with armorial bearings or fantastic devices ;
and the ladies, as was natural, donned their most elegant bonnets
and becoming costumes. The gentlemen sometimes drove in
carriages also, or rode on horses with gay trappings ; and with
their embroidered costumes, their plumed hats, their long curls
worn in graceful Cavalier fashion, they gave a gallant touch of
vivacity and movement to the brilliant scene as they rode by the
side of this or that lady, or left her to greet a new-comer.
What a scene of grace and elegance, of animated life and colour,
was this gay procession! Here was the bold and handsome
Duc de Beaufort, who was the darling of the Parisian fishwives,
and, said Cardinal de Retz, “thought and spoke like them!”
52 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Here was the Prince de Marsillac, later to be known as the
Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and to be chiefly remembered by his
bitter Maximes, conspicuously attentive to the lovely young
Duchesse de Longueville; there was Gondi, the Coadjutor,
giving no hint of the ambitions which were seething in his bold
and clever brain, and which were presently to come to such
terrible fruition; the Prince de Conti, deformed, but with a
handsome head, a witty and sperituel mind; that sparkling
brunette the Duchesse de Chatillon, and the scheming Duchesse
de Chevreuse—all so soon to be linked together in the intrigues
of the Fronde. The carriage of Gaston d’Orléans appears, and
all traffic stops, for this handsome, treacherous prince is Mon-
sieur, the uncle of the boy-king. But Gaston has gracious
manners ; he is, besides, terribly afraid of a crush, and he calls
out in some agitation, “Pray do not stop, gentlemen; keep on,
keep on!” and the carriages move on slowly again, and badinage
and conversation is renewed. Or the Grande Mademoiselle, his
tall, pretty daughter appears, and thoroughly enjoys the move-
ment of deference and admiration her coming produces, while
she bows with the condescending grace and royal air which
makes her one of the most popular members of the reigning
family.

Among the gallants who paid frequent court to the young
Marquise de Sévigné was the Comte de Lude, a handsome,
fashionable young “&égant in whose attentions she found a
most seductive flattery. He was a good dancer, a wit who
could pay back her own clever speeches in the same light
coin, who could whisper dainty nothings in the most charming
fashion in the world, who had, in fact, every art of society, and,
in addition, one that must have been peculiarly his own—he
could melt into tears quite naturally when he was wooing the
lady of the hour! Madame de Sévigné had a perfectly friendly
and frank liking for this fascinating cavalier, and years later,
when he was a Duke, and Grand Master of Artillery, her
daughter, who had heard much of the Duc de Lude, told her
laughingly one day, that “her pen was always cut to write
wonders of the Grand Master.” Madame de Sévigné cheer-
fully admitted the soft suggestion, and once, when talking of
chocolate, she writes gaily: “The Grand Master, who used to
MADAME DE SEVIGNE’S ADMIRERS 53

live upon it, has become its declared enemy ; judge, then, whether
I can be its friend!”

There was the Comte de Vassé, too, one of her husband’s
friends, who had already made some noise in the polite world
of Paris by a gallant adventure which ended in a notorious duel.
But Madame de Sévigné’s perfect rectitude of conduct was proof
against the temptations that beset her on all sides at this peril-
ous period of her life, when, in the early twenties, new to Parisian
ways, and extraordinarily attractive, she was left so much alone
by her husband among a society that boasted openly of its
conquests.

Segrais, the poet, who was a gentleman in the household of
Mademoiselle, in addressing some verses to her, finishes with
this testimony: “ But what have I said? Do I not know that
with you one loses all and gains nothing!”

The friend of her girlhood at Livry, the hunchback Saint-
Pavin, sometimes met her at the Hétel de Rambouillet, or on
Fridays in summer, when she always drove from Paris to see ©
the Bien-Bon, she would meet him at the Abbaye. So charming
was this weekly reunion of her new friends from Paris with
those old and valued friends of her girlhood, that Saint-Pavin,
with his ever-ready pen, once wrote a prayer in ten lines, which
may be compressed into three: “Lord, of all the gifts and
blessings which Thou hast bestowed upon me, I entreat Thee
to multiply the Fridays, and I will willingly forego all the
rest.”

Another gay and witty companion was the young Abbé de
Montreuil, who was always showing his white teeth in laughter,
and whose title of abbé brought him a satisfactory income
for which he performed no duties. An abbé was the most
privileged and irresponsible of beings: he had all the advan-
tages of belonging to the Church, which sometimes included a
fine revenue, with none of the drawbacks of being a priest. We
see by one of the Abbé de Montreuil’s letters to the Marquise
how pleasantly familiar was his intercourse with her; we learn
incidentally, also, that it was about this time that her husband
was made Lieutenant de Roi de Fougéres, a small town in
Brittany, not far from Les Rochers, with a grand old castle
of which there are only the dilapidated remains to-day.
54 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“As your merit will not allow you to remain long in any
place without its being known,” writes the Abbé, “it is reported
that you are in Paris. I do not know how to believe it; it is
one of those things that I most earnestly desire, and therefore
it cannot be true. I send, however, to know if it is true, so
that, if such be the case, I may no longer be ill. This will not
be the first miracle you have performed; in your illustrious
race they are performed from mother to son. You know that
Madame de Chantal was greatly given to them, and all the
honest people who see and hear you, agree that Monsieur her
son, who was your father, performed a great miracle. I beg
you then, if you have returned, not to keep the news of it from
me, so that I may have the pleasure of being quite well and
coming to see you. It is a favour which I believe I deserve as
much as formerly, since I am as giddy and wild as ever, and
still say things as much out of place. I am forgetting that if
I am not changed you may be, and that, instead of the mono-
syllabic letter which I received from you last year, in which
there was only ‘yes, you may send me one of the same length
in which there will be only ‘no.’ . . . I am, with all the serious-
ness and respect of which I am capable (the first is not great,
the second is much)—Your very humble servant,

“DE MONTREUIL

“P.S.—I have forgotten to put Madame in my letter, and
as you are now Lieutenante de Roi de Fougéres it is a great
omission. Here are three then, distribute them as you wish:
Madame, Madame, Madame.”

But of all the men who crowded round the witty young
Marquise, eager for her smiles, her gay speeches, her trifling
marks of favour, no one was more dangerous than her cousin
Roger, the Comte de Bussy. There was a singular affinity
between these two gifted people, but it was much more an
affinity of intellect than of mind or heart. The one was incap-
able of a mean or dishonourable action, was loyal and loving to
her friends, with a fine moral discrimination between right and
wrong; while Bussy showed himself lacking in every one of
these qualities. But neither time nor adversity had yet tested
his character and publicly proved his baseness, when he was
THE BIRTH OF CHARLES DE SEVIGNE 55

coolly and with definite purpose striving to win the affections
of his beautiful cousin. To her eyes, as to the eyes of the
world, he appeared a handsome soldier, accomplished, witty,
brave, even though Maréchal Turenne cruelly said that “ Bussy
was the best officer in the army—for writing chansons.” He
had been in the King’s service from the age of sixteen, and, by
the time he was twenty was a colonel, commanding his father’s
regiment. His personal advantages, too, were considerable, and
could not fail to have some influence with a woman who was
peculiarly susceptible to the power of beauty; but his greatest
advantage was the opportunity of seeing her privately in her
own home, with all the privileges of a near relative. She was
proud, too, of her cousin, with a sisterly pride, because he was
of her blood, her nearest relative on her father’s side; she
makes frequent mention of the Rabutins, and we easily perceive
that, besides having a natural delight in her noble race, she
recognises that it is from the Rabutins that both she and her
cousin inherit that strain of mingled wit, gaiety, and irrespon-
sible wildness, which she calls Rabutinage.

One of her earliest known letters to her cousin is dated
1648, from Les Rochers, shortly after the birth of her son
Charles de Sévigné. It is much too frank to be quoted to-day,
for in France as in England, two centuries and more ago, it was
customary to be quite outspoken on the elemental subjects of
life; indeed, Madame de Sévigné in after years discussed with
her daughter subjects that few people would think of writing in
a letter to-day, for the Marquise held the opinion that every-
thing might be a subject for conversation so long as it was
treated in the right way.

After giving Bussy the news of the birth of her son, and
scolding him for not writing before, she ends thus—

“... But enough of concealing my tenderness, my dear
cousin, nature is more powerful than policy. I had intended
to scold you for your laziness from the beginning of my letter
to the end, but it is too great an effort, and I am obliged to tell
you that M. de Sévigné and I love you well, and often speak of
the pleasure we should have in being with you.”

In answering this letter Bussy, tells his cousin, “I envy
M. de Sévigné more than any man in the world,” with a good
56 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

deal more in the light, gallant, somewhat free strain in which
at that time, and indeed till Madame de Sévigné found means
of stopping it, the Comte always wrote to her.

While Madame de Sévigné was spending the summer at
Les Rochers with her husband and two baby children, her
cousin Bussy was engaged in a most daring and scandalous
enterprise, which gives a faint indication of the insolent power
and audacity of the nobles of seventeenth-century France,
which, notwithstanding all Richelieu’s efforts, had been as yet
only scotched, not destroyed. It was not till Louis XIV came
to the full power of his manhood that, by his extraordinary
force of will and his unequalled egoism, he made himself the
sun and centre of the social system of France, round which
the nobles revolved and looked for recognition and life, know-
ing well that any attempt at the old feudal lawlessness and
independence would be promptly crushed.

The Comte de Bussy, who had married just a year before
Madame de Sévignéd, lost his wife in 1646. After two years
of widowhood he was now looking out for a second wife
who should advance his fortunes. His paternal estates were
impoverished, and the gay life he led, with high play, and all
the other expenses incidental to his rank as a young cavalry
officer of noble birth, did nothing to improve his prospects.
But Bussy was exacting. His handsome person, distinguished
name, and long ancestry were considered —by him!—a fair
exchange for beauty, wealth, and youth, and if possible good
birth also. But as even an impoverished noble cannot have
everything, he was willing to forego this latter, perhaps because
he knew that other possessors of noble names would not barter
them for empty titles sexs wealth and lands.

He frequently talked over these matters with his uncle,
Hughes de Rabutin, the Grand Prieur du Temple, with whom
he usually stayed when he came to Paris, and it chanced that
while he was staying with the Grand Prieur at his country
house near Sens, he heard of a lady who seemed by report to
fulfil to a marvel the chief conditions he demanded.

The affair was absurdly romantic, but Bussy, who tells the
shameful story himself, appeared to look on it as a common-
place matter. The lands adjoining those of the Grand Prieur
A CHARMING YOUNG WIDOW 57

belonged to a wealthy bourgeois named Le Bocage, and, as a
near neighbour, Bussy became friendly with the old man, who,
knowing that he was looking for a rich young wife, told him
one day that he had heard of a widow, beautiful, young, of a
pious and angelic sweetness, and, most important qualification,
worth several millions! He did not know the young lady
himself, said Le Bocage, but a friend of his, Pére Clément, was
her confessor, in whom she placed considerable confidence,
and he thought that by his means a marriage could be
brought about.

Pére Clément was consulted, and readily consented to do
his best in the affair. He was, in fact, a worthless priest who
had no other object than to extort money from Bussy, and no
stage-villain could more effectively have played his part. As
a preliminary, he told Bussy at what hour he would be able to
see the pretty widow in church; and Bussy, who saw her twice,
thought her superlatively lovely. He neither spoke to her, nor
even approached her; but Pére Clément assured him that the
lady was pleased with his appearance, but that she could do
nothing without the consent of her relatives.

Every word of this was fabrication. The young Madame
de Miramion, so far from thinking of Bussy as a possible
husband, had only an overwhelming desire to devote herself
to the service of God. She had been married at sixteen to
Jean de Beauharnais, Seigneur de Miramion, a handsome, de-
voted young husband, who lived but six months after their
marriage. Heartbroken at his death, the young girl would fain
have buried her grief in the cloister, had it not been for the
frail baby daughter who was born some time after its father’s
death. The first two years of her widowhood she had spent
in the most austere retirement, dividing her days between the
altar and the cradle; and now, at the age of nineteen, her
friends were hoping to bring about a marriage between her
and M. Caumartin, although her supreme desire still was to
become a veligieuse, a desire that nothing prevented her from
fulfilling but maternal duty and tenderness.

But of all this Bussy knew nothing, save the garbled and
false accounts which Pére Clément periodically gave him. This
latter was always demanding money, and, in all, Bussy paid
53 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

him about two thousand crowns for his services. After much
circumlocution, and a tissue of falsehoods, the priest assured
Bussy that the relatives would never consent to Madame de
Miramion’s marriage with him, but that the widow herself was
quite willing, and the only alternative was to carry her off by force!

Bussy was not at all startled by the proposal. It may
possibly have been his own, but in any case he felt confident
that the young lady would be delighted to become the Comtesse
de Bussy, and be fully compensated for any inconvenience the
abduction might cause her by the privilege of being presented
at Court, where she had hitherto not been admitted.

A fact that throws in higher light the social disorder of the
period, is that the Prince de Condé, in whose army Bussy held
his commission, and to whom he confided the scandalous affair,
promised the Comte his protection, and even offered to help by
giving him a mission in Paris, and to place him in command of
Bellegarde, one of his strongholds in Burgundy, where he might
retire after the abduction! Backed as he was by this powerful
prince, Bussy felt fresh confidence, and was reckless as to con-
sequences. He laid his plans with all the forethought of which
his clever, unscrupulous mind was capable, and arranged every-
thing to ensure success. By the aid of spies he learned that
Madame de Miramion was staying at Issy with her late
husband’s grandfather, and that on the 7th of August she
intended to visit the convent at Mont Valérien for the purposes
of devotion.

Bussy posted four relays of horses along the road from Saint-
Cloud to the Chateau de Launay, belonging to the Grand
Prieur, about twenty-five leagues distant, where he had gathered
a band of armed gentlemen and retainers to help him in case of
trouble. Near Paris another strong escort of armed men, among
whom was his brother Christophe de Rabutin, awaited the
passing of Madame de Miramion’s carriage. The young widow,
thinking only of her devotions, left Issy at seven o’clock in the
morning, accompanied by her mother-in-law and some of her
waiting-women.

Just as the carriage had crossed the bridge on the way from
Saint-Cloud to Mont Valérien, it was suddenly stopped by two
cavaliers, who presented themselves at the door to lower the
A DARING ABDUCTION 59

apron, or leather curtains, which shut them in. Madame de
Miramion, thinking they were robbers, tried to repulse them by
striking at them, and calling “ Help! Help!” with all her strength,
Her cries and efforts were alike useless. One of the gentlemen,
finding they could not lower the apron, drew his sword to cut
the strings, and the young widow, with frantic courage, tried to
snatch away his weapon as a defence, only succeeding, however,
in cutting her hands and covering them with blood.

Resistance was useless. Bussy had six horses harnessed to
Madame Miramion’s carriage, and the cavalcade trotted off,
armed men on each side of the carriage door guarding the help-
less women within. When they stopped at inns for fresh horses,
Madame de Miramion implored people to help her, but her hands
covered with blood, the disorder of her appearance after her
struggles to get free, and her mental agony, gave her such a wild,
distraught look, that when Bussy and his gentlemen assured the
people that it was a mad woman whom they were taking away
to put under restraint, they willingly believed them.

At length they reached the Chateau de Launay, and at the
sight of the two hundred armed men awaiting them in the sombre
courtyard the young widow was almost frantic with terror. She
utterly refused to leave her carriage, to eat, or to have her maid
taken from her. Fortunately one of the gentlemen, a Chevalier
of Malta, touched by her distress and helplessness, assured her
of his desire to serve her, and, gaining her confidence in a slight
degree, induced her to enter the chateau.

Then Bussy came to see her, but of him she felt the utmost
horror and loathing. He talked of his devotion, and mentioned
marriage, but she swore a solemn oath that no power on earth
should induce her to become his wife. This, to Bussy, was a
serious matter. Had the affair been successful, he would have
gained his fair widow and her millions ; the matter would have
caused some gossip, but he would have been a hero who had
carried off his bride for love. But now, instead of being a hero,
people would not hesitate to call him a scoundrel—there is such
a wide gulf between failure and success! To add to his concern,
news was brought to the chateau that Rubelle, the brother of
Madame de Miramion, was on his way to the castle with an
armed force of six hundred men.
60 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

He quickly decided to send her away to the town, and the
Chevalier of Malta accompanied her carriage, but even he
did not think it prudent to enter Sens. Her brother, M. de
Rubelle, soon discovered her at an inn, but the poor young widow
was so exhausted by the excitements and terrors of her extra-
ordinary adventure, that she fell dangerously ill, and had to be re-
moved to Paris for medical advice. Her life was in the greatest
danger, and the sacraments were even administered to her;
but fortunately for Bussy she recovered, though only after a long
and painful convalescence; when, with a magnanimity that the
Comte did not deserve, she begged her friends to deal leniently
with him on condition that he should never attempt to see her
again,
CHAPTER VI

A visit to the Bishop of Chalons—The Marquis and his wife return to Paris—
The beginnings of the Fronde—The flight of the Court to Saint-Germain—Paris
besieged by the Queen—‘‘ Mazarins” and ‘‘Frondeurs”— The Duchesse de
Longueville at the Hétel de Ville

HE family and friends of Madame de Miramion were
naturally greatly incensed at the Comte de Bussy’s
audacious conduct, and had it not been for the powerful inter-
cession of his patron, the Great Condé, things would not have
gone very well with him. While it was still doubtful whether
he would be pursued by the law, he went to visit his uncle,
Jacques de Neuchéze, the Bishop of Chalon, where the Marquis
and Marquise de Sévigné were spending the autumn with their
children. This bishop, uncle to both the cousins, had, it will be
remembered, officiated at the marriage of Madame de Sévigné ;
he was also godfather to her daughter, and he now gave a cordial
welcome to his young relatives at his beautiful old Abbey of
Ferriéres on the banks of the Loing. Here the days passed
pleasantly enough, and we know that they had excellent enter-
tainment, for Bussy declared that Crochet, the Bishop’s cook,
made such good soups that they gave him a distaste for all
others. The Comte, doubtless, was glad to escape for a while
from Paris, to avoid the mockery of his friends at his failure, and
the scorn of those who were disgusted at his conduct. It was
delightful, too, to be with his young cousins, both as gay and
witty as himself, and who, whatever they may have thought of
his disgraceful enterprise, were too loyal to their relative to say
much on the subject. But he had hardly been with them a
week when a letter from his mother recalled him to Paris,
urging him to come at once to settle some business in connec-
tion with the abduction of Madame de Miramion. Bussy left
this pleasant company most unwillingly, only to find that his
62 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

recall had been quite unnecessary. Some time after he wrote to
both his cousins, who were still at Ferriéres : “ If you do not soon
return to Paris I shall come to find you, even though my affairs
here will not be settled till after Christmas.” It was then the
15th of November 1648, and they must have come back to
Paris very shortly after this, for on the 11th of December
Madame de Sévigné was at the Parlement in the “ Lantern,”
with her relative the celebrated lawyer Olivier d’Ormesson,
listening to a case in which they were both interested, when the
députés des enquétes came ina body into the Grand Chamber and
demanded a General Assembly.

This scene was probably Madame de Sévigné’s first actual
experience of the Fronde, the “ Ladies’ War,” as it has been
lightly called in derision, but which, nevertheless, for four long
years was to divide France into violently opposed factions, to
cause bitter family dissensions, and to bring untold misery and
bloodshed throughout the kingdom. While Madame de Sévigné
had been staying at the peaceful old Abbey of Ferriéres in the
autumn of 1648, the Fronde had commenced with the one or
two dramatic little “curtain-raisers,” so to speak, by which the
long and bloody drama of the civil war was ushered in.

Since the death of Louis XIII in 1643, the affairs of the
State had prospered marvellously. It was “the good regency
when court and town thought of nothing but pleasure and
love,’ wrote Saint Evremond. “The Queen is so good,” was
a phrase on everyone’s lips, and the handsome little King,
whenever he appeared in public, was idolised by the people.
To add to the general sense of security and triumph, the Great
Condé, even before his father’s death, while he was yet only
the Duc d’Enghien, had gained for France such astounding
victories that they could only be compared with those of the
ancient world. But, underlying all this apparent prosperity,
there was a growing discontent among the masses. The wars,
though they added glory to the name of France, drained the
nation of men and resources. Paris was filled with disabled
soldiers, who, with no provision made for their needs, and
maddened by their misery and want, helped to foster dis-
affection among the people. Revolt was in the air of Europe.
Cromwell’s troops were every day more victorious in England;
DISAFFECTION IN PARIS 63

Charles I was in prison, and his Queen and her two sons had
been hospitably received by their royal relatives in Paris; and
the presence of these victims of the Revolution in England
probably had a share in turning the thoughts of the Parisians
towards rebellion.

The treasury of France was empty. Mazarin, the humble,
smooth-tongued Italian, “who reverenced no virtue and hated
no vice,” who ruled the haughty Anne of Austria by his
lightest word, had bribed, quite openly, with honours and
emoluments, people of all sorts and conditions who had joined
his party, and had spent in advance four years’ income of the
treasury of France. He had contrived, also, at the same time,
to amass an enormous and shameful private fortune during the
few years he had been minister in fact, though not in name.
The natural result of this policy was a frequent and oppressive
taxation, which closely affected all classes; and when, in 1648,
fresh duties were imposed on the supplies entering Paris,
Parlement assembled, under its venerable First President
Matthew Molé, and refused to register the new decrees, It
determined also to check this growing abuse of excessive
taxation, and made an order, called Avrét a’ Union, which
summoned its members to the Grand Council Chamber for
the purpose of deliberating on State affairs, and of reforming
the Constitution.

Mazarin was alarmed at such unheard-of assertion on the
part of Parlement, which by this action went far beyond its
privileges. The Court party professed a boundless contempt
for “those square-capped devils” the men of the law, and
Mazarin forbade them to assemble. But these were men of
intelligence and education who had a real grievance, and who
were determined, if possible, to have it redressed. Matthew
Molé, Blancmesnil, Charton, and Broussel held meetings,
harangued and argued, and the latter “talked like a Roman
of the liberties and rights of the people.”

Anne of Austria was furious at this dissatisfaction among
the men of the long robe. At every fresh act of assertion on
the part of Parlement she became more angry, more eager to
punish them for daring to oppose her will, In August the
arrest of Broussel had been followed by the famous Jour des
64 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Barricades, and disaffection had been simmering all through
the autumn. The popular hatred of Mazarin was increasing
daily ; Parlement was growing more arrogant, more insistent
in its demands; and the Queen Regent, more haughty at each
encroachment on royal prerogatives, more furious at every
fresh insult to Mazarin—who, it was commonly believed, was
her lover or her husband—was maturing a plan of punishment
which should appal the good people of Paris, and soon reduce
them to abject obedience. Few, very few, were in the secret.
On the Eve of the Epiphany, while her confidential ministers
were making ready for the great coup, Anne talked and laughed
among her ladies, as usual; and one of them, Madame de
Motteville, gives us a charming little picture of how this Twelfth-
night of 1649 was kept at the Court of France.

“Qn the 5th of January, the Eve of the Epiphany, the
evening so famous that it will be talked of for ages to come,
I went to the Queen, with whom I was accustomed to pass the
greater part of my life. I found her in her little room, tran-
quilly watching the King playing cards, and leaning carelessly
against the corner of the table as if she were thinking of
nothing but of what she was looking at. ...To amuse the
‘King, the Queen cut up a cake, and as my sister, Madame
de Brégy, and I were the only ladies present, she did us the
honour of making us share it with the King and herself. We
made her the Twelfth-night Queen, because the bean was
found in the Virgin’s slice,and to make merry she sent fora
bottle of hippocras, which we drank before her ; and having no
other purpose than to amuse ourselves, we forced the Queen
to drink a little also. Then, wishing to fulfil the obligations
which the extravagant follies of the day demanded, we cried out
‘The Queen drinks!’ We supped as usual in her dressing-
room, and made good cheer without the slightest uneasiness.”

Shortly after, the Queen retired, and apparently everything
went on at the Palace as usual. But at three o’clock on that
cold January morning the King, and the little Monsieur his
brother, were awakened, hastily dressed, and taken to the
carriage which awaited them at the garden gate of the Palais
Royal, where the Queen joined them, They drove to the
Cours-la-Reine, which was the rendezvous for those in the
A STRANGE COURT PROCESSION 65

secret, and surely that magnificent promenade never witnessed
a stranger sight than the assembling, in the weird, chilly
moonlight of a winter morning, of the Princes of the Blood,
the Court officials, the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, all,
in fact, who were of any importance in the political party of
the Queen’s adherents. One by one carriages drove up with
occupants who were more or less sleepy, more or less annoyed
that the rendezvous should be at such an unseasonable hour.
There was Gaston d’Orléans, with Madame his second wife
and her baby daughters—the former much troubled at such
an unheard-of expedition; La Grande Mademoiselle, Gaston’s
eldest and imperious daughter, not very pleased at having to get
up at such a cold and early hour; and the dowager Princesse
de Condé, who only at the last moment had been wakened
by her son the Prince de Condé, and consequently was angry
and annoyed at not having been told the secret sooner. There
was, however, no time to scold, so, taking her daughter-in-law
and the little Duc d’Enghien, then five years old, she also drove
to the Cours-la-Reine. All the Princes of the Blood and their
families were present save one member, the Duchesse de
Longueville. But no one at this juncture thought her absence
ominous. When she had been urged to leave the town with
the Queen and Court, she had sent back a plausible message
that the state of her health would not allow her to bear the
fatigue of travelling; she was confident, however, that the
good citizens of Paris would do her no harm.

The royal cavalcade started on its way to Saint-Germain-
en-Laye, and reached there about five o’clock in the morning.
Everyone was cold, sleepy, and supremely uncomfortable in
the great palace, which was almost bare of furniture. Cardinal
Mazarin had sent two or three small beds from Paris a few
days previously, and these were made ready for the Queen,
the King, the little Monsieur, and Cardinal Mazarin. La
Grande Mademoiselle was fortunate; she slept on a mattress
in an attic with no glass to the windows; but the Duchesse
d’Orléans, the Princesse de Condé, and most of the others of
the party, were thankful for a heap of straw to lie on. Even
this presently became so scarce and precious that none was
to be had at any price.

5
66 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“T will starve Paris into submission,” the Queen declared
triumphantly. And the Great Condé, well versed in the
tactics of war, assured her that it could be besieged and taken
in a fortnight.

Paris, waking up to find itself bereft of Queen, King, and
Court, was for a short time in a panic of alarm. But the
Coadjutor of Paris, Madame de Sévigné’s relative by marriage,
now came into prominence as the leader of the Frondeurs,
and soon reassured his flock. Parlement took counsel with
the Coadjutor, the Duc de Beaufort, and other leading
Frondeurs, and, as a first step, levied a tax on all who could
pay it, and in this way collected an immense sum of money
for provisions and arms. The Queen, however, sent out a decree
forbidding all villages round Paris to carry provisions of any
kind into the city by land or water, intending to blockade Paris
by river as well as by road; but as the farmers of the sur-
rounding villages obtained such good prices for their produce
in Paris, the besieged town experienced no difficulty on that
point.

Such a general and disastrous upheaval could not fail to
affect every person in Paris, and it became a necessity for each
one to declare for one party or the other, to announce himself
as a “Mazarin” or a “Frondeur.” The hatred of the multitude
for Mazarin had grown to such a point, that all their grievances
were identified with him, and the whole Court party was vilified
under his name; while the Frondeurs took their title from a
group of idle youths and loafers who hung about the confines
of the town, flinging stones at each other or at peaceable
passers-by. yonder means literally “to fling,” or “to censure,”
and when the word was used by one of the Parlement it was
taken up immediately by their party, and used as a catchword
with the customary popular frenzy; and gloves, hats, ribbons,
and canes, to be quite fashionable, were all presently labelled
in the shop windows @ la Fronde,

Madame de Sévigné and her husband were naturally on
the side of the Frondeurs. The Coadjutor of Paris, of the
powerful de Retz family, was the unscrupulous, intriguing soul
of the Fronde, and as he was the head of their house, they, as
a matter of course, belonged to his party. At this period the
A PROCESSION OF FRONDEURS 67

strife centred round the lovely Duchesse de Longueville, who
for the sake of the Prince de Marsillac, son of the Duc de
la Rochefoucauld, broke with her family, and contributed by
her powerful influence to keep alive the flame of civil war.
Her sway over her own family and friends was so great, that,
as Madame de Motteville said, “her approval was looked on
as the greatest blessing.”

Three days after the Queen and Court had left the capital,
the Duchesse sent a message to her husband, and to her
younger brother the Prince de Conti, asking them both to
join her in Paris. These two men were completely under the
dominion of this lovely and clever woman, and had no thought
but to obey her; knowing, however, that they would be followed
by the execrations of the whole Court for deserting the Queen,
they secretly left Saint-Germain in the evening, and reached
the gates of Paris at midnight. Here they were met by a
torchlight procession, at the head of which were the Coadjutor
and the Duc de Beaufort, while the greater part of Paris
shouted itself hoarse in welcoming a Prince of the Blood among
their leaders.

The Parisians, however, found it almost too difficult to
believe that a prince and princess were actually identifying
themselves with the popular interest; it was unnatural; such
good news could not be true, and they suspected an intrigue
by which they would be betrayed. It was therefore necessary
to gain their entire confidence, and the leaders soon devised
a plan which appealed with immense force to the popular
imagination, and assured the good citizens that these royal
personages were in sympathy with the Frondeurs. The Duc
de Longueville went to Parlement and told those who had
assembled there that Madame his wife would, with Madame
de Bouillon, take up her residence at the Hétel de Ville!
Such condescension was unheard-of! It brought tears to the
eyes of the cétoyennes, and vivas of delight from their husbands.
Years after, when the Coadjutor (then Cardinal de Retz) was
writing his memoirs, he gave this little pen-picture of the
circumstance, which shows that he was fully aware of the value
of the incident as a stroke of policy—

“Tmagine, I pray you,” he wrote, “these two ladies upon the
68 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

steps of the Hétel de Ville, the more beautiful because they
appeared to be carelessly dressed, though this was not really
the case. Each held in her arms one of her children, who were
as beautiful as their mothers. The Gréve was crowded with
people up to the roofs; all the men gave shouts of joy, and all
the women shed tears of tenderness. I threw five hundred
pistoles from the windows of the Hétel de Ville.”

The room of the Duchesse de Longueville became the
council chamber, as it were, for the leaders of the Fronde.
Here came the Frondeur nobles, the Duc de Bouillon, the
Duc d’Elbceuf, the Marquis de Noirmoutier, and, to her the
most important of all, the Prince de Marsillac. The magistrates
and town officials came here also, and the details of the pro-
gramme of the Fronde party were all discussed and settled only
with her approval.

In the midst of all this intrigue Madame de Longueville’s
youngest child was born on 29th January 1649. The next day
she paid a high compliment to Messieurs of the Parlement,
which delighted the Parisians, She begged President le Féron,
in the name of the Parlement, to act as godfather to her little
son in conjunction with the Duchesse de Bouillon; and the baby
received the name of Charles-Paris, in honour of his birth-place.

The men of the Sévigné family had their part to play in
the Fronde, though it must be confessed that it was not per-
formed with distinction. The Duc de Longueville hastened
to his province of Normandy to rouse it to rebellion against
the Regent, and the young Marquis de Sévigné joined the
expedition. They did not accomplish much in any way, but
it was quite a pleasant campaign, and Saint-Evremond, who
wrote a delicate satire on the occasion, records that the Marquis
de Sévigné had the honour of affording much amusement to the
Duc de Longueville by his clever buffoonery.

Renaud de Sévigné, an uncle of the Marquis, was scarcely
more fortunate in the matter of military laurels. He was sent
to command a regiment raised by the Coadjutor, and, because
of his title of Archbishop of Corinth, it was called the
“ Corinthians.” When this regiment was badly beaten by the
Royalists, the latter called them in derision the “ First of the
Corinthians,” which amused even the Frondeurs themselves.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE AMONG THE FRONDEURS 69

They were very light-hearted, these Frondeurs and Royalists.
Everything was a subject for jest and biting epigram, for
chansons and witty madrigals. The Coadjutor employed the
poet Marigny to use his poetic gift in showering clever insults
on the enemy, anonymously of course. His muse, one is
inclined to think, must have been too hard-worked at this
period, or he would never have sent such wretched rhymes to
Madame de Sévigné as a New Year’s greeting —

** Adorable et belle marquise,
Plus belle mille fois qu’un satin blanc tout neuf;

Au premier jour de l’an mil six cent quarante-neuf,

Je vous présenterais de bon cceur ma franchise, . . .”

However, since they were sent with such good intentions, she
probably did not criticise them very severely.

Madame de Sévigné was among the Frondeurs who paid
court to the Duchesse de Longueville, and joined in the gaieties
that went on in Paris while each side was preparing for war.
The Comte de Bussy was in the army of the Prince de Condé,
commanding a company of light horse, just outside Paris on the
plain of Saint-Denis. In February he wrote the following letter
to his cousin—

“TI have long hesitated to write to you, not knowing whether
you had become my enemy, or whether you were still my good
cousin; whether to send you a lackey or a trumpeter. But
having remembered once hearing you blame the brutality of
Horace for having said to his brother-in-law that he would
no longer recognise him after war had been declared between
their republics, I believed that the interests of your party would
not prevent you from reading my letters; and as for me, except
in what concerns the service of the King my master, I am your
very humble servant.

“Do not think, my dear cousin, that this is the end of my
letter ; I wish to say a few words to you concerning our war.

“TI find that keeping guard is very cold work. It is true
that wood costs nothing here, and that we can live well at a
cheap rate. With all that, it is a most wearisome business, and
without the hope that you would fall to my share at the sack
of Paris I should be tempted to desert ; but that prospect gives
me patience.
70 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“T send my servant for news of you, and to bring from Paris
my carriage horses, in the name of our uncle the Grand Prieur.
Adieu, my dear cousin.”

Bussy, however, was not destined to see his carriage horses
again. Finding that the efforts of his servant were useless, he
begged Madame de Sévigné to use her influence in having
them sent to him; and at the end of his letter he says, “If
Cardinal Mazarin had a cousin as charming as you in Paris,
I am very much deceived if he would not make peace at all
costs; and I would do the same, for upon my faith I love you
well, Adieu.”

Madame de Sévigné did her best to get Bussy’s carriage
horses sent to him, but the Frondeurs knew too well to whom
they belonged, and would not give them up. The Comte de
Bussy, making the best of his loss to his cousin, assured her
that he was consoled for the loss of his horses by the friendship
she showed in trying to have them sent to him.

From a letter written by Madame de Sévigné in the
beginning of the war, to Lenet, the friend who had sent
her the rhyming letter to Les Rochers in conjunction with
Bussy, the same Lenet with whom she laughed so much in
her youthful days, we learn what the Marquise thought of the
war, though at this period its miseries and horrors had barely
begun—

**Paris, March 25, 1649

“MONSIEUR,—You must permit me to wish for peace, for,
with your permission, I think an hour’s conversation is worth
fifty letters. When you come here, and I have the honour of
seeing you, I shall compel you to agree with me that war is
a foolish thing. I passionately desire it to end, and to remain
in your good graces, which I hold in particular esteem, and am
with truth, Monsieur, your very humble and obedient servant,

“M. DE RABUTIN-CHANTAL ”

Notwithstanding her passionate desire, and that of many
thousands more, the war was far from its end, and before that
longed-for event, Madame de Sévigné was to experience a
private grief and affliction that for the time caused her to regard
the war as of quite secondary importance.
CHAPTER VII

The ‘‘ Princes’ Fronde”—The Sévignés give a supper-party to the Duchesse
de Chevreuse—The affartement of the crippled poet Scarron—The Marquis de
Sévigné and Ninon de I’Enclos—An intercepted letter—The Marquis conducts his
wife to the solitude of Les Rochers—The diamond earrings—The Marquis de
Sévigné is killed in a duel

**Camp OF MoONTROND, /uly 2, 1650

“ JT HAVE at last declared myself for Monsieur le Prince, and

I may say to you, my fair cousin, that it has not been
without great reluctance, for, against my King, I am serving
a Prince who does not care for me. It is true the position he
is in fills me with pity. I shali therefore serve him while he is in
prison as if he loved me, and if ever he comes out, I shall return
him my lieutenancy and leave him at once.

“What do you say to such sentiments, Madame? Do you
not think them grand and noble?

“Let us write often to each other, the Cardinal will know
nothing of it; and at the worst, if he sends you a /ettre de cachet,
it is a fine thing for a woman of twenty to be mixed up in
affairs of state. The celebrated Madame de Chevreuse did not
begin earlier. As for myself, I declare to you, my charming
cousin, that I would willingly cause you to commit a crime, no
matter what.

“When I think that last year we were on different sides, and
are so still, though we have both changed, I fancy that we are
playing at prisoner’s base. However, your side is always the
best, for you never leave Paris, while I go from Saint-Denis
to Montrond, and I am afraid I shall end by going from
Montrond to the devil. . . .”

From this entirely characteristic letter of the Comte de

Bussy, written a month after his second marriage, we gather
7
72 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

what an amazing change had occurred in the affairs of the
Fronde in one short year. In its beginning, Anne of Austria
had besieged Paris, hoping thus to reduce her subjects to
obedience, and the Prince de Condé had been her most loyal
and trusted commander. The Frondeurs, whether men of the
robe, bourgeoisie, or cazaille, were resisting the Queen because
they resented the crushing taxes, and hoped to be able to stipulate
for a less oppressive rule. But the nobles were not united by
this single aim; almost everyone, in fact, was occupied with
his own pet ambition, from the Prince de Marsillac, who, quite
unfairly, during his father’s lifetime demanded the honneurs
du Louvre, to the Coadjutor, who was scheming for a cardinal’s
hat.

In this network of intrigue, cohesion was impossible, but
when the Queen Regent and Court returned to Paris everyone
hoped that affairs would be amicably settled. The Prince de
Condé, however, gave great offence to the Queen by his
arrogant behaviour, and as a punishment she caused him and
his brother the Prince de Conti, with their brother-in-law the
Duc de Longueville, to be conducted to Vincennes as prisoners
of state.

A thunder-bolt from heaven would not have;seemed more
terrifying to all classes in France. The Princes of the Blood
in prison! Their sacred persons brought under the law like
mere nobles! It was incredible! inconceivable! but it was
nevertheless true, and the whole aspect of the Fronde
changed as by magic. It was now the “ Princes’ Fronde.”
The Coadjutor and his party executed a volte-face, and
were supporting the Queen and upholding her authority in
Paris; while the provinces, hating Mazarin rather than Anne
of Austria, were making war on the Crown on behalf of the
Princes, urged to rebellion by the Duchesse de Longueville
and the Princesse de Condé. The poor dowager Princesse,
broken-hearted at the indignity put upon her sons, did not long
survive their disgrace. While her sons were in prison, and her
daughter Anne, the beautiful Duchesse, was in active rebellion
against the Queen, she died in bitter loneliness, without one of
those children whom she had loved so well, to soothe her last sad
hours.
THE SEVIGNES’ SUPPER-PARTY 73

Madame de Sévigné and her husband were now both in
Paris, and, following the lead of their relative the Coadjutor,
supported the royal cause, though it must not be supposed that
there was anything approaching unity of purpose or action
among the Queen’s adherents. This party was split up into
several factions, most of which were governed by the intrigues
of the Duchesse de Montbazon, who entirely ruled the actions
of the Duc de Beaufort; the Duchesse de Chevreuse, who
dictated to Gondi; and the Duchesse de Chatillon, who was the
confidential friend of the Prince de Condé. The Fronde, indeed,
now justified its name of “ The Ladies’ War.”

Amid all this inconceivable confusion and bewildering
intrigue, the gaieties of Parisian life went on as usual, with a
licence and gay freedom that had been unknown in the days
of the “good Regency,” the time of the précieuses, and the
receptions of the Hétel de Rambouillet. Madame de Sévigné
and her husband, though neither was mixed up in political
intrigue, were, nevertheless, brought frequently into contact
with the Coadjutor’s party, and in July 1650 they gave a supper
to the Duchesse de Chevreuse, Gondi’s clever and powerful
ally, one of the most notorious women of her day. Loret has
recorded it in his curious chronicle, the Rhyming Gazette, a
diary in rhyme that he kept for Mademoiselle de Longueville,
the stepdaughter of the Duchess,

“There is a good deal of talk here,’ wrote Loret in easy
doggerel, “of a fine collation that Sévigné gave to the Duchesse
de Chevreuse four or five days ago, after their return from
driving along the Cours-la-Reine. The supper-room was well
lighted with candles, there were several pretty ladies and a good
number of gallants. It was a merry party. They ate ortolans,
they sang drinking songs; they argued excitedly, ‘no’—
‘yes’—‘no’—‘we shall see’ was repeated a hundred times,
and it is said they applauded the Fronde. Someone spilt soup ;
a silver dish was stolen, and—I know nothing more about
it!”

This rather wild supper-party was, however, a simple affair
in comparison with some of the excesses of the Fronde. All
society was disorganised ; Parisians breathed intrigue and lived in
an atmosphere of masquerade and disguises. The house of the
74 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

crippled poet Scarron was at this period one of the chief
rendezvous for the licentious and aggressive spirits of the Fronde.
All those who hated Mazarin were sure of hearing him vilified at
Scarron’s appartement in the Marais. The general hatred of the
minister was here concentrated into witty lampoons, epigrams,
and insulting street songs which sooner or later found their way
to the Pont Neuf, and were repeated with delight by the Parisian
mob.

The satyr-like host of the house in the Marais was one of
the “lions” of Paris. He was so terribly crippled that he could
not walk; so poor, that he hardly knew where to find daily
bread ; but so devoted to art, that in his greatest poverty, during
the Fronde, he ordered a picture from Nicolas Poussin—a
Bacchic subject of course! So witty that everyone—except
his victims—enjoyed the sinister sneers, the biting jests, the
wounding epigrams, that he dispensed so freely. He com-
plains that visitors came to see him “as if he were a lion ata
fair,’ but he probably did not object to this notoriety. His
guests were among the most distinguished men in Paris ; Gondi
the Coadjutor, the Duc de Lesdiguiéres, the Comte de Fiesque,
the President de Pommereul, and among many others came
the young Marquis de Sévigné. Few ladies would visit at his
house; his lack of even ordinary moral sentiments was too well-
known, but he was such a witty talker that he was frequently
carried to the houses of the ladies whose husbands visited him.
Ninon de 1’Enclos, however, who, like himself, scorned all social
conventions, was sometimes a guest at his gay and licentious
suppers, and it was here that she probably often met the young
Marquis de Sévigné,

The Marquise, it need hardly be said, was not of the number
who sought the acquaintance of Scarron, though, later, he begged
her to go and see him. She learned, however, to her sorrow
and annoyance, of the irregular life her husband was leading.
Bussy, ever since their marriage, had tried to persuade both
husband and wife that he was the entirely devoted friend of
each. As he was a near relative, some eight years older than
herself, a clever and polished man of the world, with a defer-
ential manner to women, and a persuasive tongue, the Marquise
doubtless looked upon him as a friend on whom she could rely
NINON DE L°ENCLOS 75

for safe guidance. Whenever he was in Paris during the
intervals of warfare, she begged him to use his influence with
her husband to keep him, if possible, from the low and vicious
acquaintances who were continually causing her annoyance as
well as grief, for his irregularities were no secret to the society
in which they lived.

Bussy declares in his memoirs that he did influence the
young Marquis for some time, and that through him he broke
with some of his vulgar associates; and he evidently was
entirely in his confidence, for one afternoon, during the drive
along the Cours-la-Reine, the Marquis came into Bussy’s car-
riage, and confided to him with fatuous delight that he was the
accepted lover of Ninon. Ninon! Who in Paris at that period
had not seen or heard of Ninon? Anne de |’Enclos—Ninon
is merely a charming diminutive of the sober Anne—had been
left an orphan at fifteen, and having a sufficient fortune for her
needs she had elected to live her life without any respect to
convention or morality. She was of good family, which gave
her a certain standing, though she soon lost her place in society
by her openly immoral life. But to the day of her death, at the
‘age of ninety, she had her own peculiar place in Paris. The
beautiful and dangerous courtesan was even more witty than
beautiful; and her openly avowed sentiments of free-thought
aroused more horror than her notorious life. Ninon scoffed at the
précieuses, and her wit was eagerly repeated in society. A man
once complained to her that his daughter had no memory.

“Be thankful, Monsieur,” said Ninon, “for then she cannot
quote.”

Her conversation was so gay, so witty and brilliant, that
people came in crowds to her evenings ; and though she drank
nothing intoxicating, her guests used to say that the soup got
into her head as if it had been wine.

More than once Ninon was in danger of being exiled by the
stern Anne of Austria, who, as far as she could, kept a check
on licence and immorality, but each time she was saved, either
by a witty moz¢ of her own, or by the intervention of powerful
friends. On one such occasion, when Ninon was in disgrace,
the Prince de Condé, once her lover and always her friend,
meeting her among a great crowd of people, lifted his hat
76 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

and stood for some minutes talking at her carriage door. This
deference from a Prince of the Blood saved Ninon, and there
was no more talk of exile!

Ninon had a singular and fatal attraction for the men of the
Sévigné family. Madame de Sévigné’s husband was the first
victim of her fascination, and in due time his son followed in his
unworthy father’s footsteps; and many years later, when Ninon
in her old age was still one of the attractions of Paris to fashion-
able and gilded youth, her grandson, the young Marquis
de Grignan, took pleasure in seeking her company. Strangely
enough, when the Queen of Sweden came to Paris, and passed
free comments on all she saw and heard, she declared that the
two most interesting women she had met were Madame de
Sévigné and Ninon de l’Enclos; all of which seems to suggest
some similarity in their gaiety of mind, their frankness and joze
de vivre, in spite of their total dissimilarity of morals.

Bussy had no sooner heard the news which the Marquis
de Sévigné had been so eager to give him, than he hastened to
tell his cousin. Madame de Sévigné coloured with anger and
annoyance when she heard the humiliating truth, and when
Bussy advised her to say nothing about it she saw no wisdom
in his counsel.

“You must be mad to give me such advice, or else you think
that I am mad,” said the indignant young Marquise.

“You will certainly be foolish if you do not follow his
example,” insinuated Bussy. “Revenge yourself, my pretty
cousin, and I will share your vengeance, for your interests are
as dear to me as my own.”

But Madame de Sévigné was not to be led away by such
specious reasoning.

“ That is all very well, Monsieur le Comte,” she said laugh-
ingly, “but my annoyance is not great enough for that.”

The unscrupulous Bussy writes with an absolute lack of shame
of the scandalous part he played between the weak young Marquis
and his wife. The next day, when the Comte met Sévigné again
at the Cours-la-Reine, the latter at once came into his carriage.

“TI think you must have mentioned to your cousin what I
told you yesterday,” he began, “because she has hinted some-
thing of it to me.”
A SUBTLE LETTER 77

“T have not said a word of it, Monsieur,” declared the false
de Bussy, “but as she is very clever, and has said a good deal on
the subject of jealousy, she may have chanced to hit on the
truth.”

The foolish young Sévigné, full of his new affair, was easily
satisfied on the point of his wife’s jealousy, and told the Comte
that he was going to Saint-Cloud that evening, where the
Marquis de Vassé was giving a grand féte to Ninon, and that
he should not return to Paris before the next day.

Bussy warned Sévigné that such openly scandalous conduct
would drive his wife to despair, and that, however prudent and
virtuous she might be, she would seek revenge if he persisted in
his shameful courses. Then, taking leave of the Marquis and
driving home, he at once wrote the following subtle and per-
nicious counsel to his young cousin—

“TI was not wrong yesterday, Madame, in suspecting your
prudence. You have repeated to your husband what I told you.
You can see quite well that it is not for my own interest that I
reproach you, for all that would happen to me would be to lose
his friendship ; but for you, Madame, there is much more to fear.
I have, however, been fortunate enough to allay his suspicions.
For the rest, Madame, he is so persuaded that he cannot be a
man of the world without being always in love, that I despair of
your ever being satisfied if you aspire to be the only one loved
by him. But this need not alarm you, Madame; as I have
begun to serve you, I will not forsake you at this juncture.
You are aware that jealousy has sometimes more power to
retain a heart than charms or worth; I therefore advise you to
make your husband jealous, my pretty cousin, and for that
purpose I offer myself to you. If I bring him back by this
means I have enough affection for you to return to my first part
of being your agent with him, and I will sacrifice myself again
to make you happy. And if you must lose him, love me, my
cousin, and IJ will help you to take your revenge by loving you
all your life.”

Bussy sent this letter early in the morning to Madame de
Sévigné’s house by a page, who, learning that she was asleep,
waited about till he could give the letter into her own hands, as
he had been ordered. Shortly after, the Marquis de Sévigné
78 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

arrived home from Saint-Cloud, and, finding the page with a
letter from the Comte de Bussy to Madame de Sévigné, he took
it from the lad, and, after reading it, told him he might return to
his master as there was no answer. When the Comte de Bussy
heard who had read the letter, he declares that he felt fit to kill
the page, and did not sleep the whole night for thinking of the
danger to which he had exposed his cousin ; and since one knows
the character of the Comte, we may guess that some fear of the
annoyance it might bring to himself may also have contributed
its share to his sleepless night.

The weak young Marquis, however, took no very decided
action. He merely forbade his wife to see the Comte de Bussy
again; and with her usual charm and sweetness she wrote to her
cousin, telling him to have a little patience and the affair would
soon be forgotten. But the intercepted letter probably had its
influence, for Sévigné thought that if his wife were away from
Paris he might continue his dissipated life with more freedom
than if she were at hand to hear of his dishonourable doings ;
and shortly after this he took the Marquise and her two young
children to Les Rochers, and leaving them there with callous
unconcern, he returned to Paris, flinging himself anew without
the least restraint into his evil courses.

It is not surprising that such a life required more money
than he possessed. Though they had been married hardly
more than six years, Madame de Sévigné, in self-protection,
had already had a separation of property, probably by the advice
of the good Abbé de Livry. But when her husband plunged
daily deeper into the slough of dishonour and debt, Madame de
Sévigné, like the true woman that she was, forgave his flagrant
sins against her, and came to his help with fifty thousand
crowns. What the good thrifty Abbé, who so well knew the
value of money, said on the occasion has not been recorded, but
Ménage, who cordially disliked the selfish young Marquis for so
openly neglecting his charming wife, used his privilege of being
tutor and scolded her sharply for her weakness,

“Madame,” he said severely, “a prudent woman would
never throw away such sums upon a husband!” But Madame
de Sévigné was never prudent where she loved.

After the Marquis de Sévigné had left his wife in the gloomy
A PAIR OF DIAMOND EARRINGS 79

solitude of Les Rochers, he threw himself with less restraint
than before into the pleasures of Paris. Ninon, to whom “three
months was an eternity,” soon tired of him; but instead of
joining his wife in Brittany, and endeavouring to retrieve the
fortune he had so nearly ruined, he now made himself con-
spicuous as the slave of a worthless woman who had already
been the talk of polite Paris because of what were termed her
“ galantries,”

Though this Madame de Gondran was undoubtedly a
beautiful and attractive woman, Tallemant, in writing of
Sévigné’s infatuation, adds, “For my part, I should have liked
his wife better.” Bussy, too, with the frankness of a friend and
cousin, pointed out to the Marquis that Madame de Sévigné
was so charming that if she were not his wife he would certainly
desire her for his mistress.

“Very possibly I might,” assented Sévigné, but the admis-
sion did not make him a whit more faithful.

Strangely enough, his intimates and acquaintances could all
perceive the rare charm and beauty of his young wife; every-
one admitted it except the foolish, dissipated young Marquis,
who thought it doz ton to neglect her. He now became so
infatuated with Madame de Gondran—“ Lolo,” as her intimates
called her—that he could refuse her nothing, and he carried his
complacency to such an absurd point that for a while all the
gossips of his circle were set talking in amazed indignation.

Mademoiselle de Chevreuse owned a pair of exquisite
earrings, and these, no less, Madame de Gondran desired to
wear at a ball during the Carnival. It was a little difficult for
a woman of Madame de Gondran’s rank, to say nothing of her
lack of character, to borrow earrings belonging to the daughter
of a duchess; but capricious beauty never believes that anything
it desires is impossible, and Madame de Gondran contrived to
make the Marquis de Sévigné believe it also. With a headlong
determination to gratify Madame, he went boldly to Mademoiselle
de Chevreuse and begged her to lend her earrings—not to
Madame de Gondran, ¢hat request he knew would have been
useless! but to Mademoiselle de la Vergne, his wife’s intimate
friend, whose mother had quite recently married his uncle, the
‘Chevalier Renaud de Sévigné.
80 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Mademoiselle de Chevreuse lent them willingly, and that
same evening the bourgeoise wore them with complacent vanity
ataball. The earrings were immediately recognised, and several
of the guests spoke of their amazement at seeing them worn
by Madame de Gondran, hardly, indeed, believing the evidence
of their own eyesight, and openly curious as to how she could
possibly have obtained them.

The Marquis de Sévigné knew that someone would be
certain to tell Mademoiselle de Chevreuse who had worn her
jewels, and, fearing to be found out in his disgraceful falsehood,
he went to Mademoiselle de la Vergne. To her he confessed
the whole shameful truth, and throwing himself on her mercy,
he begged her to help him out of the tangle into which he had
drawn himself. Mademoiselle de la Vergne, who afterwards
became the celebrated Madame de la Fayette, was then a
charming and gentle girl of about nineteen, and, taking pity on
the Marquis, promised to doher best. She went to Mademoiselle
de Chevreuse and thanked her for the jewels ; then, to save her
friend’s worthless husband, added the falsehood that she had
lent them to Madame de Gondran!

The Marquis de Sévigné procured invitations for the
Gondrans to all kinds of entertainments, where on their own
merits they would never have been admitted, and, in consequence,
their vanity increased daily. They began to speak with the
utmost disdain of their old friends and relatives, and affected to
know only the most charming people of the Court. It was
inevitable that such absurd pretensions should meet with
ridicule, and one evening, at her own house, the Abbé de
Romilly grossly insulted Madame de Gondran while in the
company of her husband. That good, easy man apparently
dared not notice an insult to his wife from a person of superior
rank, and a man named Lacger, who saw the curious scene,
industriously spread the report of it. :

When the Marquis de Sévigné heard of it he was furious,
and made no secret of his intention of caning Lacger before a
numerous company. Lacger, warned in time, did not appear,
and Dame Rumour, disappointed of the actual duel which would
assuredly have followed, invented one entirely on her own
account, and, with her usual careful attention to detail, added
A FATAL DUEL 81

that the Marquis had been badly beaten and was dangerously
wounded by a sword-thrust.

This entirely fabricated story found its way to the provinces,
and Madame de Sévigné, in alarm for her faithless husband,
wrote him a letter full of tender reproaches, breathing a deep
anxiety about his health. The Marquis never replied to this
letter; for the next few days, far from thinking about his
devoted young wife, his whole thought and attention were
absorbed by an “affair of honour,” the indirect result of his
quarrel with Lacger. This young man, in great anger at
Sévigné’s threats, determined to be revenged without risking his
own person. Knowing that the Chevalier d’Albret, another of
Madame de Gondran’s admirers, had for some time been
refused admittance to her house, he spread the report that
Sévigné had been scoffing at his discomfiture, not only with
Madame de Gondran, but in the hearing of other people also.
The Chevalier, determined to know the truth of the story, sent
his friend the Marquis de Soyecour to Sévigné to ask whether
he had been talking about him in the manner mentioned by
Lacger.

Sévigné replied at once that he had never said a word to the
disadvantage of the Chevalier d’Albret; then, not wishing to be
suspected of trying to conciliate a rival, he added haughtily
“that he had only said this in the cause of truth and not to
justify himself, for that he never did except with a sword in his
hand !”

There was only one possible answer to this, and probably
both young men—the one hotly jealous of his rival, the other
burning to avenge the insult to Madame de Gondran on
someone—were more than willing to fight. A meeting was
arranged, and at midday on Wednesday, 4th of February 1651,
they drove, attended by their seconds, to a spot behind the
convent of Picpus, a short distance from Paris.

Every detail was carried out with the punctilio such
occasions demanded. The Marquis de Sévigné, who had
chosen swords, bowed to the Chevalier, saying that he was his
servant, and again declared that he had not said the words
which had been falsely reported. The young men then
embraced.

6
82 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“But,” said the Chevalier, “we must fight all the same.”
“Certainly,” agreed Sévigné; adding that he had not come out
there merely to return without having done anything.

Did a glimmer of their folly in fighting—indirectly—for such
a worthless woman pierce for a moment their hot and foolish
young heads? Even supposing that such wisdom had illumined
them for a brief space, the laws of “honour” (and honour meant
neither truth, chastity, honesty, faith, nor any other virtue save
that of courage; but in that respect, as Madame de Sévigné
wrote years after, a man’s reputation was more delicate than
a woman’s) would have forbidden them to do anything but
fight; and fight they did in grim earnest. After a few minutes’
practised sword-play Sévigné received a thrust in the body,
and he fell. He was taken from the ground to a carriage, and
conveyed at once to Paris, where the surgeons pronounced that
he was mortally wounded. His wild and foolish companions
of pleasure came to see him; Gondran, the complacent and
ridiculous bourgeois, wept bitter tears at the thought of losing
his aristocratic friend the Marquis; and of Sévigné himself
there is not a word recorded to indicate that even at that late
hour he regretted his misspent life, or repented of the wrongs
he had inflicted on the Marquise. His one futile refrain was the
regret that he had to leave this pleasant world at the early age
of thirty-two.
CHAPTER VIII

Madame de Sévigné’s widowhood at Les Rochers—She returns to Paris and
gradually re-enters Parisian society—Rival suitors—The quarrel between the Duc
de Rohan and the Marquis de Tonquedec in her rwe//le—A haughty Duchess—The
battle of Saint-Antoine

M ADAME DE SEVIGNE had just passed her twenty-
fifth birthday when the sad news of her husband’s
death reached her among the sombre woods of Les Rochers,
and who can say what dark hours of desolation and anguish
were spent by the young widow in her lonely chateau, where,
so few years before, she had enjoyed a brief bright period of
happiness as a bride? Few mourned the Marquis save his
young wife; he had been a selfish egoist, seeking nothing but
his own vicious pleasure; he had wasted his own fortune and
part of his wife’s also by his reckless dissipation; he had
heaped humiliation on the Marquise, and it is scarcely sur-
prising that the cynical Bussy found it difficult to believe that
Madame de Sévigné’s sorrow for her husband could be genuine.
But no one save this cynic doubted the reality and entire
sincerity of Madame de Sévigné’s grief. We know from her
letters what a sensitive and impressionable heart and mind were
hers; how keenly alive to pleasure, how readily touched by
sorrow ; and, notwithstanding the humiliations her husband had
caused her to suffer, in spite even of the crowning outrage of
the manner of his death, she was overwhelmed with grief at her
loss. Even her pride was dominated by love and yearning
sorrow. Tallemant tells the story, that the Marquise, who had
neither a lock of hair nor a portrait of her husband, putting
aside all wifely anger and just resentment, went to Madame
de Gondran, who at once gave her what she required; while
Madame de Sévigné, on her side, returned to the bourgeoise all

the shameful letters she had written to the Marquis. This
83
84 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

may or may not have been true, there is only an inveterate
gossip’s word for it, but it is quite conceivable that in the
abandonment of her grief the young widow may have acted
in a manner she would not have thought permissible in calmer
hours.

We have, too, a record of her emotion when, two years after
her husband’s death, she saw Soyecour, who had taken part in
the affair that led to the duel. Tallemant saw her turn pale
and almost faint at the sight of this man; and the first time
she saw the Chevalier d’Albret, the man who had killed her
husband, she lost consciousness entirely. Once, too, when
walking among the beautiful allées on the heights of Saint-
Cloud, she caught sight of Lacger, and turning to her friends,
she said in a low voice—

“There is the man I hate more than anyone in the world,
because of the misfortunes he has brought upon me.”

The two officers who were walking beside her immediately
offered to thrash him in her presence, but the Marquise, who
shrunk from such notoriety, refused their kind but embarrassing
offer by saying tactfully—

“Pray take care; he is with several of my relatives whom
you would not wish to offend, I am sure.” And she turned
with the officers into another allée of the park to avoid meeting
Lacger.

Many years after, she chanced to write to her cousin Bussy
that she could scarcely tell one year from another, because they
were so mingled in her memory that only one or two were worth
remembering.

“T should like to know,” wrote the malicious Bussy, “ which
are the two years you consider worth remembering. If it were
anyone else I should say that they were the years when you
were married and when you became a widow.”

The Marquise glided lightly over this impertinence. “I
had only retained the dates of my birth and of my marriage,”
she replied ; “but without increasing the number I will forget
the year when I was born, which saddens me [she was then
sixty], and I will put in its stead that of my widowhood, and
the commencement of an existence which has been sufficiently
pleasant and happy, without triumphs, and without distinction ;
 

ES, ABBE DE LIVRY

2

CHRISTOPHE DE COULANG
MADAME DE SEVIGNE RETURNS TO PARIS 85

but it will finish in a more Christian manner than if it had been
disturbed by great events, and that truly is the chief thing.”

All the spring, summer, and autumn of that sad year of
1651 the Marquise spent on her estate at Les Rochers with her
two little children and her good uncle the Abbé de Coulanges,
who immediately set himself to work to repair the shameful
inroads that the late Marquis had made in his niece’s and her
children’s fortune. Gradually all debts were paid, and by the
virtue of that “holy economy” which the Abbé revered and
daily instilled into his niece, her estates were brought again
into good order, though only at his death did the Marquise
reveal what a perilous state her affairs had been in at this period.
“He extricated me from the abyss into which I was plunged
at the death of M. de Sévigné ; he gained my lawsuits, improved
my estates, paid my debts, and made my son’s estate the
prettiest and most agreeable place possible,” she tells her
cousin, the Comte de Bussy, at the Abbé’s death in 1687.

After nine or ten months of solitude and inevitable regrets
for what might have been, Madame de Sévigné returned to
Paris in the November of 1651. Loret, who recorded all events
of importance in the polite world of Paris, noted the fact in
his society chronicle—

** Sévigné, veuve, jeune et belle,
Comme une chaste tourterelle
Ayant d’un cceur triste et marri
Lamenté monsieur son mari
Est de retour de la campagne,
C’est-4-dire de la Bretagne ;

Et, malgré ses sombres atours
Qui semblent ternir ses beaux jours,

Vient augmenter dans nos ruelles
L’agréable nombre des belles.”

It is probable that the young widow, whose year of mourning
was not yet complete, in the first few months of her return saw
only her relatives and most intimate friends. There was her
mother’s sister, Henriette de Coulanges, Marquise de la Trousse,
who was also a widow. She was frequently with her niece;
indeed, she seems at this time to have been a companion and
chaperone to the young Marquise, who was much too charming
and attractive to live alone, even if etiquette had permitted it,
86 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS.

Another relative by marriage was Madame Renaud de Sévigné,
at whose house she frequently saw the pretty and clever young
Mademoiselle de la Vergne, her aunt’s daughter by her first
marriage; the young girl who, greatly against her will, had
been mixed up in the affair of the diamond earrings. A life-
long friendship commenced between the Marquise de Sévigné
and Mademoiselle de la Vergne, who, a few years later, as
Madame de la Fayette, became one of the celebrated women of
her time. There was a difference of eight years between the two
friends, but the younger, by her grave philosophical character,
her rather sombre outlook on life, and, in later years, by her ill-
health, seemed fully as old as the Marquise de Sévigné, who by
her gaiety, magnificent health, and joyous delight in life, kept
her youth for an unusually long period.

It is pleasant, too, to find that the beautiful young widow, in
the midst of the many perils of that unscrupulous society, was
carefully guarded by her uncles the de Coulanges. Bussy sneers
lightly at them for being jealous of her reputation; but the
Comte, whose professions of affection for her were, at this time
especially, greatly in evidence, could never have been accused of
such a virtue.

When Madame de Sévigné again appeared in society, there
was no lack of pleasant houses at which to visit. In these last
months of the Fronde all classes of Paris were seeking amuse-
ment with a feverish gaiety, on the eve of they knew not what.
La Grande Mademoiselle held her little court at the Tuilleries,
and two or three nights in the week there was a comedy, a band
of twenty-four violins to make music, and afterwards a supper
and a ball. Indeed, the entertainments at Mademoiselle’s were
the chief of those in Paris. Anne of Austria gave no fétes, or
balls, or comedies; she was indolent by nature, much absorbed
by her devotional exercises, and had probably little taste left
for amusement among all the intrigues of the Fronde, which,
however amusing they might be to the gay conspirators, were
serious enough for her and her son, whose kingdom was at
stake. Besides the charming entertainments at the Tuilleries,
other heroines of the Fronde were constantly providing balls,
suppers, fétes, plays, at which not a few of the political intrigues
were developed. The Duchesse de Chatillon, the daughter of
MADAME DE SEVIGNE IN PARIS 87

Bouteville de Montmorency, whose friendship had been so
fatal to Madame de Sévigné’s father, had grown up to be a
triumphant beauty, who dominated a little circle of which she
was the brilliant directress. The Prince de Condé was her
abject slave, while she played the political cards entirely in
his interests. The Duchesse de Chevreuse, another prominent
Frondeuse, had her evenings too; and the Comtesse de Fiesque,
the gay, irresponsible trifler, was attached to the court of La
Grande Mademoiselle, and generally, on those evenings when
the royal lady did not receive, gave some diversion or entertain-
ment at her house. All these were the heroines of the Fronde,
and, strangely enough, though Madame de Sévigné had no
taste for intrigue—indeed, she was too frank and outspoken for
the subtle réle of z¢rigante—they were all her intimate friends.
We gather that she was warmly welcomed in this society, for
this was the most triumphant, and at the same time the most
perilous period of her life. Her beauty was at its finest
flowering point; her wit had been polished and her manners
formed in the exacting school of the Hétel de Rambouillet, and
by five years of the best Parisian society; while her freedom
of speech, which was the only fault that even Tallemant could
find, must have been benefited by the softening and refining
influence of grief and adversity. A circle of admirers gathered
round her whenever she appeared, all eager for her preference;
and some, we cannot doubt, hoping to be accepted as the
successor of the late Marquis. All, however, among these
gallants had not such honourable intentions, and she, well
knowing her world, and realising her lonely, situation with no
father, husband, or brother to defend her, was probably the more
determined to protect herself by her prudent and careful conduct.

But they were the troublous times of civil war. Party feeling
ran high, the least social offence was magnified into an insult,
and it is perhaps not surprising that there should be ill-blood
among the hot-headed young gallants who strove for the first
place in Madame de Sévigné’s regard. A little more than a year
after her husband’s death, she found, to her intense annoyance,
that an incident which occurred at her house, and of which she
was the heroine, became the subject of conversation in all the
ruelles of Paris.
88 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Among the men who at this time were paying her the most
marked homage was the Duc de Rohan, who had, not long
before, by his handsome person, his graceful figure, his skill as
a dancer, and similar qualities, won the heart of the haughtiest
heiress in France, Mademoiselle de Rohan. This lady, who
might have married a prince or a duke, would have none other
than the handsome Chabot, a simple and obscure gentleman
who brought her neither wealth nor titles. Her mother violently
opposed this choice, but the pious Queen promised to give
Chabot the name and dukedom of the Rohans, on condition
that the children of the marriage should be brought up in the
Roman Catholic faith, The bargain was gladly made, and
Chabot rose with a bound from his modest condition as a mere
gentleman, to every privilege belonging to a duke and peer of
France. He was greatly attracted by Madame de Sévigné, and
was a frequent visitor at her rwelle; though we may be quite
certain that the Marquise, who, said her cousin Bussy, “was too
jealous of her own honour,” gave him no more than the pleasant
welcome that was ordinarily given to gentlemen in the vwed/es of
the ladies of their acquaintance. Conrart, the first Perpetual
Secretary of the Academy, gives such a quaint picture of the
manners of the time in his piquant recital, that no mere para-
phrase could do the incident justice. Tonquedec, it may be
mentioned, was a neighbour and friend of Madame de Sévigné
in Brittany.

“A gentleman of Brittany,” writes Conrart, “named the
Marquis de Tonquedec, related to the young Madame de Rohan,
was attached [by feudal service] to the Duc de Rohan, and had
promised to raise a regiment for him in the party of the Princes,
but instead of doing this he joined the party of Cardinal Mazarin.
After this the Duc de Rohan complained of him and would
receive him no longer.

“On the 18th of June, Tonquedec was at the house of the widow
of the Marquis de Sévigné when the Duc de Rohan arrived there.
Tonquedec, who was in an arm-chair at the head of the bed in
the rvuelle, rose slightly, lifted his hat, and sat down again before
the Duke had taken a seat, and without offering him his place.
The Duke did not, however, show any resentment at this, but as
he was leaving, he said to the Marquise de Sévigné that if it
JEALOUS RIVALS 89

had not been her house he would have taught Tonquedec the
duty and respect he owed him. The Marquise said to the Duc
de Rohan that she was very sorry indeed that Tonquedec had
been so impertinent at her house, and that she would beg him
not to come again, for which the Duc de Rohan thanked her
and went away. The following Thursday the Duc de Rohan
passed Madame de Sévigné’s house, and seeing the carriage of
the Comte de Lude outside, he asked the coachman if his master
was there. The man said no, it was M. de Tonquedec, to
whom his master had lent his carriage. The Duke was attended
by several gentlemen, whom he left below while he went upstairs
to the rwelle of the Marquise de Sévigné. When the Marquise
saw him she was very confused, and the Duc de Rohan, after
having saluted her, turned to Tonquedec, and said—

“*T have been told that you boasted of having defied me in
this house, and I have come to-day to teach you the respect you
owe me.’

“* Monsieur,’ retorted Tonquedec, ‘I always pay you more
respect than you deserve.’

“You do not know your duty,’ repeated the Duke, ‘and I
shall have to show you what it is.’

“Upon this, the Marquise de Sévigné, who was alone, and who
well knew to what such words would lead, begged Tonquedec
over and over again that he would leave the house at once.

“*Madame,’ said the Duc de Rohan, ‘do you really wish
him to go?’

“Certainly, Monsieur,’ she replied.

“«Tt is only right that you should be obeyed, answered the
Duke, and with these words he turned Tonquedec out of the
house.”

This, said Conrart, was the Duc de Rohan’s version of the
affair, but that of Madame de Sévigné was somewhat different.
In the first place, she denied that she had ever promised not to
receive Tonquedec at her house again. Indeed, on this point
she greatly offended the Duchesse de Rohan. After the first
visit of de Rohan, on the 18th of June, Madame de Sévigné, who
all through her life was particular in the observance of small, as
well as important, social duties (and who continually scolded her
daughter for the neglect of them), paid a visit to the Duchesse
90 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

de Rohan in the Place Royale, to say how sorry she was that
the affair should have occurred at her house. The haughty
Duchesse received her with marked coldness, which perhaps was
hardly surprising when the homage that her husband, whom she
passionately loved, was paying Madame de Sévigné was just
then the most freely discussed topic in Paris! Then the
Marquise, anxious to make peace, mentioned the affair to
Mademoiselle de Chabot, the sister of de Rohan, who replied
that if she wished the Duchesse to be satisfied with her conduct,
it was necessary that she should refuse to see Tonquedec again.
“ This,” remarked Conrart, “ was thought very imperious,” and
Madame de Sévigné had no intention of discarding an old
friend for such insufficient reasons.

It was generally believed in society that it was the proud
Duchesse de Rohan whowas so determined that Tonquedec should
be humiliated by the Duke. When the latter told his wife of
the manner in which Tonquedec had almost ignored his presence,
and had kept the seat of honour in the Marquise de Sévigné’s
ruelle without offering it to him, his feudal lord, the Duchesse
had exclaimed that “the affront was too great to endure!”

It was because of her anger that the Duke had paid the
second visit, knowing that Tonquedec was there, and had then
“reprimanded him as if he had been his valet.”

Nor was Madame de Sévigné alone, as the Duc de Rohan
had said, for her aunt, the Marquise de la Trousse, was in the
ruelle, and Marigny the poet was there also, and when the Duc
de Rohan spoke so insultingly to Tonquedec, they both implored
the latter to leave the house at once, knowing that in the heat of
passion a duel on the spot might be the result if he stayed.

All this caused much gossip in Paris, and everyone, “ especi-
ally the ladies,” said Conrart, “blamed the behaviour of the
Duke in the presence of the Marquise de Sévigné.” Even
Loret, who of course gave the piquant incident a place in his
chronicle, deplored that it should have happened dans un lieu
de respect, and the general feeling was against the de Rohans.
Madame de Sévigné had no near relative to call out the
Duke; even Bussy was with his regiment in Nivernais, but the
Chevalier Renaud de Sévigné, the nearest of her late husband’s
kin, challenged the Duc de Rohan, while Tonquedec demanded
“MADAME SAINTE-GENEVIEVE” g!

satisfaction on his own account; and the Comte de Vassé, the
Comte de Lude, Chavagnac, and others among her friends, were
all anxious that the insult to the Marquise should be answered for.

But the watchful Duchesse, passionately devoted to her
husband, was determined that no meeting of the kind should
take place. Knowing what would be the inevitable result of
her husband’s arrogant conduct, she never allowed him to go
out without a guard of men, and Loret recorded that “the Duke
was held back, though he frantically desired to fight.” But unkind
rumour said that it was not necessary to hold him very tightly !

Conrart finishes his recital of the incident with this terse
comment: “The true cause of the misunderstanding between
the Duc de Rohan and de Tonquedec was that they were both
in love with Madame de Sévigné.”

But the attention of Paris was soon directed to other, more
serious matters than this nobleman’s quarrel. The Fronde, after
nearly four years of the turmoil and bloodshed of civil war
throughout France, was now drawing near to its end. Paris
was brilliant with the colour and commotion that differing
parties brought in their train. The followers of Condé wore
scarves of the couleur isabelle or dove colour; red was the badge
carried by the soldiers of the brigand king the Duc de Lorraine,
who, when those intriguing ladies the Duchesses de Montbazon
and de Chatillon asked him what part he intended to take in
the Fronde, gallantly took the hand of each, and replied, “ Let us
call the violins, and dance, Mesdames; that is the way one
negotiates with ladies!” The adherents of Gaston d’Orléans
wore blue; and, to the lasting shame of the House of Condé,
there were many Spaniards flaunting their yellow scarves, a
continual reminder of the treason of those who had sought a
Spanish alliance against their own King.

Paris, weary of war, was desiring peace above all other things,
and in desperation decided to appeal to its venerated saint,
“ Madame Sainte-Geneviéve.” This was, of course, to satisfy the
demands of the people; for even in that day there were many
among the educated and upper classes who openly scoffed at it
as superstition.

La Grande Mademoiselle mocks gaily at the custom in her
memoirs, and Madame de Sévigné’s attitude towards it may be
92 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

guessed from the jesting account of the pedersion she long
afterwards gave to her daughter.

“T have been with Madame de Vins, the Abbé Arnauld, and
d’Hacqueville to see the procession of Sainte-Geneviéve. Do
you know that this procession is considered a very fine sight?
It is composed of all the different religious Orders [of the
mendicant friars—the Cordeliers, the Jacobins, the Augustins,
and the Carmelites], all the parish priests, and all the canons of
Notre Dame, preceded by the Archbishop of Paris, who goes
on foot, giving his benediction right and left till he comes to
the cathedral. JI should have said to the left only, for the
Abbé de Sainte-Genevieve walks barefooted on the right, pre-
ceded by one hundred and fifty friars who are barefooted also.
The cross and mitre are borne before him, as before the Arch-
bishop, and he bestows his benediction in the same manner,
but modestly and with much devotion, fasting, and with an air
of penitence which shows that he is to say mass at Notre Dame.
The Parlement in red robes, and the chief companies, follow the
shrine of the saint, which glitters with jewels, and is carried by
twenty men robed in white and barefooted. The Provost of the
merchants and four councillors are left as hostages at the Church
of Sainte-Geneviéve for the return of this precious treasure.”

The procession was carried on the 13th of June, and on the
1st of July the decisive and disastrous battle of Saint-Antoine was
fought just outside Paris, that extraordinary conflict between the
two greatest French heroes of their century, the famous Turenne
and the equally famous Condé. King, Queen, and Court watched
the struggle from Charenton on one side, while the townspeople,
crowding on to the roofs, watched with eager, fascinated eyes
from the other bank. Condé, hotly pursued by Turenne in the
rear, and faced by the closed gates of Paris, seemed doomed to
ignominious death and defeat before the eyes of the Parisians,
who had once adored him for his military genius. Then
Mademoiselle, her heart touched by the hero’s distress, insisted
on the opening of the Porte Saint-Antoine, and had the cannon
of the Bastille turned on Turenne’s army. Condé was saved, and
it was practically the end of the Fronde, of which Mademoiselle
was declared the “Heroine,” a proud title for which she was
yet to pay an extravagant price—a dreary exile of six years !
CHAPTER IX i

The Comte de Bussy pays court to the Marquise—He gives a féte in her honour
in the Temple Gardens—Madame de Sévigné at the height of her charm and
popularity—A period of temptation—Dangerous gallants—The Prince de Conti—
Nicolas Foucquet

HE Comte de Bussy in his scandalous memoirs boasts that

he was the first to speak of love to Madame de Sévigné

after her husband’s death, but we have seen that the young

widow was surrounded by many admirers as soon as her year of

mourning was completed, and as Bussy was only able to leave

his regiment for a short visit to Paris in the October of 1652, he
must have been deceived by his vanity on this point.

Inthe following February, however, he came again to Paris,and
stayed there tillthe autumn. Then, there is no doubt, he paid the
most assiduous attention to his charming cousin, who, besides
being one of the most attractive women in Parisian society, was
doubly desirable to a man of Bussy’s character, because of the
many distinguished men who were constantly seeking her.

Bussy himself lacked neither distinction nor charm. He, too,
was of that strangely seductive Rabutin blood, and had not yet
proved what a base alloy was lurking in his character. To
outward seeming he was a brave soldier, a polished courtier, a
witty and handsome man, who never forgot that he was of the
nobility ; who, however little he might esteem women, always
paid them the most courteous homage in speech and manner.
But though, as the cousin of the Marquise, he had the advantage
of being able to visit her more frequently, and on more familiar
terms than other friends who were not her relatives, the young
widow was in no danger from the fascinating Comte. He has
written much that was spiteful and malicious about her, but he
bore constant witness to the absolute rectitude and virtue of her
life ; and this from Bussy, who cone at least in his anger would
94 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

so gladly have soiled her good name, has been considered by
her biographers as a testimonial indeed.

But with all her undoubted and indisputable virtue, which
shines with star-like purity among the astonishing intrigues by
which she was surrrounded in her daily society, she was never
austere. She met Bussy’s amorous speeches, his veiled
advances, his most cunning innuendoes, with the same laughing
repulses, none the less effectual because they were witty and
showed a perfect comprehension of the situation. Bussy records
that he got nothing but “the answer of the oracle,” and though
he still continued his attentions to his cousin, trying his utmost
to make her believe that he was desperately in love with her, he
transferred some of his affections to Madame de Montglas,
who received them with more gratitude than Madame de
Sévigné.

Bussy had been staying all that summer of 1653 with his
uncle Hughes de Rabutin, the Grand Prieur of the Temple, and
just before leaving Paris, to join his regiment in Flanders, he gave
a féte in the Temple Gardens, ostensibly to Madame de Sévigné,
but in reality to Madame de Montglas; and it was so like Bussy’s
double-dealing to make each of them believe she was the lady
he delighted to honour. And all this time not a word of his
wife, who was probably safely away in Burgundy at his estate
of Chaseu! Bussy was very well pleased with his féte, and
gives an account of it which shows that he at least appreciated
it at its full value.

“Some days before I departed,” he writes, “I gave to
Madame de Sévigné a féte so beautiful and extraordinary, that
you will, I am sure, like to have a description of it. First, picture
to yourselves the Temple Gardens, which you know well, where
there is a grove traversed by two walks. At the point where
they meet was a rather large circle of trees, to the branches of
which had been fastened a hundred glass chandeliers. On one
side of this open space a magnificent theatre was erected, of
which the decoration was worthy of the illumination, The light
from hundreds of candles, which the leaves of the trees prevented
from being diffused, threw such a glow on to that spot, that the
sun could not have made it more brilliant, and, from the same
cause, the surrounding places were so dark that eyes were
THE COMTE DE BUSSY’S FETE 95

useless, The night was beautifully clear and tranquil. The
entertainment began with a comedy which the guests found
very amusing, and after this the twenty-four violins played some
ritournelles, branles, couvantes, and petites danses. The company
was more select than numerous; some danced, others looked on,
while others wandered away among the allées. This lasted till
the break of day, and, as if Heaven had acted in concert with
me, the dawn appeared just as the candles flickered out. This
féte was such a success that I received many inquiries as to the
particulars of it, and to this day it is spoken of with admiration.”

Bussy, who was now mestve de camp général of light cavalry
—a promotion for which he had been negotiating during his
stay in Paris—joined Turenne’s army not long after this, and
though he corresponded with his cousin after his departure,
several letters of this period have been lost, for which, he says,
he would willingly have paid their weight in gold to anyone
who brought them to him.

Madame de Sévigné had not time to miss her cousin amid
the gaieties of the Parisian winter season. The Fronde was
now happily over, and Paris was settling down to pleasure after
the distractions of civil war, precisely as she had sought it when
the strife had been at its worst; for does not Paris, under all
superficial change, ever remain au fond the City of Pleasure?
The leading spirits of the Fronde were now in exile. The
Cardinal de Retz languished in Vincennes; La Grande Made-
moiselle was experiencing the deadly monotony of winter in
the provinces, in her dilapidated old Chateau of Saint-Fargeau ;
her vacillating father, Gaston d’Orléans, was banished to his
estate of Blois, and even refused his daughter’s visits as often
as he dared defy that determined young Princess, fearing lest a
too great intimacy with the chief heroine of the Fronde might be
considered compromising by the young King. Condé, once the
greatest hero in France, was utterly demoralised by the ignominy
of his imprisonment. “I went to prison an honest man,” he
declared, “and came out a criminal.” He was now misusing
his military genius in making war on the King in the provinces ;
his army a very Adullam’s cave for the disaffected. Those
poor provinces! Words cannot paint the sufferings the peasants,
farmers, and lesser gentlemen endured after the passing of an
96 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

army, even though that army was composed of fellow-country-
men! Whole villages were laid waste, and sometimes left a
smoking ruin after everything had been seized by the rapacious
soldiers; and men and women who resisted or protested were
strung up on the nearest trees after the most horrible treatment,
or frightfully mutilated as a warning to others, That true saint,
Vincent de Paul, went where he could in the wake of this terrible
army, binding up wounds, carrying comfort and consolation to
stricken hearts, a most faithful and humble “curer” of souls and
bodies.

But all these things had no place in the chronicles of Paris,
The streak of barbarism in the French character of this and
much later periods, showed itself in the absolute insensibility
to the wrongs or sufferings of the peasant. A gentleman was
always sure of consideration—according to his rank, of course!
—but a peasant was of no importance under any circumstances,
And while Paris, in the season that followed the battle of Saint-
Antoine, was seeking amusement with the same frantic im-
petuosity that she had sought it during the Fronde, a few, very
few, good women of the bourgeoisie—the Presidente Lamoignon
and Madame de Miramion were among the foremost—under
the direction of Saint Vincent de Paul, carried what help they
could to those stricken towns and villages which had suffered
from the visit of an army; whether of Condé’s men or the
King’s it hardly mattered, for all the soldiers were poorly and
irregularly paid, and almost as indifferent to life as outlaws or
barbarians.

The Prince de Conti had made a better bargain for himself
than his brother Condé. As payment for his share in the
Fronde he had married Anne Martinozzi, one of those attractive
Italian nieces of Mazarin who all made such good marriages,
This clever young Prince was one of the many men who found
an especial charm in Madame de Sévigné’s society, and, as will
be seen by one of Bussy’s letters, deliberately planned to gain
a special place in her regard. He was a strange compound of
virtues and vices; a man who swiftly passed from excessive
devotion to extremes of dissipation. At one time he was in-
tended for the Church, and for a brief period he was the Abbé
de Cluny ; and Olivier d’Ormesson gives this striking pen-picture
THE PRINCE DE CONTI 97

of the occasion when, at the Sorbonne, he maintained his first
thesis for the degree of licentiate. All the theological faculty
of the Sorbonne were present. “M. le Prince de Conti was in
an arm-chair on a high dais opposite the President, under a red
velvet canopy, with a table before him. He wore a violet
satin cassock with the rochet and camail, like a bishop. The
Coadjutor (Gondi) presided, and disputed very well, though
with great deference; but the young Prince sustained his thesis
marvellously well, with much vivacity and spirit, in front of a
great number of the Jesuits.”

But the Prince de Conti had to relinquish his abbacy when
he married, and for a time he threw himself into a whirl of
dissipation. In the winter following the Fronde he had met
Madame de Sévigné at the Marquise de Montausier’s house,
and had been greatly attracted by her witty conversation, for
he too was clever and spzrctuel, with a gift of persiflage that
doubtless harmonised very well with the brilliant gaiety of
Madame de Sévigné. Nature, who had been so lavish to him
in some ways, had been very severe in others, for with a hand-
some, well-formed head and face, he had piteously deformed
shoulders. We have no record as to what were Madame de
Sévigné’s impressions concerning him, but we may be quite
certain that, whatever his intentions may have been, she looked
on him merely as a pleasant and exalted friend of the moment,
whose attentions were passing honours to be lightly forgotten.

Another, more dangerous admirer was Nicolas Foucquet, the
new Surintendant des Finances, a perilous friend for a young,
unprotected woman because of his extraordinary personal charm.
He had had an amazing career of unbroken prosperity. At the
age of sixteen he was an advocate of Parlement ; two years later
he was a councillor of the Parlement of Metz; and before he
was twenty he held the honourable post of Maitre des Requétes,

During the Fronde this precocious young lawyer had
rendered important services to Mazarin, and in Parlement was
always one of the most zealous supporters of that unpopular
minister. Such devotion and ability did not go unrewarded.
Mazarin, who had the born ruler’s gift for appraising men,
gauged his suppleness of mind, his ability and resource as a
negotiator, his energy and power as an administrator, and on

7
98 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

the day after the entry of the Cardinal into Paris—back again
till death to his old power and supremacy—Foucquet, conjointly
with Servien, was made Surintendant des Finances.

In the few short years that followed, the life of Nicolas
Foucquet reads like that of the younger son in a fairy-tale who
has suddenly become prince, with stores of treasure at command.
By his peculiar gift for finance, and his almost miraculous
power of inspiring confidence, immense sums of ready money
were at his disposal; gold poured through his hands, so to
speak, in an inexhaustible stream. The King demanded money,
always money, for treaties, ballets, fétes, rejoicings, masquerades ;
and Foucquet, by his resource, ability, and unlimited credit,
was always able to supply it.

His family, his relatives, his friends, all shared in his
marvellous success; courtiers, both men and women, were,
figuratively, at his feet, and overwhelmed him with the most
delicate, the most flattering marks of their regard, which he
in turn paid for with gold or remunerative posts. He had
a genuine passion for art; and poets, painters, sculptors, and
artists of all the minor arts found in him a modern Maecenas,
He gave magnificent entertainments at his house at Saint-
Mandé near Picpus; royalty sat at his table, and came out of
curiosity to see his magnificence ; in all the kingdom there was
no man more generally courted than Nicolas Foucquet. Court
ladies of the highest rank gladly accepted his attentions, and
his charm was not all that of gold. He was gay, witty, clever,
with a delight that was almost a passion, in all the good things’
of life, and he had apparently no greater happiness than in
putting himself and his riches at the service of his friends. La
Fontaine, who for some years lived under his protection—for
those were the days when literary men did not disdain to pick
up the crumbs from great men’s tables—declared of Foucquet
“that his manner of giving was better than the gift.”

Madame de Sévigné frequently met Foucquet in Parisian
society after the Fronde. The financier was greatly attracted
by this charming, brilliant Marquise, who, unlike so many ladies
he met, wanted nothing either for herself or for her friends,
Once, when Bussy urged her to beg some favour of the Surin-
tendant, Madame de Sévigné replied almost indignantly, “I
A LETTER FROM THE COMTE DE BUSSY ~~ 99

would rather ask a favour of any other man in the world than
him”; for she knew that only by her absolute independence
could she keep him at a safe distance. From a letter, written
by Bussy to the Marquise, we gather that she was in the midst
of temptation among the gay and corrupt society of Paris, who,
if they had ever followed the precepts of the préczeuses, had
certainly forgotten them, or laid them aside as out of fashion.
Bussy had accompanied the Prince de Conti to Catalonia, and,
while halting for two days at Montpellier, wrote to his cousin
a letter which, under its light badinage, reveals Bussy at his
worst, a self-seeker of the most degraded kind.

‘© MONTPELLIER, /eme 16, 1654

“T have had news of you, Madame. Do you remember
the conversation you had last winter with the Prince de Conti
at Madame de Montausier’s? He tells me that he said some
pretty things to you, that he found you much to his taste, and
that he intends to tell you so more decidedly this winter. Take
care, my charming cousin ; the woman who is not guided by
interest is sometimes led away by ambition, and she who is
able to resist the King’s financier may not always be able
to withstand his cousin. By the way in which the Prince
spoke to me of his designs, I see plainly that he intends
to make me his confidant. I suppose you will have no
objection to this, knowing as you do, how well I have
acquitted myself in that character under other circumstances.
For myself, I am delighted with the hope of being his successor ;
you understand me, my pretty cousin. If, after all that fortune
wishes to put in your way, I do not make mine, it will be
entirely your fault; but you will surely be careful, for you
really must help me in some way. I think you will be some-
what embarrassed between the two rivals; I seem to hear you
saying,

*‘Des deux cétés j’ai beaucoup de chagrin ;
O Dieu, l’étrange peine !
Dois-je chasser l’ami de mon cousin?
Dois-je chasser le cousin de la Reine?

“Perhaps you are afraid to attach yourself to the service of
princes, and my example may deter you. Perhaps the figure
100 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

of one displeases you, and perhaps the face of the other. Let
me hear something of this latter, and of the progress he has
made since my departure. How many free-patents has your
liberty cost him?

“Fortune is making you splendid advances, my dear cousin;
do not be ungrateful. You are as much infatuated with virtue
as if it were a real good, and you despise wealth as if you
could never be in need of it. Do you not know that old Senne- |
terre, a sensible man of great experience, said that people of
honour go barefooted? We shall see you one day regretting
the time you have lost; we shall see you repenting of having so
badly employed your youth, and of having with so much
difficulty striven to acquire and preserve a reputation which
a calumniator may destroy, and which depends more on good
fortune than on your good conduct.

“T joined the Prince de Conti at Auxerre. He did not pass
by Chaseu [the Comte de Bussy’s estate] because he learned that
it would take him six leagues out of his way, so my prepara-
tions were useless. I have not left him since, and am on the
best possible terms with him. We intend to amuse ourselves
here for two days, with play, drives, and good cheer, while
waiting for the troops to assemble for the purpose of entering
Catalonia. I can answer for it, my charming cousin, that
you will hear of me in this campaign.

“Adieu, my fair cousin; think sometimes of me, and that
you have no relative or friend. who loves you so much as I do.
I wish—no, I will not finish, for fear of displeasing you, but you
know quite well what I wish.”

In no other letter of Bussy’s does he show quite such black,
unrelieved baseness of mind. He was desperately anxious
to improve his fortunes, and, untroubled by the least moral
hesitation, he urges his young, unprotected cousin to barter her
beauty and charm that he may, of her dishonour, make a
stepping-stone to advancement! His counsel, his insinuations,
his suggestions throughout are villainous, and not even the
prevalence of such ambitions among courtiers can excuse him.
There were many honourable and noble men even among the
class who claimed the proud title, and Bussy’s shameless and
 

 

 

THE COMTE DE BUSSY
BUSSY AND MADAME DE SEVIGNE 101

cynical letter would not deserve quotation if it did not show
what a fire of temptation assailed the young Marquise on all
sides, even from her nearest relative, who should have held her
honour as dear to him as his own. Tried in this fire, however,
her purity of life shines the brighter, more especially as the
licence of the times was so great that many examples among
her daily society would have provided her with ample excuses
if she had wished to follow Bussy’s advice.

How sadly prophetic he is, too, in saying that a caluminator
may easily destroy the reputation which she is so careful to
preserve! One may quite certainly say that at this period
neither of them dreamed that the base-hearted Bussy would be
the caluminator of the cousin he professed “to love better than
any relative or friend.”

Her answer to this letter has been lost, but we may gather
something of its nature from the note Bussy sent her on
receiving it—

** Ficuibres, July 30, 1654

“Mon Dieu! How witty you are, my dear cousin! How
well you write, and how charming you are! It must be owned
that, being so modest as you are, you are under a great obliga-
tion to me for not loving you more than I do. Faith, I can
scarcely keep within the limits you impose. Sometimes I
blame your insensibility, sometimes I excuse it; but I always
excuse you. I have many reasons for not displeasing you, but
I have still stronger reasons for disobeying you. What! You
flatter me, my cousin, you say sweet things, and yet you forbid
me to have the least tenderness for you. Ah well; I must not
then; I must do as you wish, and love you after your own
fashion ; but some day you will have to answer before God for
the constraint I put upon my feelings, and for the evils which

will follow in consequence. .. .”

In the next letter to his cousin, written rather more than a
fortnight afterwards, Bussy gives us some glimpses of Madame
de Sévigné’s affectionate character, and of the scorn and indig-
nation with which she regarded coquettes. We also glean
a little news of the Surintendant Foucquet, about whom Bussy
102 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

was continually asking questions, and building, one doubts not,
all kinds of airy castles on the subject. It is noticeable, too, that
this letter is different in tone from the one he had written at
Montpellier. The Marquise, though truly amiable, and hating
to wound her cousin, had evidently made him quite aware that
such letters were not to her taste.

“THE Camp AT VeRGis, August 17, 1654

“You tell me so often that you would regret me greatly if I
were dead, and there is something so delightful in the idea of
being regretted by you, that I would willingly die, if a few trifling
considerations did not make me wish to live. Besides, having
never found you out in an untruth, I am quite willing to believe
your word in this instance rather than prove it. It is also
extremely probable that a person whose eyes fill with tears when
speaking of the loss of her friend, would mourn him truly if he
were really dead. I believe then, my beautiful cousin, that you
love me, and I assure you that I, like you, am entirely satisfied
with our friendship.

“But I do not agree with you that your letter, frank,
and signed openly as you say, would put to shame all the love-
letters in the world; the two things are entirely distinct from
each other. You must be satisfied if your friends approve of
your style, without depreciating the dz/lets-doux that have never
injured you. You are ungrateful, Madame, to abuse them after
the respect they have shown you. For my part, I am an
advocate for the love-letters, but not against yours; I see no
necessity to decide between them, for they are entirely different
things. Your letters have their graces, and the JdiMets-doux
theirs; but, frankly speaking, if you would sometimes send
us a love-letter, your letters would not be so valued as they are.

“You are strangely indignant against coquettes. I do not
know whether this will last till you are fifty, but at all events I
shall keep in exercise a few sentiments of love, so that I may
have them for use if at any time you should happen to change
your mind. Till then, I shall have for you only the purest
friendship in the world, since you will have nothing more.

“T am glad that you are satisfied with the Surintendant; it
A WISE PRECAUTION 103

is a proof that he is returning to reason, and that he does not
take things to heart so much as he did. When you will not do
as we wish, Madame, we must wish to do what you desire, and
consider ourselves too happy in remaining your friends. No
one except you in the whole kingdom could persuade a lover to
be content with friendship. There are very few who remain
friendly when their love has been refused, and I am convinced
that a woman who is able to prevent a rejected lover from
turning into an enemy, must have extraordinary merit... .

“Tam delighted to hear that your uncles think well of me.
Apart from jealousy, they are excellent men; but there is no
one perfect in this world, and if they were not jealous they
would perhaps be something worse. With it all, it is not they
whom I fear the most ; and do you wish to know why, Madame?
I fear you so much because you are a hundred times more
jealous for your own honour than they can be.

“T shall be obliged to say sweet things sometimes, Madame;
I cannot keep from writing them ; but there is no danger from
the hour that Madame de la Trousse sees my letters. .
Adieu, my charming cousin, here is enough badinage for this
time. Here is the serious part of my letter, I love you with all
my heart.”

The Marquise, rather alarmed, no doubt, at the licence
Bussy was taking in his letters, told him, with the instinct of
self-protection, that in future all the letters he sent her would
be shown to her aunt, the Marquise de la Trousse. Her
uncles, too, one gathers, are prepared to be watch-dogs to their
charming young niece, whose greatest safeguard, however, is
her own high sense of honour,

Bussy encloses a note to Madame de la Trousse, which
shows that he is not abashed in the least at his too-free letters
to his cousin.

“Tam greatly obliged to you, Madame, for the advice you
have given me. Believing that our charming Marquise read my
letters by herself, I might perhaps have written some things
that I should not wish others to see, and God knows what a
life you would have led me on my return, and how ashamed
you and I would have been of them. Your prudence has averted
104. THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

that misfortune by telling me that you will read all I write, and
has placed things on such a footing that I shall take care
to please you always, and never to cause you any annoyance,
But, Madame, in reassuring you concerning the too-tender
letters, I am ashamed of writing such follies, knowing that you
will read them; you who are so wise, and before whom only the
précieuses are pure... .”
CHAPTER X

The escape of Cardinal de Retz—His relative, Madame de Sévigné, acts as in-
termediary—A letter to her old tutor Ménage—The Comte de Bussy leaves Paris
to go to camp—A lively correspondence between the two cousins

HORTLY after receiving these letters from her cousin
Bussy, Madame de Sévigné went, as was her custom, to
spend the autumn at Les Rochers, and while there received a
letter from Cardinal de Retz which must have caused her much
astonishment.

Though personally she had kept aloof from the political and
other intrigues of the Fronde, she had a close acquaintance
with most of the prominent actors in it, for her kinsman by
marriage, Cardinal de Retz (he obtained the hat in 1650), has
with much reason been called by historians “the soul of the
Fronde.” He began his career as “leader of a party ”’—the
phrase is his own—by instigating the Paris mob to rebel against
authority on the eve of the famous Jour des Barricades, in
August 1648, which was virtually the beginning of the Fronde ;
and for the next four years he was intriguing, now with this
party, now with that, and was, throughout the rebellion, one
of its most prominent and truculent figures.

At the conclusion of the Fronde he was confined at Vincennes,
and not long after, his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris, died.
This was a great opportunity for the Cardinal. All the curés
of Paris demanded of the King, in the name of religion, that the
Cardinal should be set at liberty to take his rightful place at
the head of the clergy and of his flock. The Holy Father at
Rome, too, had a voice in the matter, and expressed some indig-
nation that a Prince of the Church should be put in prison,
considering that all ecclesiastics claimed immunity from arrest.

But strangely enough, for some inexplicable reason, the

Cardinal formally renounced all claim to the Archbishopric of
105
106 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Paris!’ He thus gave up all hope of his liberty, and the only
result of this quixotic action was his removal from Vincennes
to a prison at Nantes, where the Maréchal de la Meilleraye
guarded him with so little severity that the Cardinal passed his
days in the pleasantest society.

It was probably from motives of policy that the scheming
Cardinal was surrounded by diversion, and permitted to receive
visits from all the ladies in the neighbourhood, who, after enjoy-
ing the comedy which was the usual evening amusement of the
Cardinal, would often stay to sup with him. The Chevalier
Renaud de Sévigné and his wife, who lived in Anjou, often
came to see him, bringing with them Mademoiselle de la Vergne,
whom the Cardinal found “very pretty and charming.”

But amidst all these diversions the Cardinal was yearning
for the only thing they denied him, his liberty. He was a
prisoner on parole, but de Retz was always able to juggle with
conscience or honour as occasion demanded, and he now made
a bold bid for freedom with the aid of Joly, the Duc de Brissac,
and his relative the Chevalier Renaud de Sévigné.

It was a romantic flight. He escaped from under the eyes
of his gaolers in broad daylight, and while they were trying to
open a heavy door which he had shut behind him, he climbed
with ropes the walls of a bastion forty feet high, and then de-
scending, mounted a horse which his friends had in readiness on
the other side. While hotly pursued he fell from his horse and
dislocated his shoulder, but even this did not daunt him. He
concealed himself for seven hours in a haystack, and then
galloped off again, in spite of the intense pain in his arm. The
whole flight was a romance, a series of exciting perils and
hairbreadth escapes, till finally, reaching Rome, the escaped
prisoner was just in time to bring the drama to a picturesque
conclusion by assisting at the election of a new Pope, with all
the gorgeous pomp of the Roman Catholic Church.

While he halted on his journey at Machecoul, in his brother’s
territory of de Retz, he hada short breathing-space in which to
reflect on the consequences his flight might have for the Maréchal
de la Meilleraye. He dared not write to him personally, for
fear of compromising him still more than he had already done
by his breach of faith; he may even have found it somewhat
THE MARQUISE AND CARDINAL DE RETZ 107

difficult to find explanatory phrases for his conduct in address-
ing the considerate guardian to whom he had given his parole.
In his dilemma he bethought himself of his charming young
relative, the Marquise de Sévigné. She, he knew, was on
friendly terms with la Meilleraye, and he wrote to her an
account of his flight, explaining his motives, passing as lightly
as he could over his breach of honour, and begging her to use
what influence she had with la Meilleraye on his behalf.
Fearing this letter might be intercepted, he sent it to Ménage,
indicating, at the same time, how it should be used. The letter
reached Madame de Sévigné in safety, and on the first of
October she wrote to Ménage from les Rochers.

“T have received the letter you sent me from the Coadjutor,
and I do not doubt but that it will have a very great effect. I
sent it yesterday to Nantes to the Maréchal de la Meille-
raye, and I cannot tell you how much obliged to you I am for
the promptness with which you have done me this service. In
that I recognise your usual habit, and I truly thank you
with as much goodwill as of goodwill you have taken such
trouble... .

“ But how delightful it is to find you on good terms with all
my family. Six months ago things were not so pleasant. I
find that these quick changes have a strong resemblance to those
of the court.... But, bon Dieu! Where did you make
acquaintance with the Grand Prieur, whom M. de Sévigné used
always to call‘ my uncle the Pirate’? He had the fancy that
he resembled him greatly, and I think he was not mistaken.
But do tell me what you could have been doing together, as
well as with the Comte de Bussy. I have a strange curiosity to
learn all about this affair as you have promised me. But there
is yet something else. Our Abbé [the Bien-Bon], who hears on
all sides that you are loved, gets it into his head that he loves
you also, and he has already told me to put a word in here and
there on this subject to you. I have promised to do my best,
and if it be true that you love those whom I love, and to whom
I am under the very greatest obligations, I shall not have much
trouble to obtain this favour from you. I will give you time to
think of it, and, while awaiting your reply, I assure you that you
108 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

ought to be as satisfied with me as on that day when I wrote to

you a letter worth ten thousand crowns.
“MARIE DE RABUTIN-CHANTAL”

The Marquise could not resist her inclination to coquetry
whenever she wrote to her old tutor Ménage, and she refers
to the days of her girlhood, when the tutor had declared
that one of her letters was “worth ten thousand crowns.” A
year or two before this she had reproached him humorously
for the devotion he was showing to his young pupil
Mademoiselle de la Vergne. “But even though she be a
thousand times more amiable than I am, you have been ashamed
of your injustice, and your conscience has been so remorseful
that you have been obliged to divide your affections more
equally than you did at first. I praise God for this good
feeling, and promise you to agree so well with that amiable
rival, that you shall hear no complaint from either of us.”

As may clearly be seen from the letter, dated 1654, Ménage,
who a few years before had been, in his quality of literary man,
an almost daily guest at the Cardinal’s table, had become
embroiled with his patron during the troubles of the Fronde.
Loret refers to it in his chronicle, and it is probable that at the
same time he may have quarrelled with the Abbé de Livry also.

“But how delightful it is to find you on such good terms
with all my family. Six months ago things were not so
pleasant.” These cordial phrases show what genuine pleasure
it gave the Marquise to find that the friend and tutor of her
girlhood was no longer at enmity with her people. With what
charming artifice she mentions the Abbé de Livry’s desire to be
friendly again; how gracefully she insinuates that by meeting
him half-way, her old tutor will be giving her a special pleasure !
This gentle, peace-loving side of Madame de Sévigné’s nature
must have been one of her greatest charms; her gracious, kindly
spirit was strangely free from the taint of pride or bitterness;
she “ hated satire,” it was said, and she hated, too, all the ignoble
passions which mar human intercourse ; the discord, strife, and
jealousy which, a free-growing crop at all times, flourished
especially during the turbulent years of the Fronde.

Madame de Sévigné returned to Paris for the winter season
BUSSY GOES TO CAMP 109

at All Saints, and in the spring her cousin Bussy came to the
capital for a short period. All society was watching with keen
and curious eyes for the lady who would be honoured by the
preference of the young King. It was more than whispered that
Mademoiselle Mancini was the chosen of the King; indeed, it is
history now that he would fain have raised her to share his
throne. But the Cardinal’s ambitions stopped short at this;
even Anne of Austria could not countenance this honour for
Mazarin at her son’s expense, and the project was promptly
quashed.

The Marquise de Sévigné was still pursued by the attentions
of Foucquet, who was daily increasing in the power that wealth
gives, and it is again from Bussy’s letters that we gather in
what relation the Surintendant stood to Madame de Sévigné.
Bussy, who still professed to care for his cousin with a more
than cousinly affection, was so occupied with his various “ affairs
of the heart ” that he could not find time to bid her good-bye,
till the last hour before his departure for Landrecy. Then, on
calling at her house, he found that she had gone to Livry for a
few days, as she often did while she was in Paris during the
summer. He sent an apologetic letter, but we see from
Madame de Sévigné’s reply that she has nothing but the most
frank and sisterly regard for him, and accepts the excuses for
his neglect without the least offence, and is anxious, indeed,
only for his honour and distinction.

© Livery, June 26, 1655

“T did not doubt that you would bid me good-bye sooner or
later,” she writes, “either at my own house or from the camp at
Landrecy. As I am not a woman of ceremony I am quite
content with the latter, and had not even thought of being angry
because you did not come to see me before you set out... .

“TI have not stirred from this beautiful desert since your
departure, and, to speak frankly, I am not at all sorry to hear
that you are with the army. I should be unworthy of so brave
a cousin if I were sorry to see you in this campaign, at the head
of the finest regiment in France, and in so glorious a post as the
one you hold. I believe that you would condemn any senti-
ments less noble than these; I leave weaker and more tender
110 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

feelings to other people. Everyone loves in his own way. I
profess to be brave as well as you, and am proud to boast of
such sentiments. Some ladies might perhaps think this
profession a little too much in the old Roman style, ‘And
would thank God they were not Romans, that they might
still preserve some feelings of humanity.’”

“ But I can assure them that I am not entirely inhuman, and
that with all my heroism I desire your safe return as passionately
as they can do. I trust, my dear cousin, that you do not doubt
this, or that I pray to God with all my heart that He will
preserve you. This is the farewell you would have received,
and I beg you to accept it from here as I have accepted yours
from Landrecy.”

Bussy was a little piqued at these heroic sentiments, how-
ever, and would have been much better pleased with timorous
doubts as to his safety.

“Your letter from Livry is very pleasant,” he writes, “but,
as you say, it is not the most loving in the world... . When
one loves people who go to the army, one has more fear for the
dangers to which they will be exposed than joy in the hope of
the honours they may obtain.”

About a fortnight after this, the Marquise wrote again to
Bussy, giving him the most affectionate congratulations on the
success of his Guards at Landrecy, an engagement that
Maréchal de Turenne had praised before all the Court. She
was delighted to hear that her cousin had so distinguished him-
self, and sent her praises under the form of the badinage he so
well understood.

Paris, July 14, 1655

“Will you always disgrace your relations? Will you never
be tired of making yourself the subject of conversation in
every campaign? Do you think we are pleased to hear that
M. de Turenne has sent word to the Court that you have done
nothing worthy of mention at Landrecy? Truly this is most
annoying to us, and you will understand how deeply I feel the
insults that you bring upon our family.

“But I do not know, my cousin, why I thus amuse myself
FOUCQUET AND MADAME DE SEVIGNE III

with jesting, for I have just now very little leisure, and what
time I have I ought to speak seriously. Let me tell you, there-
fore, how delighted I am to hear of the success you have had in
what you have undertaken... .

“ Adieu, my cousin ; the Gazette mentions you very slightly ;
which has given offence to many people, and to me especially,
for I am more interested than anyone in what concerns
you. nt ”

A few days after this, Madame de Sévigné wrote a long
letter to her cousin, of which the most interesting paragraphs
are those which relate to the Surintendant Foucquet. In a letter
that Bussy had sent her early in July from the camp at Landrecy,
he gave her a detailed account of the tender leave-taking
between himself and Madame de Montglas, and finished the
recital by saying—

“There, Madame, is my Aistotve amoureuse. 1 believe that
that of the Surintendant is neither so gay nor so sad, but what-
ever it is I beg you to tell me all about it.”

The Marquise did not satisfy his curiosity. In her letter
answering this she told him very little, and of what she did say
she warns him not to gossip, for Bussy had already been helped
by the powerful Surintendant to purchase his post of mestre de
camp général, and, as she took care to remind him, it would not
be politic to talk about Foucquet’s relations with herself. It is
quite probable that Bussy’s too-glib tongue occasionally needed
a curb!

“,..I1 never remember to have read anything more
amusing than your description of your leave-taking. ... But
though it is very good of you to give me the particulars of this
affair, I have not the least inclination to make you a similar con-
fidence concerning what passes between the Surintendant and
me; indeed, I should be very sorry to be able to say anything
in the least resembling it. I have always in his company the
same circumspection and the same fears, and these are a con-
siderable drawback to the progress he wishes to make in my
affection. I believe that, in the end, he will be tired of renewing
a subject in which he is so little likely to succeed. I have seen
him only twice these six weeks because of a journey I have
112 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

taken. This is all I can, and indeed all I have to say on
this subject. Be as careful of my secret as I am of yours;
it is as much your interest as mine to keep silence on the
matter... .”

The journey that Madame de Sévigné mentions was in all
probability to Saint-Fargeau, the lonely chateau where La
Grande Mademoiselle was still in exile. The Princess mentions
this visit in her memoirs. ‘“Mesdames de Montglas, Lavardin,
and de Sévigné came expressly from Paris to see me,” she
writes in July 1655; and she whimsically complains of the
‘curious power she has at this period of making people ill, In
many cases when she invited her former friends and flatterers
to her chateau, she received, instead of the visits she expected,
so many excuses on the score of ill-health that she began to
suspect that the real cause of so much illness was her disgrace
with the King! :

In October, Bussy again wrote to the Marquise, again
mentioning the Surintendant, with whom he had evidently had
some little misunderstanding, and, reading between the lines, it
is not difficult to imagine that Foucquet’s leniency, which sa
surprises Bussy, is due to the powerful influence of the Marquise.
It is interesting, too, to note that Maréchal de Turenne, one of
the most distinguished heroes in France, was anxious to be on
familiar terms with Madame de Sévigné. The little we can
learn of this affair is tantalising. We know from her letters
that, some years after this, she went to visit him with Madame de
la Fayette, we know also that the sympathetic letters she wrote
on his death could only have been inspired by a personal
acquaintance and a deep admiration, but we do not know
whether at this brilliant period of her life he was ever successful
in gaining admittance to her vued/e. ?

“THe Camp aT ANGRES, October 7, 1655

“T am very glad, Madame, to receive assurances from you
that the Surintendant is inclined to think me in the right in the
affair between us. This greatly surprises me, and I think it very
extraordinary that he chooses to complain of Madame Martel
rather than of me. I assure you also, my charming cousin, that
I am very much obliged to him, and that there is hardly any-
TURENNE AND MADAME DE SEVIGNE 113

one in the world against whom I would not declare myself if it
were a question of his interests. Judge, if you can, how much I
love you for having prevented me from losing such a good
friend. ...

“Two or three days ago, when M. de Turenne and I were
chatting together, I chanced to mention your name. He asked
me if I saw you sometimes, and I told him that we were first
cousins of the same family, and that I saw no other woman so
frequently as you. He said that he knew you, and that he had
been twenty times to your house without finding you at home.
He added that he esteemed you greatly, and that, as a proof of
it, he saw no other woman—[the next sentence is missing in the
text in every edition], I told him that you had spoken of him
to me, that you were aware of the honour he did you, and that
you had told me you were greatly obliged to him.

“While we are upon this subject, Madame, I must tell you
that I do not believe there is a person in the world who is more
generally esteemed than you. You are the delight of man-
kind. In pagan times, altars would have been raised to you,
and you would assuredly have been created the goddess of some-
thing or other. In these days we are not so prodigal of incense,
above all for living merit, and we content ourselves with saying
that you are the most lovely and virtuous woman of your age. I
know Princes of the Blood, foreign princes, great noblemen who
keep a princely state, great captains, ministers of state, gentle-
men, magistrates, and philosophers, who would be your humble
servants if you would allow them. What could you desire
more? Unless you envy the liberty of the cloisters you can go
no further... .”
CHAPTER XI

The Queen of Sweden visits Paris—Her impression of Madame de Sévigné —An
infant prodigy—La Fontaine’s verses on the Marquise—A ball in her honour—Wax
candles carried off by maskers

HESE were indeed the most brilliant and triumphant years
of Madame de Sévigné’s life. The “princes, ministers of
state,and great captains” of Bussy’s eulogy are easily recognis-
able in the Prince de Conti, Foucquet, and Maréchal de Turenne;
and it would be interesting, if it were possible, to trace the other
dignitaries who he declared were willing, at a sign from her,
to become her devoted servants. She had not yet reached her
thirtieth year, and was still in the zenith of her extraordinary
charm, still enjoying life with the gay abandon that was part of
her natural disposition, but which was, however, always kept
between well-defined limits of grace and propriety.

During the year 1656 Paris was pleasantly occupied with
entertaining that eccentric royal lady, Queen Christina of
Sweden, This learned and masculine daughter of Gustavus
Adolphus, who voluntarily renounced her throne, was received
with enthusiasm and given many fétes by the French King and
his Court ; for it has ever been a charming Parisian habit to offer
hospitable welcome to kings and queens who were not comfort-
able in their own kingdoms.

Balls and masquerades, comedies and reviews, followed by
sumptuous banquets, were given in honour of the Northern Queen,
whose dress, speech, and actions were watched and noted with
an amused and eager curiosity. At the balls and festivals she
clothed herself something like the Court ladies at least, but there
were times, enjoyed by the Parisian crowd, when she donned
her usual costume of a man’s jus¢aucorps of black velvet trimmed
with ribbons; a cravat tied with flame-coloured ribbons, which

was popularly called a “dréle”; a blue moire skirt edged with
114
QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN 115

deep embroidery ; and on her fair hair, cut short like a man’s, a
black velvet toque decorated with a plume of black feathers.

Among the many diversions provided for the Queen, was
that of an exhibition of an infant prodigy, at that time astonish-
ing both Court and town, and who reminds us that there is
nothing new under the sun, not even infant prodigies. This
strange child was the son of a comedian named Beauchasteau,
and at the age of seven or eight, spoke several languages, and
improvised verses with extraordinary facility. King, queens, and
courtiers, always eager for novelties of any description, crowded
to hear the child, who, unabashed by this brilliant assembly,
improvised complimentary verses on each in turn. Madame de
Sévigné was of the company, and of her he said—

‘*Sévigné,, suspendez vos charmes
Et les clartés de votre esprit?
Pour nous faire rendre les armes,
Votre extréme beauté suffit.”

Poor little prodigy! After receiving a pension of a thousand
crowns from Mazarin, and another of three hundred crowns from
the Chancellor Séguier, he was taken to Spain, and from thence
to England, where he was brought before the Protector Cromwell.
He survived all these honours, but his ambitious friends, still not
satisfied, wished to introduce him at the Court of Persia, and
during his journey into that far country all trace of him was lost.

Queen Christina of Sweden wrote and spoke her impressions
of people and things with an almost embarrassing freedom. To
Mazarin she wrote that the Court lacked only one thing to make
it perfect, “the witty conversation of that rare person Ninon de
PEnclos”! She was evidently quite impartial in her admiration
of gaiety and intellect, for she expressed an equally sincere
admiration for Madame de Sévignd, and in a letter to the
Marquise de Lavardin said so much in praise of her beauty and
wit, that Madame de Sévigné was rather annoyed when she
found that the Marquise had been showing this letter somewhat
freely to her friends. There is, perhaps, a little of this annoyance
to be traced in an extract from a curious epistle, half prose, half
verse, that she wrote to La Grande Mademoiselle from Les
Rochers the same autumn :
116 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“T have lately received twenty-five or thirty letters, which
have told me the same thing twenty-five or thirty times; the
fine receptions that have been given to the Queen of Sweden,
and those which she has given to other people.”

Among the many fétes was a sumptuous entertainment given
by Nicolas Foucquet at Saint-Mandé, for the Surintendant had
grown in influence and importance as his wealth increased. He
kept a superb table, which was supplied with the rarest delicacies
from all known quarters; and so exquisite were his banquets, that
Mazarin, the Queen- Mother, the young King, and Monsieur
accepted the hospitality of this wonderful financier, who seemed
to have discovered the coveted secret of turning everything into
gold. But, magnificent as Saint-Mandé was, Foucquet’s ambition
soared yet higher; he would have a palace of art, in which should
be gathered all that money could buy or art create, of things that
were most rare and precious.

The Surintendant owned the estate of Vaux-le-Vicomte, near
Melun, and here he determined should be his Palace of Art.
Up to that period, brick faced with stone was considered good
enough for any private building, but Foucquet, for his new palace,
would have nothing but the finest cut stone. Le Vau, the King’s
architect, planned the building, and an army of workmen was
brought to carry out his advanced ideas. Le Nétre, the King’s
gardener, exercised his talent in laying out whole villages in
parks, parterres, gardens, and closes; and there was also the
tranquil little river Argenteuil to turn into fountains, cascades,
and foaming torrents, amid the sylvan silence of the woods and
gardens.

Foucquet had inherited from his father, not only a cherished
collection of books and rareties, but also the passion for collect-
ing, which he was now able to gratify to its utmost. He bought
whole libraries and collections, which he housed at Vaux; he -
procured the richest tapestries from Mortlake in England and
from Flanders; but such an enormous quantity of these precious
fabrics was required for the walls and furniture of his new
palace, that skilled workmen were brought from Paris, and a
manufactory was started at Maincy, a village close to Vaux.

The famous Le Brun decorated his walls and ceilings;
sculptors, artists, craftsmen of all kinds, looked to Foucquet as a
NICOLAS FOUCQUET 117

beneficent patron, and if anything rare or unique were taken to
him it was nearly certain to be bought at a good price. Marble
basins, vases and groups of figures, were wanted for his fountains ;
statues were required to people his woods; all the most rare
and costly works of art were needed to fitly furnish the rooms
of his superb palace. Even his factotum Vatel was unique;
there was not such another as he in the kingdom; and the
great Mazarin did not disdain to borrow him from Foucquet
to superintend the festivities when the Duc de Mantua stayed
in Paris.

There was a charm of boyish enthusiasm in all that Foucquet
did, a vivid personal charm that seems to have endeared him to
all those whom he benefited. He was a generous friend to
literary men in the days when, as Pellisson said, “an immortal
work would cause a poet to die of hunger.” La Fontaine lived
at Vaux, and amid the beauties of the woods and gardens
watched the habits of the wild creatures of the woods, a know-
ledge that he afterwards turned to good use in his imperishable
Fables. To Scarron, the jovial scoffer, the burlesque poet
whose words were winged with venom, he was more than a
patron; we have glimpses of him as a kind and thoughtful
friend. Foucquet not only allowed him a pension of sixteen
thousand crowns, but in 1659 the poet wrote to Foucquet:
“Since you sent me the pie, I have received your excellent
cheeses. I believe you intend to nourish us on the best fare
in the world.”

Mademoiselle de Scudéry was another of his pensioners, and
also one of his most attached and faithful friends. She is not
an altogether lovable person, although she was most weari-
somely admirable; for ever talking in her strident voice; for
ever laying down rules for the guidance of other women;
always posing as an oracle to an admiring circle. But her
loyalty to her friends when they were in trouble excuses many
of her platitudes. Just as she had been faithful to the Duchesse
de Longueville in her disgrace, so, when Foucquet came to his
inevitable fall, Mademoiselle de Scudéry was his most ardent
helper and advocate, so far as a man in his desperate condition
could be helped.

When Vaux-le-Vicomte was finished, Foucquet had an
118 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

especial pleasure in gathering round him in his sumptuous
retreat, the poets, literary men, playwrights, and artists, to enjoy
the exquisite gardens and to wonder at the marvellous fountains,
which for their beauty and ingenuity had not their like in
France. Moliére came with his troupe of players to give his
comedies ; Le Brun, the painter, would not only paint scenes for
their representation, but he would also use his mechanical
genius in preparing all kinds of surprises; artists of every
degree delighted in giving the generous, kindly Foucquet of
their best.

Mademoiselle de Scudéry was a person of much importance
at Vaux. She was the pre-eminently successful novelist of the
day, whose volumes, as they issued from the press, were veritable
events. Here, too, came her declared lover Pellisson—Foucquet’s
business manager—not as an ordinary lover, of course, but a
purely platonic though ardent friend, exactly according to the
precepts that Mademoiselle de Scudéry had laid down with so
much authority at the Hétel de Rambouillet.

Madame de Sévigné was an honoured guest at Vaux.
Besides the admiration Foucquet had always professed for her,
he had great confidence in her intelligence and judgment. “I
must consult the Marquise de Sévigné,” he said on one occasion,
“her conversation throws such a clear light on things that are
puzzling.”

It is not difficult to picture the Marquise at Vaux, wandering
among the beautiful gardens, listening to the murmurous music
of the fountains, and walking round with her host to examine
and admire all the wonderful works of art he had gathered in
his palace.

At these charming reunions, host and guests vied with each
other in literary games, douts-rimés, epigrams, madrigals, and
chansons ; and on one occasion La Fontaine, then an unknown,
ardent young poet, read a letter for the amusement of the
company that he had written in verse to the Abbesse de Mons.
The audience was charmed with the wit and easy grace of the
letter, and Madame de Sévigné expressed her pleasure to the
modest young poet with her usual gracious frankness. Two
days afterwards, La Fontaine, delighted with her approval, and
knowing that praise of the charming Marquise could not fail to
ah

 

NICOLAS FOUCQUET
A “PORTRAIT” OF MADAME DE SEVIGNE 119

please Foucquet, wrote to him the following prophetic but
somewhat obscure lines :—

“De Sévigné, depuis deux jours en ¢a,
Ma lettre tient les trois quarts de sa gloire.
Elle lui plut, et cela se passa,
Phébus tenant chez vous son consistoire.
Entre les dieux (et c’est chose notoire)
En me louant, Sévigné me placa... .
Ingrat ne suis: son nom sera piéga
Dela la ciel, si ’on m’en voulait croire.”

It was about this time that Mademoiselle de Scudéry
published her famous romance C/éze, in which she gives a
“portrait” of Madame de Sévigné, under the name of the
“Princesse Clarinte.” It was, indeed, one of the chief points
of interest about these novels, that some of the ladies and
gentlemen of the fashionable world would be certain to find
themselves there, under high-sounding names drawn from Greek
and Roman sources.

One can imagine the eager curiosity and interest with which
certain people would be recognised, and how the author would
be besieged with questions as to who was who. The “ portrait”
of Madame de Sévigné would be considered a somewhat
lengthy description even of a princess in a novel to-day, but the
many little details give us an intimate knowledge of this grande
dame who was so unaffected and charming in her manner.

“The Princesse Clarinte,’ she writes, “is of that pleasant
height and figure which, while being much more than medium,
is yet not excessive. Her air also is so free, her actions so
natural, her carriage so noble, that immediately one sees her
one knows she is of noble birth and has passed her life in the
great world.

“She is fair, without being insipid, and her colouring is
very suitable to her style of beauty. Her complexion is so
admirable that not even the most severe winters can rob her of
the beautiful bloom which makes it so lovely, which gives such
a fine effect to her marvellous fairness; and one sees there at
all seasons that freshness which is only seen at dawn on
the most beautiful roses in spring. Her lips are of the
loveliest colour; her face is well formed, her eyes are blue and
120 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

full of fire and expression. . . . Her throat is white, and beauti-
fully formed. As for her mind, I do not know how to make you
understand it, but I know well that there never was one more
charming, better turned, more enlightened, or more delicate.
She has a lively imagination, and her whole manner is so
galante, so frank, and so charming, that one could not, without
shame, see her without loving her. She, however, confesses that
she is sometimes subject to little moods of melancholy without
reason, which cause her to make a truce with joyousness for
three or four hours only ; but these annoyances are so slight and
pass so quickly that hardly anyone but herself knows anything
of them. Her conversation is easy, amusing, and natural; she
speaks well and justly; she has sometimes certain naive and
witty expressions which please infinitely ; and though she is not
one of those stiff and motionless beauties who have no gestures,
all her little actions have no affectation and are only the natural
outcome of her vivacious spirit, of the enjoyment of her humour,
and of her charming habit of doing everything gracefully. She
dances so marvellously well that she delights the eyes and the
hearts of all those who see her. Clarinte loves reading, and,
what is better, she understands admirably all the best literature
without any pretence of being a be/ esprit, She has even
learned the African [Italian] language, with wonderful ease.
This princess, besides these rare qualities, has a sweet, true, and
charming voice; and what is especially praiseworthy, is that
though she sings in a passionate manner, and one might truly
say she sings well, yet she sings like a lady of quality; that is to
say, without staking all her honour on how she does it, without
being begged to do it, and without ceremony: and she does it
so gaily that she becomes still more charming, especially when
she sings certain little African [Italian] songs, which she likes
better than those of her own country because they are more
passionate.

“For the rest, Clarinte loves all pretty things, and all
innocent pleasures, but she loves glory more than herself; and
what is a very great advantage to her, is that she has found the
means, without being either severe, shy, or solitary, to preserve
the best reputation in the world at a great court where she sees
round her the most polished men, and where she awakens love
A “PORTRAIT” OF MADAME DE SEVIGNE 121

in the hearts of all those who are capable of experiencing it.
That same playfulness which becomes her so well, and amuses
herself while it amuses others, helps her to retain as friends
many who, if they dared, would become her lovers. Her
conduct is such that calumny has always respected her virtue,
and she has never been suspected of the least gallantry, though
no one is more galanite than she. She sometimes says that she
has never been in love except with her own reputation, which
she guards jealously.

“What is still more remarkable in this person, is that at her
age she directs the affairs of her household as prudently as if
she had all the experience that time could give to a most
enlightened mind; and what I admire still more is that, when
it is necessary, she can leave the world and the court, and amuse
herself in the country with as much tranquillity as if she
had been born in the woods, .. . I have never seen together so
many attractions, so much good-humour, so much politeness,
so much enlightenment, so much innocence and virtue; and no
one else has ever known better the art of having grace without
affectation, cheerfulness without folly, propriety without con-
straint, glory without pride, and virtue without severity. . . .”

Mademoiselle finishes the portrait by saying—

“ She has a friend who has known her since childhood, who
is a man of such great merit, who has so much wit, judgment,
knowledge, virtue, politeness, and who knows the world so well,
that it is not strange that she should have chosen him from the
beginning of her life to be the chief among her friends.”

This description could only apply to the Comte de Bussy,
who, to his world, seemed a polished courtier, a gentleman
sans peur et sans reproche—the abduction hardly counted—but
who was soon to make a startling revelation of his character,
in a manner that most seriously wounded the heart and hurt
the reputation of the lady who was supposed to be his closest
friend.

During the years that immediately succeeded the Fronde,
Paris was gradually growing more ardent in the pursuit of
amusement exactly in proportion as the young King approached
nearer to his full manhood. Never was King more passionately
devoted to pleasure in every form than Louis XIV, and at this
122 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

period, a year or two before his marriage, we find him frequently
running about the streets at night during Carnival time, with his
young brother the Duc d’Anjou, and a few choice spirits among
his courtiers, all masked, or dressed in absurd masquerade
costumes, visiting the houses at which they knew balls were
being held. It is interesting to find that on one such occasion
he visited the hétel of the Duc de Lesdiguiéres, who that night
was giving a ball, ostensibly to six ladies, though, says the
chronicler, “the affair was really given in honour of the widow
of the Marquis de Sévigné.”

It was a magnificent entertainment. It began with a
comedy, which was followed by a ball, and after that the
guests sat down to a banquet. The rooms were beautifully
decorated, and in the grand gallery there were no less than
thirty-six crystal lustres, each holding twelve wax candles. At
the hour of the ball, a little group of figures, all closely masked
a la portugaise, came out of the Louvre and stood on the steps
debating as to where they should go that evening. There was
the young King, then about nineteen, Monsieur, some chevaliers
d’honneur, and a few ladies of the Court, the charming little
Riviere Bonceil, Mademoiselle d’Argencourt, and Mesdames de
Navailles and de Comminges. It was at first proposed to
visit Mademoiselle, but finally they decided to go to the house
of M. de Lesdiguitres. The maskers reached the house just as
the comedy was over, when the ball was in progress; and the
host, knowing this band of maskers, gave them welcome, and
after dancing for some time they all sat down to a superb
collation. But when the King and his distinguished company
had left the house, another masked band of a less reput-
able kind swarmed in, and carried food from the tables and
candles from the lustres. These latter had to be replaced
several times during the evening, and it was said that the wax
candles alone cost the Duc de Lesdiguiéres more than one
hundred pistoles.

These maskers were an extraordinary feature of the second
half of the seventeenth century in Paris, and under such con-
venient disguise, robberies and murders were committed with
impunity. Sometimes as many as two hundred maskers would
be seen at one ball; and it was a necessity for anyone walking
DISORDERLY MASKERS 123

or driving through Paris at night to be accompanied by armed
lackeys. So great was the disorder that sometimes the lackeys
themselves would turn on the maskers and plunder them ; indeed,
all kinds of excesses were committed by these dark, mysterious
figures, who might be anyone, from the young King, or Monsieur
his brother, to the students at the Jesuit or other colleges, escap-
ing for a few brief hours from the rigid rule of their daily life.
CHAPTER XII

The Comte de Bussy in difficulties—He desires to borrow money of the Marquise
—A misunderstanding—Madame de Montglas pledges her diamonds—Bussy’s mean
revenge on his cousin—Moliére produces Les Précieuses Ridicules

M ADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY was not the only
person who considered the Comte de Bussy as one of the
staunchest friends of Madame de Sévigné. Had the Marquise
been asked who was her dearest, most loyal friend, she probably
would have named her cousin Bussy. He never lost an oppor-
tunity of telling her—in polished phrase and amusing epigram,
it is true, but none the less unmistakably—that he was her very
humble servant, always anxious to do her bidding, always hoping
that she would return the love he professed to have for her.

Madame de Sévigné, as we have seen, consistently laughed
at such professions, and kept him at a safe distance by refusing
to take them seriously. Those were the days of exaggerated
gallantry, and ‘perhaps it was a legacy from the court of
précieuses that men should make pretty speeches and women
expect them. The Marquise certainly preserved her reputation
as a précieuse by keeping all her professed admirers beyond a
well-defined circle of propriety, and to Bussy she confessed a
sisterly love and interest in his honour which he found peculiarly
irritating. In 1655 she wrote to him—

“Tam told that you have ‘asked permission to stay on the
frontiers this winter. As you know, my poor cousin, that I
love you with a blunt and honest kind of love, I hope your
request may be granted ; for this, it is said, is the sure road to
promotion, and you know how sincerely I am interested in your
welfare and good fortune. But I shall be pleased whatever
happens. If you remain on the frontier, true friendship will
find there what it expects ; and if you return, affectionate friend-
ship will be gratified.”

124
BUSSY IN NEED OF MONEY 125

Bussy, as we have seen, was rather piqued by such calm
expressions of friendship; he would greatly have preferred to
hear that a warmer, more agitated interest filled her with fears
for his safety.

The peculiar connection between these cousins, who, said a
mutual friend, “were born for each other,” was an intimacy of
mind, an affinity between their wit and understanding quite
apart from their totally diverse characters and principles. The
Marquise herself once wrote that “they could hear each other’s
thoughts before they spoke,” and this quick mutual interplay
of ideas and expression is so marked in some of their letters,
that, without looking at the heading, it is occasionally difficult
to say which cousin is writing.

Each, without question, found an especial and piquant
pleasure in the other’s society. The Comte admired his cousin
for many things: her grace, her beauty, her sweet disposition,
even for the impregnable virtue which he tried so often to
undermine; but above all else he admired her for her instant
appreciation of his sparkling wit, to which her own brilliant
intellect answered with never-failing responsiveness ; his lightest
bon mot, his most obscure allusion, his most delicate repartee,
would always, he knew, be sure of instant comprehension from
her, and not infrequently strike an answering fire of wit.

As Bussy told Maréchal Turenne, “he saw no other woman
so frequently,” and the Marquise was, doubtless, equally glad to
see this handsome and polished soldier-cousin who had so many
times tried to impress on her the fact that he was her most
devoted servant. It would seem incredible that any misunder-
standing could arise between these two friends, bound so closely
together by ties of kinship as well as by such an unusual affinity
of understanding, did we not know that the frail texture of
human friendship has often some weak part that gives way
under the strain of unusual circumstances,

Bussy, in the month of May 1658, was in Paris, preparing
to join Turenne’s army in Flanders, and, as the preparation of
his equipages and other requirements was an expensive matter,
he found himself in desperate need of money. He applied to
some of his friends, who probably knew Bussy too well to lend
him a sou, and finally he went to the Marquise de Sévigné, who,
126 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

like himself, had just been left ten thousand crowns by their
uncle, Jacques de Neuchéze, the Bishop of Chalon. They had
neither of them yet received the money from the executors, and
Bussy sent to ask his cousin if she would advance him a
thousand pistoles on the money he was to receive.

The Marquise was quite ready to help him in his need, but
apparently the Abbé de Coulanges managed all her money
affairs, and when she told him. of Bussy’s application he did not
think the matter so simple as did his niece. Money should not
be lent even to cousins, said the sage Abbé, without good and
solid security; and had Bussy, who played high, who was a
spendthrift, who was always squandering money on his pleasures,
such security to offer?

Bussy was therefore told that, before the money could be
lent him, his affairs would have to be inquired into. It was
only a postponement, but Bussy, who was in sore need of money,
regarded it as a disguised refusal. Besides, there was no time
to wait ; his reputation would suffer if he arrived late at the seat
of war; and, burning with wrath against his cousin, he went to
Madame de Montglas, who, to lend him two thousand crowns,
immediately pledged her diamonds.

Having obtained the much-needed assistance, Bussy left for
Flanders, more angry with Madame de Sévigné than he would
have believed possible. His anger had, not cooled when, some
time after, he wrote this scathing reflection on his cousin’s refusal.

“There are people,” he writes to a friend, “who make only
sacred things the limit of their friendship, and who will do
everything to oblige their friends with the exception of offending
God; these people call themselves /rzends as far as the altar.
Madame de Sévigne’s friendship has other limits. That beauty
is only a friend till it is a question of the purse.”

Was the Marquise to blame? It is difficult for us to-day to
decide how much share she had in the delay, and we know it
was the Abbé de Coulanges who counselled prudence. Had she
had the control of her own affairs she would probably have
advanced the money at once, without further question. But her
own and her children’s fortunes had already been seriously
impaired by her spendthrift husband; it had taken the thrifty
Abbé years of careful management “to draw her from the abyss”
BUSSY’S QUARREL WITH THE MARQUISE 127

into which her husband’s excesses had plunged her ; and there
is no doubt that the Bien-Bon thought good money would be
thrown away by lending it to a prodigal like Bussy. We
know that Madame de Sévigné had a horror of avarice, and
that she willingly impoverished herself for her husband and
children; indeed, it is quite conceivable that the prudent Abbé
used the argument that for her children’s sake she must not
quite recklessly lend money to a gambler like Bussy without
due inquiry. An extract from a letter that she wrote just a year
before her death is a touching witness to her generosity of spirit,
for it demonstrates plainly that she had stripped herself of almost
everything to establish her children, and to pay the debts in-
curred by their extravagance.

“I die without any ready money,” she writes, “but also
without debts; it is all I ask of God, and it is enough fora
Christian.”

But even if some allowance be made for Bussy’s anger
against the cousin who he thought might have done him this
service, the revenge he took a little later was so scandalous, so
shameful from every point of view, that the most lenient of his
judges could only be shocked at such base, dishonourable
conduct.

In the spring of the following year, 1659, the Comte de
Bussy, with his friends, had just returned from a campaign, and,
eager to join in all the amusements of Paris after the hardships
of war, they were greatly annoyed when Holy Week interrupted
their plans of pleasure. Vivonne, one of the most reckless of
this band, suggested that they should all come with him to one
of his country-houses some leagues from Paris, where they might
indulge in whatever amusements they desired, unchecked by
the religious observances which Paris always devoutly practised
in the holy season.

His companions accepted this proposal with enthusiasm,
and at his Chateau of Roissy they behaved outrageously ;
uttering blasphemies against religion, and acting in such a wild,
reckless fashion, that Bussy, who had passed his fortieth year,
should have been ashamed to chronicle such doings. But
Bussy, born without moral sense, had no shame at any time,
and he tells us in his memoirs that, in the morning after this
128 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

wild night, he and his companions agreed to write the worst
things they knew of everyone except their friends.

It was then that Bussy, in this disgraceful company, gave
rein to his spite and anger against his cousin. He wrote a
“ portrait,’ in which he dissected her with a merciless analysis,
accentuating her defects, depreciating her charms, and holding
her up to ridicule in the manner most calculated to wound her,
or any woman, to the depths of the soul.

But retribution was near at hand for Bussy ; in fact, this event
has been noted by his biographers as the turning-point of his
life, when from being a brave, clever captain, with high
ambitions for the future, and a brilliant prospect of promotion,
he became, first a prisoner, then an exile for long, weary years,
seeing one by one his fair hopes and bright ambitions fade to
the melancholy actuality of grey, monotonous, empty days at
his estate in the provinces, with only the recollection of past
successes to feed his vanity.

Rumours, very probably exaggerated, of the orgy at Roissy
had reached the ears of the King and the pious Queen Regent,
who, as long as she lived, exacted as far as she could an outward
respect for religion and virtue, and as a result the offenders
were banished, Bussy to his estate in Burgundy. Here, in the
long leisure of his solitude, he wrote his scandalous Histoire
amoureuse des Gaules, which was, in fact, a chronique scandaleuse
of the Court, with the flimsiest disguise of fictitious names.
Bussy knew better than anyone that his cousin had no rightful
place among such depraved company, but nevertheless he in-
cluded her portrait with the others, now polished and sharpened
with malicious skill, so that every point was barbed with the
worst of venom—the bitter venom of him who has once been
friend,

Bussy declared afterwards that he never intended either the
fTistoire amoureuse or Madame de Sévigné’s “ portrait” to be
published ; he had only written it, he said, to amuse Madame de
Montglas. But of such things, once written, it is impossible to
predict the fate. This brochure was found to be so clever, so
exquisitely entertaining, by her friends and his own, who had
no difficulty in recognising the originals, that it was lent about
from one to another, and among others to the Marquise de la
A VILLAINOUS “PORTRAIT” 129

Baume, who privately made a copy of it before returning the
manuscript. Copies multiplied, and were passed about, so that
the “secret” became very well known in the beau monde of
Paris.

The Marquise was not long left in ignorance of Bussy’s
mean revenge. Had it been mere invective or defamation, it
would not have been half so damaging. But the clever Bussy
had simply analysed his cousin’s beauty, and had proved that
she, to whom three or four years before he had declared that
pagans would have worshipped her as a divinity, had really no
beauty at all. The Marquise knew well what laughter the
clever sketch would excite among her friends; indeed, no
friendship could be proof against it. Even she herself confessed,
when time had dulled the acuteness of her annoyance, that
“had it been written by anyone else of anyone else I should
have enjoyed reading it.” Corbinelli, one of her truest friends,
who greatly admired and esteemed her, wrote to Bussy his
impressions on reading the sketch, and we may be certain that
there were many others in that gay social world whose delight
would not be tempered by the least sympathy for the victim.

“When I first read it,” writes Corbinelli, “I was angry; then,
in spite of myself, I laughed heartily. After that, I was
ashamed of having laughed. Then I yielded to temptation
and read it again. I laughed yet a second time, though I was
angry and ashamed all the same.”

No wonder Madame de Sévigné said that “the villainous
portrait” caused her to pass whole nights without sleep! It
was a cruel blow to her friendship as wellas to her pride, and for
a long time she could neither forget nor forgive it, and would
have no intercourse with her despicable cousin, who, in holding
up to ridicule his near relative, whose reputation and honour he
should have been the first to defend, has heaped such dishonour
on himself that it will endure while his name is remembered.

Satire was in the air. Moliére, that brilliant satirist of his
century, was delighting Paris with his life-like representations of
the absurdities around him, and in 1660 he first performed
Les Précieuses Ridicules. But it must not be supposed that the
true précieuses, who had shone with such distinction at the
Hétel de Rambouillet, were the people whom Moliére held up

9
130 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

to the scorn and mocking laughter of the Parisians. Madame
de Rambouillet herself and several of her family witnessed the
performance. Madame de Sévigné was probably there, and
certainly many others of the préczeuses who were so proud of
their title, and it is scarcely probable that they would have gone
to see themselves caricatured ; besides, all the literature of the
day makes it perfectly clear that the préczeuses of the Hétel
de Rambouillet were ladies worthy of all honour and praise.
Since the Fronde that salon had been virtually closed, but
Mademoiselle de Scudéry had been holding her “Saturdays”
in the rue Vieille du Temple, and one would not dare to say that
Moliére had not found his absurd préczeuses there! The con-
versation was so fervently, so inexorably literary ; words,
phrases, sentiments, expressions, fancies, and feelings were
examined, analysed, and torn to tatters ; every form of literary
exercise was worked to death, while the hostess talked almost
without cessation to her admiring guests.
CHAPTER XIII

The last féte at Vaux—A startling arrest—Letters from Madame de Sévigné
found among the private papers of Foucquet—A Parisian scandal—The Comte de
Bussy defends his cousin’s good name

HILE Madame de Sévigné was still suffering from the
annoyance that her cousin’s treachery had caused her,
she had to endure yet another attack on the reputation of which
she had always been so jealously careful. This time, the
scandal did not start up stealthily here and there, like some
noxious weed; and instead of learning by the amused and
malignant smiles of her acquaintance that they had seen and
enjoyed every detail of her latest “portrait,” the blow was to
fall with the utmost publicity, for the slander was one of the
results of an event that astonished not only all France, but all
Europe —the sudden and startling downfall from power of
Nicolas Foucquet, Surintendant des Finances,

Foucquet was at the very pinnacle of his power in 1661, but
he was as yet unaware that he had reached the ultimate point
of his splendour. Was not his device, the squirrel leaping
upwards from branch to branch, interwoven endlessly in all the
decorations of his palace? Was not his motto, Quo non
ascendam ? (To what may I not attain?) ever before his eyes
and never absent from his ambitious mind? Mazarin, the
ruler of all France, including the Queen-Mother and the young
King, was dead, and Foucquet was awaiting an honour which his
sanguine spirit looked on as almost acertainty—his appointment
to the coveted post of First Minister.

But the astute Mazarin before his death had already planned
Foucquet’s fall. When the Chateau de Vaux was in course of
construction, he had sent an obscure young dependant of
his household named Colbert, to give a report of what was

going on. Colbert had brought back a detailed account
181
132 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

of the stupendous expenditure: an army of workmen, fifteen
thousand men at least, employed in building, or on the estate,
and many details to correspond; with the conclusion that
Foucquet was keeping up his gorgeous state by a system
of fraud. He drew up a memorandum and sent it to Mazarin;
but if the minister had spies, so also had Foucquet, and
the memorandum was stopped in its transit through the post,
read by the Surintendant, then re-sealed and sent on to its
destination.

In the memorandum, Colbert had suggested that Foucquet
should be brought to trial, and forced to refund the money that
he had abstracted so freely from the nation’s funds. Foucquet
at once prepared to resist this intended humiliation, and drew
up a wild scheme on paper, which was, not long after, thrown
into his desk and forgotten. When it was discovered, however,
after his arrest, this absurd document was used by his enemies
against him, and proved a terrible witness in the hands of his
implacable pursuers, Colbert and le Tellier.

But Foucquet, unaware of the abyss of ruin which his
enemies were deliberately preparing for him, had never felt
more confident in his good fortune. He was expecting to have
the Order of the Holy Spirit conferred on him, as a preliminary
to the greater honour of being chosen First Minister in the place
of the late Mazarin, and, in buoyant expectation of this great
distinction, he prepared a magnificent féte at Vaux for the
the King and all the Court, a féte on which he lavished all
the resources he had at command.

On that fateful day for Foucquet, August 17, 1661, the
royal cortege came from Fontainebleau ; King, Queen-Mother,
and courtiers, in their carriages, on horseback, in litters; a
gay and glittering procession passing under the leafy avenues
through the great gates, into the superb grounds of Vaux, then
glowing with its mature summer display of brilliant flowers,
rare plants and shrubs, and musical with the sound of falling
waters,

It was six o’clock when the company arrived, and all, with
eager curiosity, wandered from one to another of the superb
rooms, where everything that was finest in the arts had been
brought together into a magnificent, harmonious whole. Some
THE LAST FETE AT VAUX 133

wandered into the gardens among the orange-trees, or, leaning
on the balustrades, listened to the cooling and soothing music of
the myriad fountains; or watched with fascinated gaze the
wonderful display of water in the big walk that divided the
gardens into two. This, perhaps, was the most arresting spot
in all these pleasure grounds of enchantment. On each side of
it were one hundred columns, out of which water gushed at the
height of thirty-five feet, making two straight walls of water ;
and close by, fifty fountains were playing into separate basins.
This cool, murmurous beauty of falling water, irradiated by the
declining August sun into millions of sparkling jewels and a
rainbow mist of spray, made for King and courtiers a magnificent
and novel sight, the like of which had never before been seen in
France.

As daylight waned, the company was summoned to a grand
collation. The royal guests were served in their own apparte-
ment with pheasants, quails, ortolans, the choicest wines, the
finest fruits and viands that could be procured, all prepared
under the skilful direction of the renowned Vatel, and served
sumptuously on gold plate, a luxury that the King himself did
not possess. The courtiers in other rooms fared no less
delicately, while soft music from the twenty-four violins gave a
charming and unwonted grace to the feast.

Supper over, the gay, laughing company again hurried into
the gardens, now sleeping in the serene splendour of the August
evening, anxious to obtain seats for the play—a new, and of
course entertaining, comedy by Moliére, to be given for the first
time. Can we not see that crowd? The young King in close
attendance on Mademoiselle de la Vallitre; the pious Queen-
Mother, drawn in the caléche thoughtfully provided by Foucquet ;
the doll-faced, pretty Monsieur, with his new and charming young
wife, the beautiful Henriette of England; and the crowd of
attendant courtiers in silks and brocades, the ladies with their
hair in bunches of curls on each side of the face, daintily patched,
highly rouged, their white throats clasped with pearls, talking,
jesting, laughing with their gallants almost as finely dressed as
themselves, all sauntering or hurrying towards the theatre ; and,
chatting with his guests, or in attendance on the King, Foucquet,
with his enigmatical smile, the lord of all this Eastern splendour
134 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

combined with Western ingenuity, pitifully unaware of the
tragedy with which this gay and sumptuous féte would end.

What a setting for the play had been chosen! It was given
near a grove of fir-trees, with the murmuring freshness of
fountains all round; a thousand torches gave a brilliant
illumination to the scene, and beyond and round about were
the dense, mysterious shadows of the whispering trees. While
King and courtiers were waiting expectantly, Molitre, as he
himself relates, suddenly appeared on the stage in ordinary
clothes, and, feigning great surprise, he turned to the King and
begged him to excuse the lack of preparation. There was no
time, he said, to get ready for the entertainment which his
Majesty apparently expected ; there were, indeed, no actors; but
if the King would only assist by ordering a play! It was
a comedy within a comedy, a childish artifice which pleased the
young King and his young Court, in these early days of his
manhood when all pleasures were new, and satiety. had not yet
dulled the freshness of every delight. The King made a sign;
and immediately the famous shell opened, and a Naide appeared
in the car of a goddess, and commanded the boundaries to be
removed and ‘the trees to speak, which, naturally, they did at
once, at the bidding of so charming a person; Pellisson spoke
the inevitable prologue, and at the first entry of the ballet the
Naide, with her train of fauns, nymphs, and satyrs, disappeared
into the fairy-land of the surrounding woods. Stale enough
to-day, perhaps; nothing but common pantomime; but in those
early days of theatrical art in France how exquisitely novel and
enchanting !

But as all things, even Les Fdcheux, the new comedy by
Moliére, must come to an end, the King and courtiers turned
their steps towards the chateau in the warm dusk of the autumn
night. At that instant another surprise awaited them.
Suddenly the whole horizon beyond the chateau, near Maincy,
was illuminated with soft light, four statues of fire appeared on
the hill, and the superb palace of Vaux was brightly outlined by
thousands of tiny lamps, an artifice to-day so old, but which to
those more than two hundred years ago had the supreme charm
of novelty. Dome, statues, carvings, all the wonderful white
beauties of this superb castle, stood out in bold relief, and though

 
A STARTLING ARREST 135

midnight had struck an hour before, yet King and courtiers
stood still to gaze on the fascinating sight. Wonder succeeded
wonder, for as they paused in astonishment a countless number
of rockets shot up into the vault of heaven; some fell, trans-
formed in their slow descent into fleurs-de-lis, familiar names,
monograms ; a whale appeared on the canal, from whose body
issued rockets, which, shooting up into the air, were transformed
into a thousand differing shapes, from which issued fire and
water, while trumpets and tambours made a confusing din,
giving the illusion that a furious battle was being fought. Just
as the King, believing that these wonders were at an end,
gave the sign to retire, numberless rockets burst forth from the
dome, and, increasing in size as they shot into the air, fell on the
other side of the gardens, making an archway of jewelled fire for
the King and Court to pass under to the palace. Here another
magnificent repast awaited them, after which came a ball that
was not ended before the dawn.

Everyone declared that the féte was magnificent, extra-
ordinary, wonderful, fairy-like; but its main object was a failure,
it had not given pleasure to the King. Louis had taken note of
all the marvels that his host had exhibited for his delight and
entertainment, but his comment was somewhat bitter :

“I shall never again venture to invite you to visit me,
Monsieur; you would find yourself inconvenienced,” he
remarked to Foucquet.

It was said, too, that among the allegorical paintings the
King had recognised a portrait of la Valli¢re; but whatever
may have been the immediate cause, Foucquet’s ruin was a
settled thing; Colbert and le Tellier were pursuing him with
hatred and jealousy, pointing out to the King how dangerous
a man he was; and no one could disguise the fact that the
Surintendant was helping himself freely from the public coffers,
even as Mazarin, as Richelieu, as all men in power did in those
days.

Scarcely more than a fortnight after the féte, Foucquet was
arrested at Nantes, where he had been living in a house with a
subterraneous passage to the Loire, on which a boat was always
in waiting to carry him over to Belleisle. Once there, he hoped
to be able to set the King at defiance ; a boyish project enough,
136 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

which was quite in keeping with his character and youthful
enthusiasm, Besides this, he had couriers waiting with relays
of horses at intervals along the road; but all his avenues of
escape failed him, and he was carried off to Angers, a strong
prison, which had been prepared, as he blindly supposed, for his
rival Colbert.

His superb library was sold, the palace of Vaux was shut
up, seals were placed on all his property, and as the Chancellor
Séguier affixed them to the furniture of his house, Saint-Mandeé,
near Paris, he could not resist an epigram. “ Foucquet desired
the Seals, and he has them now,” he said, in reference to the
Surintendant’s ambition. ‘

Madame de Sévigné was at her Chateau of Les Rochers in
Brittany, not far from Nantes, waiting for the news of Foucquet’s
appointment as Minister, and his election to the coveted honour
of the Order of the Holy Spirit, when the sudden and appalling
tidings of his arrest was brought to her. We know from her
letters afterwards, how keenly she felt her friend’s disgrace, and
how sincerely she grieved for his fall, but a keener, more
personal stroke to herself was presently to shock and harass her
yet further. All his private papers at Saint-Mandé had been
removed to Versailles for the King to read, and business
correspondence, Jzllets-doux, and the most intimate com-
munications were eagerly examined. The arrest of Foucquet
had been startling enough, but the love-letters of great ladies to
the financier was a theme entirely to the Parisian taste. Names
leaked out, and chansons were sung in the public streets,
hawked on the Pont-Neuf, and jested over in the vwelles; and
while in her Breton solitude, Madame de Sévigné learned with
horror and indignation, that letters from herself had been found
among the dz//ets-doux, that she who had been so careful of her
fair fame was held up to public ridicule as being among the
crowd of ladies who had not been able to resist the wealth and
personal charm of the Surintendant.

Did not all her world know that Foucquet had pursued her
with marked attentions? And was it not natural that they
should rejoice at hearing that Madame de Sévigné was no
better than the rest, in spite of her parade of virtue? Men
whom she had repulsed, women who hated her for the honour
A PARISIAN SCANDAL 137

they lacked, all took up the chorus, and this supposed indiscre-
tion of the virtuous Marquise caused more malicious joy, and
tenfold as much scandal, as that of the others, whose notorious
gallantries had long ago lost the surprise of novelty.

Madame de Sévigné remembered what letters she had sent
to Foucquet, and knew that they were no di//ets-doux, but merely
notes concerning her nephew the Marquis de la Trousse. But
how prove her innocence to others? It is to be feared that there
were men and women of the Court who never were convinced ;
so difficult it is to demonstrate to others a thing of which they
have no conception !

The King himself, struck with the charming and easy style
of the letters, said that they did honour to the lady who had
written them. Le Tellier repeated this on all sides, but to
little purpose; it was so much more piquant and amusing to
believe the worst !

The Marquise did not, however, sit down idly under this
injustice. She wrote to her old tutors, Chapelain and Ménage,
who both exerted themselves in the interests of their esteemed
pupil. Chapelain took up the cudgels very warmly on her
behalf, but in writing to tell her so, he said hard truths about the
Surintendant at which she probably winced ; he also referred to
Scarron, Pellisson, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry as “interested
rabble,” which was a harsh judgment on the two latter at least,
who proved the most devoted friends of the financier in his
adversity. It cannot have been a very agreeable letter to the
Marquise, but it at least assured her that he had not waited to
be asked to act in her defence, and in a somewhat grandiloquent
fashion he finished by assuring her that she had many friends
to defend her good name, and “that she might live in repose
and sleep in peace.”

In a letter that Madame de Sévigné wrote to Ménage, we
may trace a little just annoyance that her simple notes should
have been placed by Foucquet in a box containing love-letters.
She evidently feels that such conduct was a species of treason.

“I thank you, my dear Monsieur, for all your news,” she
writes; “there are two or three items in your letter that I did
not know. As for that of M. Foucquet, I hear nothing else
spoken of. I think you understand very well the displeasure I
138 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

felt at having been included in the number of those who had
written to him. It is true that it was neither gallantry nor
interest which obliged me to correspond with him, one may
perceive quite clearly that it was nothing but the affairs of
M. de la Trousse; but that did not prevent my having been
very vexed to find that he put them in the same box as his
love-letters, and to hear myself classed with those whose senti-
ments are not so pure as mine. On this occasion it is necessary
that my friends should enlighten those who do not know the
truth of the matter.”

She also wrote on the same subject to the Marquis de
Pomponne, the son of Arnauld d’Andilly, who was a personal
friend of Foucquet, who, indeed, was included in Foucquet’s
disgrace and exiled to Verdun in 1662.

“... But what do you say to all that has been found in
those boxes? Would you ever have believed that my poor letters,
full of the marriage of M. de la Trousse and of all the affairs of
his family, would have been put away so mysteriously? I assure
you that whatever credit I may gain from those who will do
me the justice to believe that I have never had any other
connection with him, I am greatly disturbed to be obliged to
justify myself, and perhaps uselessly, with regard to a thousand
persons who will never understand the truth. I think you will
easily comprehend what grief this causes to a heart like mine.
I implore you to say what you know concerning this; I can
never have enough friends on this occasion. I am impatiently
expecting your brother to console me a little over this strange
affair; nevertheless I do not fail to wish with all my heart some
solace to the unhappy, and I desire of you always, Monsieur,
the continuation of the honour of your friendship.

“M. DE RABUTIN-CHANTAL”

There was yet another defender of her good name to whom
Madame de Sévigné had not applied, whom she only remembered,
in fact, with indignation and anger. Her cousin Bussy, hearing
that letters from the Marquise had been found among Foucquet’s
papers, bethought himself that they might refer to the office of
mestre de camp général, in which transaction the Surintendant
had advanced him some of the money. He went to le Tellier
BUSSY DEFENDS THE MARQUISE 139

to explain this affair, and while there took the opportunity to
ask the truth about the letters of Madame de Sévigné, which
just then were one of the chief subjects of Parisian gossip. Le
Tellier assured Bussy that “they were the most honest letters
possible, and of a jesting character.”

Bussy, already feeling ashamed of his own scandalous be-
haviour, which he always afterwards had the grace to look on
as one of the worst actions of his life, now took up his cousin’s
cause, and defended her good name on every possible occasion.
Society had not forgotten the part he had so lately taken
against her, and one day when his brother-in-law de Rouville
classed Madame de Sévigné among the mistresses of Foucquet,
Bussy quarrelled seriously with him.

De Rouville was astonished at his attitude, and reminded
him that after having written such scandal against her, it was
hardly in keeping for him to take cudgels in her defence.

“JT don’t like such reports,” retorted Bussy, “unless I make
them myself!”
CHAPTER XIV

Foucquet’s trial—Madame de Sévigné writes a daily account of it to the Marquis
de Pomponne—The Chancellor Séguier—A period of suspense—Foucquet is sent to
Pignerol under the escort of d’Artagnan and his famous Musketeers

N his famous “Instructions to the Dauphin,” Louis xIv de-

clared that no act of his reign had given him more pain than

the arrest and trial of Foucquet. The Surintendant’s ruin was

a planned and settled thing, but the bitter animosity of Colbert

and le Tellier to the accused, greatly aggravated every circum-

stance connected with the trial, and contributed, there is little
doubt, towards the severity of his punishment.

The letters of Madame de Sévigné to the Marquis de
Pomponne, almost the first of importance that she wrote, give a
living, moving picture of Foucquet on trial before his judges,
some of whom are determined that if possible he shall be made
to suffer the extreme penalty of the law. She also, with her
wonderful art of fixing the most fleeting impressions, makes us
share in the hopes and fears that alternately possessed those of
his friends who were watching the trial with such absorbing
interest. We see, too, her tender woman’s heart resenting the
injustice of his judges, and wholly absorbed, as the trial goes on,
in the important question, “Will the penalty be death or im-
prisonment?” Indeed, when Napoleon read these letters in his
exile at Saint-Helena, he remarked “that they were very tender
letters to be written about a mere friend.”

The letters begin—

“To-day, Monday, the 17th of November, M. Foucquet was
brought for the second time before the Chancellor. He
seated himself without ceremony upon the se//ette as he did
the first time. The Chancellor began by desiring him to hold
up his hand, to which he replied that he had already given

the reasons which prevented him from taking the oath. . . .
140
FOUCQUET’S TRIAL 14!

“«But, said the Chancellor, ‘though you will not acknow-
ledge the power of the court, you answer and put questions, and
you are now upon the se//ette,

““Tt is true, I am,’ he replied, ‘but not voluntarily. I am
brought here against my will; there is a power which I must
obey, it is a humiliation which God has made me suffer and
which I receive from His hands. After the services I have
rendered, and the offices I have had the honour to fill, I might
have been spared this disgrace.’

“The Chancellor then continued the examination respecting
the gabelles,'to which the replies of M. Foucquet were very
satisfactory. As the examination proceeds I shall continue to
send you a faithful account of it; I am anxious to know whether
my letters reach you safely. . . .”

The Marquise might with reason be anxious about her
letters. She was perfectly aware that a rigorous watch was
kept on the post, and that all suspected correspondence was
seized and read without scruple. It was an unpleasant habit
of those in power. Mazarin had found the practice of
great service; Foucquet, as we have seen, was glad to ex-
ercise it on occasion; and Louis XIV, having a practically
inexhaustible capacity for enjoyment, found much diversion
as well as profit in reading the private correspondence of his
subjects,

But Madame de Sévigné’s loyalty to her friends was stronger
than her fear, and we must remember that it was no light thing
to profess friendship for Foucquet at this period; so many of
his friends had been included in his disgrace, while Colbert and
le Tellier, his chief enemies, pursued him with the utmost
malignity, and were sure to look coldly on those who supported
him.

The band of devoted friends who were watching every phase
of the trial, in the hope that some miracle would be worked to
save him who had been so generous when he was in power,
eagerly noticed every circumstance, however trifling, thinking
that it might influence the sentence of Foucquet. In the
following letter Madame de Sévigné records the little incident
of the plaster which Foucquet’s mother sent to the Queen, and
how much his supporters hoped from it. It is significant,
142 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

however, that the Marquise, though she desired it, could not hope
against her reason.

“ Friday, November 20, 1664

“M. Foucquet was examined this morning respecting the
gold mark. He answered very well. Several of the judges
bowed to him, but the Chancellor reproved them, and said it was
not the custom|; and to the Breton counsellor he said, ‘It is
because you are a Breton that you bow so low to M. Foucquet.’

“While passing by the Arsenal, out walking, he asked what
the workmen were doing, and he was told that they were
making the vase of a fountain. He went to them and gave his
opinion, and then returned smiling to M. d’Artagnan, and said
to him: ‘You are surprised that I should interfere in such
things, but formerly I used to understand them very well.’

“ The friends of M. Foucquet, and I among the rest, think this
tranquillity admirable ; others call it affectation ; such is the way
of the world.

“ Madame Foucquet, his mother, has given the Queen a plaster
that has cured her convulsions, which, to speak correctly, were
nothing but the vapours. Many people, believing what they
wish, imagine that the Queen will seize this occasion to intercede
the King for pardon for the unfortunate prisoner; but I, who
hear a good deal of talk of the tenderness in that quarter, do
not believe a word of it. The noise that plaster has made is
wonderful ; everyone says that Madame Foucquet is a saint, with
the power of working miracles... .”

Day by day, as the trial proceeded, Madame de Sévigné
gave a clear and lucid account of it to Foucquet’s exiled friend
Pomponne, always with the most tender sympathy for the
accused man, and often with much indignation against his judges.
In the following letter she gives a glimpse of the Chancellor
Séguier at his devotions, for everything was of importance to
the friends who were watching the trial; even the Chancellor's
visit to a convent might have a bearing on the case, and it will
be seen that the lady Abbess did not miss the opportunity of
speaking a word for Foucquet. The interest for us of to-day
lies in the record of an instance of the intense religious fervour
PERE VINCENT 143

that was one of the distinguishing features of this great century,
and so conspicuously lacking in the centuries that followed.
Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Vincent de Paul had a holy
influence on their countrymen that is absolutely incalculable ;
both were filled with a spiritual fervour that acted like leaven
throughout the kingdom. The one, well-born and rich, had
his own particular sphere of influence; the other, the humble
and pious Pére Vincent, was laughed at by the courtiers when-
ever he appeared at Court, for his shabby appearance and
plebeian aspect; but the record of his life’s work reads like the
chronicle of an early Christian saint, before the love of worldly
things had come to mar the simple faith as it came from their
Master. His practical Christianity in caring for the sick and
poor, when those unfortunates were regarded as absolutely of
no account; his work among the devastated villages after
the Fronde; his eloquent and successful appeal on behalf of
les enfants trouvés, are among the most moving and glorious
chronicles of his brilliant century.

The convent of the Visitation in the rue Saint-Antoine was
one of those founded by the Blessed Chantal, Madame de
Sévigné’s grandmother, under the direction of Saint Francis de
‘Sales, whom the Marquise once jestingly referred to as “our
spiritual grandfather.” “Puis” is the Chancellor Séguier ; for
it was not safe to mention the judges by name in such a
recital.

Monday, November 24, 1664

“_, Two days ago I dined at Sainte-Marie de Saint-Antoine.
The mother superior related to me the details of four visits
that Puis has paid her during the last three months, at which I
am greatly astonished. He came to tell her that the now
blessed Bishop of Geneva [Saint Francis de Sales had been
beatified in 1661] had obtained for him such especial mercies
during his illness that summer, that he felt under the greatest
obligations to him; and he requested her to ask the prayers of
the community for the deceased. He gave her a thousand
crowns for the accomplishment of his desires, and entreated her
to show him the Bishop’s heart. When he was at the grating
he fell upon his knees, and remained more than a quarter of an
144 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

hour bathed in tears, apostrophising the heart, and praying for
a spark of the Divine fire of the love of God that had consumed
it. The mother superior at his side wept also, and when he
left she gave him a reliquary full of relics of the blessed one.
He wears it always, and during his four visits appeared so
earnest about his salvation, so disgusted with the Court, so
transported with the desire of being converted, that a person
more clear-sighted than the Abbess would have been deceived.
She contrived to introduce carefully the affair of M. Foucquet,
but he answered like a man who was interested in nothing but
religion; that he did not know; that he would see; and, finally,
that justice would be done according to God’s will, without con-
sidering anything else. I was never more surprised than at
this conversation. If you ask me what I think of it, I must
tell you that I do not know; that it is quite unintelligible to
me ; and, on the other hand, I cannot see the good of this comedy ;
and if it is not a comedy, how can he reconcile his fine speeches
with all the steps he has taken since then? These are things
that only time will explain, for by themselves they are entirely
enigmatical, Do not mention it, however, for the mother
superior has begged me not to talk of the circumstance.”

In the next letter we find that M. d’Ormesson, whom the
Marquise refers to as the “ Reporter,” is speaking boldly on the
prisoner’s behalf. Madame de Sévigné was connected by
marriage with this famous lawyer (whose Journal is one of
the most trustworthy records of the period), and during the
trial she begged him to use his influence in Foucquet’s interest.
D’Ormesson would give no definite reply to the Marquise, prob-
ably because he saw more clearly than she did the inroads that
the Surintendant had made on the national funds. The lawyer
was, however, on the side of justice and mercy, and, in fact, he
defended Foucquet so well that his own disgrace, which occurred
not long after, was supposed to be the result of his zeal at this trial.

In all her letters on the trial there is nothing more delight-
ful than the picture she gives of herself and the little band of
ladies—Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Madame du Plessis Guéné-
gaud, Madame Scarron, perhaps, for we can only conjecture—
standing masked, opposite the Arsenal, to see their unfortunate
FOUCQUET’S TRIAL 145

friend, as he was escorted back to prison by d’Artagnan and
the fifty Musketeers that Dumas has made so famous.

Thursday, November 27, 1664

“The examination was continued to-day on the subject of
the grants. The Chancellor had the kind intention of driving
M. Foucquet to extremities and of embarrassing him, but he
did not succeed, for M. Foucquet acquitted himself admirably.
He did not come into the Chamber of Justice till eleven o’clock,
because the Chancellor made the Reporter read as before, and in
spite of all that fine devotion of which I told you, he said the
worst he could of our poor friend. The Reporter always took
his part, because the Chancellor evidently leaned to the other
side. Finally he said, ‘ Here is a charge which the accused will
not be able to answer.’ ‘Ah, sir,’ said the Reporter, ‘here is
a plaster which will cure that weakness’; and he gave an
excellent justification, adding, ‘Sir, in the place I hold I shall
always speak the truth, no matter in what form it presents
itself to me. The allusion to a plaster made the audience
smile, as it reminded them of the one that has lately made so
much noise. The ascused, who remained only an hour in
court, was then brought in, and when he left, M. d’Ormesson
was complimented by several people on his firmness.

“T must now tell you what I myself did. Guess which ladies
of my acquaintance proposed to me to go to a house exactly
opposite the Arsenal, where we could see the return of our poor
friend. I was masked, but I saw him almost as soon as he
came in sight. M. d’Artagnan was walking beside him, and
fifty Musketeers were thirty or forty paces behind. When I
saw him my legs trembled, and my heart beat so violently that
I could scarcely bear it. In approaching us to re-enter his
dungeon, M. d’Artagnan touched him, and pointed out that we
were there. He then saluted us with that bright, smiling count-
enance you know so well. I do not believe he recognised me,
but I confess I was strongly affected when I saw him enter
that little door. If you knew the misfortune of having a heart
like mine I am sure you would pity me, but I do not think you
have much advantage of me in that matter. .. .”

10
146 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Day by day hope and fear succeeded each other, as the
trial went well or ill, Madame de Sévigné’s well-balanced
mind was stronger than her affectionate heart, which desired
Foucquet’s acquittal so intensely; we gather from her letters
that she was never carried away by the illusions which so mis-
led his relatives and some of his friends. When Mademoiselle
de Scudéry, a woman of quite unusual intellect, and looked up
to by all her circle as a very oracle, hopes and believes that
things are going well, the Marquise is not deluded by a similar
optimism; her faculty of fearlessly facing the truth will not
allow her even this consolation. On December the gth she
writes—

“I assure you’ the days are very tedious, and that this
uncertainty is a frightful thing, but it is an evil to which the
whole family of the poor prisoner has become accustomed.
I have seen them, and admirethem. One would think they had
never known, never read the events that have happened in past
times; and what surprises me still more is that Sappho is the
same; she whose wit and penetration are unequalled. When I
think over this circumstance, I deceive and persuade myself, or
at least I try to persuade myself, that they know more of the
affair than I do. On the other hand, when I reason with
others less interested, whose judgment is reliable, I find the
measures against him so just that it will be a real miracle if
the affair terminates in the way we desire . . . we sometimes
lose by a single vote, but that vote is everything. ... Yet at
the bottom of my heart I still have a little hope; I do not
know whence it comes or where it leads, nor is it sufficient to
make me sleep in peace. Yesterday I was talking over the
affair with Madame du Plessis; I cannot endure anyone just
now but those with whom I can speak, and who have the same
feelings as myself. She hopes as I do, without knowing the
reason why. ‘ But why do you hope?’ ‘ Because I do.’ These
are our answers. Are they not reasonable? I told her with
the greatest sincerity in the world that if the sentence should
be as we desire, the height of my joy would be to despatch a
man on horseback to you instantly with the delightful news,
and that the pleasure of picturing your happiness on hearing it
would make mine complete.”
FOUCQUET’S TRIAL 147

But Madame de Sévigné was to have no such pleasant news
to communicate to her exiled friend. Foucquet had defrauded
the State of immense sums—even the Marquise admits that
“the measures against him are so just”—and the young King
intended to make a signal example of him. Richelieu and
Mazarin had both grown rich on the public money, and it was
a well understood rule that those in power helped themselves
liberally as occasion offered. But Louis xIv meant to have
neither Richelieus nor Mazarins ; he intended above all things
to govern by himself, and to understand the affairs of his
kingdom. Colbert, whom Madame de Sévigné called the
“North,” was not so amiable as Foucquet, but he was a man of
unquestioned integrity. It is a noticeable fact that during the
reign of Louis XIv there were no more ministers who out-shone
the King in splendour; no Richelieu keeping up kingly state
while the true King sat at his devotions in a badly furnished
palace, disregarded even by his courtiers; no grasping Mazarin
to hoard the nation’s wealth, to lavish it on works of art, or to
squander it among the men who were his tools; no Foucquet to
live in royal splendour, and to give with more than royal
generosity. From the day of Foucquet’s arrest, all the glory,
splendour, wealth, honour, and power of every kind centred in
the Roi Soleil; and if the nobles gave grand fétes it was for his
pleasure and approval, and it probably was his pleasure that
they nearly ruined themselves in doing so.

Foucquet was a doomed man from the beginning. Colbert
and le Tellier, who had caused his arrest, were determined on
his ruin. Maréchal Turenne was talking to a man who blamed
the violence of Colbert, and praised the moderation of le Tellier.
“True, sir,’ answered Turenne; “M. Colbert has most desire
that he should be hung, and M. le Tellier most fear that he
should not be.”

By the middle of December, the case had been so far
tried that his sentence became the subject of consideration.
D’Ormesson suggested that Foucquet should be banished for
life, and all his property confiscated. Sainte-Héléne judged
that the prisoner ought to suffer the death-penalty, but that
the King might be merciful. Madame de Sévigné, with her
usual graphic impressionism, gives Pomponne a glimpse of the
148 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

suspense which all the friends of Foucquet suffered at this
crucial time.

“Everybody is interested in this important affair. People
talk of nothing else. One reasons, draws inferences, counts his
chances on the fingers; one hopes, pities, fears, wishes, hates,
admires, is overwhelmed ; in short, my dear sir, our present situa-
tion is most extraordinary, but the resignation and firmness of
our dear friend is admirable. He knows everything that goes
on, and every day volumes might be written in his praise.”

On Saturday, December 20, the verdict was at length given,
and the Marquise writes this short postscript to her letter—

“Praise God, Monsieur, and thank Him; our poor friend is
saved, Thirteen were of M. d’Ormesson’s opinion, and nine of
Sainte-Hélené’s. My mind is so relieved that I am nearly beside
myself.”

Two days after, the Marquise sent further interesting details
to the Marquis de Pomponne, in which we find that Foucquet
kept his attitude of defiant resistance to the last. His physician
Pecquet and his servant Lavalée were greatly attached to their
master, and it is significant of the rigour and personal enmity
with which Foucquet was pursued, that these two perfectly
innocent men were thrown into the Bastille, and kept there for a
year and more, merely because they were the devoted servants
of their unfortunate master.

“ Monday

“This morning at ten o’clock M. Foucquet was conducted to
the chapel of the Bastille. Foucaut held the sentence in his
hand. ‘You must tell me your name, sir,’ said he, ‘that I may
know whom I address.” ‘You know very well who I am,’ replied
M. Foucquet; ‘and as for my name, I will not give it here, just
as I refused to give it in the Chamber of Justice ; by the same rule,
also, I protest against the sentence you are going to read to me.’

“Foucaut put on his hat and read out the sentence, while
M. Foucquet listened bareheaded. Pecquet and Lavalée were
afterwards separated from him, and the cries and tears of these
poor men melted every heart that was not made of iron. They
made such a terrible noise that M. d’Artagnan was obliged to
go and console them, for it seemed to them as if a sentence of
death had just been read to their master. They were both
FOUCQUET CONDUCTED TO PIGNEROL 149

taken to a room in the Bastille, and it is not known what will
be done with them.

“M. Foucquet went to M. d’Artagnan’s apartment... . At
eleven o’clock a coach was ready, into which M. Foucquet
entered with four guards. M. d’Artagnan was on horseback
with fifty Musketeers; he will conduct him to Pignerol, where
he will leave him in the care of Saint-Mars, who is a very worthy
man; he will have fifty soldiers as a guard. I do not know
whether our friend will be allowed another servant; you can
have no idea how cruel it seems to everyone that Pecquet and
Lavalée should be taken from him; some draw dreadful con-
clusions from it. May God preserve him as He has done
hitherto. We must trust in Him, and leave our friend under
the protection of that Divine Providence which has been so
gracious to him. They still refuse to allow his wife to join
him, but have permitted his mother to remain at Parc with her
daughter the Abbess,”

There was not much real mercy shown to Foucquet. He
was spared the death-penalty, and that was all; and probably to
linger for sixteen years in a dungeon at Pignerol, dead to his
friends, with not even his wife to share his solitude, was worse,
save for the disgrace, than death itself. We hear a few more
last words of him from Madame de Sévigné, whose affection
followed him step by step on his melancholy journey, and
whose brilliant pen shows him to have been a man of singular
fascination, with a bright, buoyant, and unconquerable spirit,
that not even his long imprisonment in the Bastille, nor the
dread prospect of Pignerol, was able to subdue.

“ Pecquet and Lavalée are still in the Bastille,” she writes to
Pomponne a few days later. “Can anything in the world be
more dreadful than this injustice? They have given another
servant to our unfortunate friend. M. d’Artagnan was his only
comfort on the journey. ...

“La Forét, his old esquire, came to speak to him as he was
going away.

“*T am delighted to see you, said Foucquet. ‘I know your
fidelity and affection. Tell the ladies of my family that my
courage remains, and that I am in good health,’
150 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“Truly this is admirable. Adieu, my dear sir; let us, like
him, have courage... .

“ Madame de Grignan is dead.”

When the Marquise wrote this last piece of news to Pom-
ponne, she had no idea of what an influence it would have on
her own life. Madame de Grignan was Angélique d’Angennes,
whom she had seen so often at the Hétel de Rambouillet, and
was the first wife of the Comte de Grignan. This latter, after
marrying another wife, and losing her also, was destined to
become the son-in-law of the Marquise de Sévigné.

The prison doors of Pignerol shut on Foucquet, and though
he lived for a time in the hearts of the many whom he had
befriended, little was ever heard of him again.

He who had loved all the material pleasures of this world,
who had surrounded himself with every luxury that art could
produce to delight the eye or to gratify the senses, spent the
last sad years of his life ina bare and miserable dungeon, which
looked out on to a desolate courtyard where no one ever passed.
Whether his bright, eager, kindly spirit chafed behind his prison
bars, and hoped vainly for release, or whether, in answer to his
pious mother’s prayers, his thoughts turned to spiritual things,
will never be known—we only know that after fourteen long
years of bitter expiation for his offences, Foucquet died.
CHAPTER XV

Madame de Sévigné introduces her daughter at Court—‘‘ A beauty who will set
the world on fire”—Mademoiselle de Sévigné dances with the King—Verses in her
honour

URING the three years that Foucquet was in the Bastille,

awaiting his celebrated trial, the Marquise experienced

one of the greatest pleasures of her life, that of introducing her

‘lovely young daughter Francoise to the Court and to the polite
world of Paris.

It is a little strange that though Madame de Sévigné was
devoted to her children, and to her daughter especially, we hear
very little of either of them during their childhood. Fortunately,
the Abbé Arnauld, the son of the Port Royalist Arnauld
d’Andilly, and brother to the Marquis de Pomponne, has written
a charming miniature pen-portrait of the mother and her two
lovely children, who were then nine and eleven years respectively.
The Abbé was on a visit to Paris, and was staying at the house
of the Chevalier Renaud de Sévigné.

“It was during this visit,’ he writes, “that M. de Sévigné
introduced me to the illustrious Marquise de Sévigné, his niece,
whose very name is dear to those who value wit, charm, and
virtue. . . . I fancy I can see her still as she appeared to me on
the day when I first had the honour of seeing her. She arrived
in an open carriage with her son and daughter beside her, all
three like the poets paint Latona accompanied by the young
Apollo and the little Diana, so striking was the beauty of the
mother and her children. She did me the honour to promise me
her friendship from that time, and I consider myself particularly
fortunate to have preserved till now a gift so dear and precious.”

Madame de Sévigné herself records the impression that her
children made on Pomponne, the Abbé’s brother, at about the
same period. Nearly twenty years after, he recalled it while
152 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

talking over bygone times with the Marquise, who, writing to
her daughter that same evening, repeated his pleasant little
reminiscence.

“Monsieur de Pomponne remembers the day when he saw you
as a little girl at my uncle Sévigné’s house. You were at a
window with your brother, more beautiful, he says, than an angel.
You were pretending to be a prisoner, a princess banished fom
her father’s house. Your brother was as handsome as you.
You were then nine years old. [She was eleven.] Hereminded
me of that day, and has never forgotten any of the times when
he has seen you.”

Francoise de Sévigné had been brought up chiefly under her
mother’s loving and wise superintendence, though we gather, from
a few words of regret written by Madame de Sévigné, that for a
short time at least her little daughter, then about ten years old,
was sent to the convent of the Visitation at Nantes, naturally
one of the establishments founded by her great-grandmother,
the Blessed Chantal.

She was taught Latin and Italian by the Marquise, and, under
her almost constant supervision, received a solid and thorough
education ; but she did not wear her learning with so light and
winsome a grace as did her charming mother, who, it has been
well said, “knew a great deal without professing to know any-
thing.” As she grew older the Abbé de la Mousse, a doctor of
theology, was her tutor, or perhaps not so much a tutor as a
friend in the household, whose learned and wise conversations
were of great benefit to the expanding intelligence of the young
girl, Under his influence she became a fervent disciple of
Descartes, whose philosophy was frequently discussed in certain
fashionable salons where Madame de Sévigné and her daughter
often visited before the latter's marriage. Drawn by a natural
affinity, she turned to the Cartesian theories of cold reason with
all the ardour of a strong intellect, unillumined and unwarmed
by the generous heart which gave such grace and glow and
tenderness to all the dainty blossoms of her mother’s witty and
cultivated mind.

We get one slight reference to her as a child, which is not
particularly pleasant ; but it is only justice to her to recall the
fact that the other child concerned, Mademoiselle du Plessis
 

 
A VISIT TO MONT SAINT-MICHEL 153

Argentré, her neighbour at Les Rochers, must have had a quite
peculiar gift of irritation, for even the Marquise, with her equable
temper, continually mentions in her letters what an tinmitigated
nuisance she is. “Ah!” she exclaims many years later, in a
letter to her daughter, “how few people there are who are
absolutely ¢rwe! Consider the word a little and you will like it.
The divine Plessis is most completely false. I do her too much
honour even in speaking ill of her; she plays all kinds of
characters ; the devotee, the skilful, the timorous, the indisposed,
the amiable, but above all she mimics me in such a manner that
it amuses me as much as would a glass that distorted my face,
or an echo, like that of Hudibras, which answered nothing but
nonsense.”

Asa child this person cannot have been very charming, but
the incident, as related by Madame de Sévigné, reveals the
weakness of her maternal affection, and how almost impossible
it was to her to believe her daughter in fault.

“Finally we talked of Mademoiselle du Plessis, of the foolish
things she used to say, and we recalled that one day, when she
had made some absurd remark to you, with her face close to
yours, you did not stand on ceremony, but gave her such a box
on the ear that it made her stagger; and how I, to smooth
matters a little, remarked, ‘ How roughly these little girls play!’
And how afterwards J said to her mother, ‘Madame, these two
young creatures were so rough, that they actually fought this
morning ; Mademoiselle du Plessis irritated my daughter, and
my daughter slapped her; it was most amusing.’ And by the
way in which I represented it, I delighted Madame du Plessis
with the idea that the two little girls were so merry together.”

It is a much pleasanter reminiscence when she recalls to her
daughter the occasion when the two drove together to visit the
famous Mont Saint-Michel with its beautiful monastery and castle.
Nearly thirty years later, while staying at Dol, she writes to
Madame de Grignan: “From my room I can see the sea and
Mont Saint-Michel, that noble hill which you have seen so proud,
and which has seen you so beautiful; I dwell on the remem-
brance of that journey with much tenderness.” Frangoise de
Sévigné was only thirteen years old at the time, but she already

gave promise of great beauty, for a Counsellor of Parlement, who
154 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

visited Mont Saint-Michel a week later, wrote to a friend at this
date: “For the last month I have had the advantage of being
the near neighbour of Madame de Sévigné, whose house is only
two leagues from ours. This favourable situation has given me
the opportunity of becoming better acquainted with her than
merely by the well-deserved report of her worth. . .. Made-
moiselle her daughter is another marvel, of whom I will say
nothing further than—

“Vous la verrez, si vous ne l’avez vue,
Vous la verrez, de mille attraits pourvue,
Briller d’un éclat sans pareil ;
Et vous direz, en la voyant paraitre : 4
C’est un soleil qui ne fait que de naitre
Dans le sein d’un autre soleil.”

Mademoiselle de Sévigné must have been an exquisitely
lovely girl when her mother first took her to Court. She was
then sixteen, for life began much earlier for girls in France of
the seventeenth century than it does to-day. Her beauty was
of a blonde type, with the colouring of the hair and eyes slightly
darker than that of her mother, which emphasised the delicate
perfection of her features and dazzling complexion. Tréville,
who at Court was regarded as an oracle on such matters, declared
that “her beauty would set the world on fire”; and her cousin
Bussy, with the pardonable pride of a relative, called her “the
prettiest girl in France.” As we look at her portrait, painted by
Mignard more than ten years later, it is easy to understand what
an exquisite flower-like loveliness the living, animated original
must have possessed in all the dainty freshness of youth, when
she first appeared among the powdered, patched, and highly
rouged dames of the Louvre.

In these years at Court before her marriage, her beauty won
for her a brilliant and undisputed success, and whenever she
appeared in the great world, a chorus of praise and flattery
greeted her on all sides, which probably gratified the heart of her
loving and indulgent mother more than any tribute to her own
charms had ever done. But even this triumphant, unquestioned
loveliness had its drawback, plainly in this instance the defect of
its fair quality. It is the Marquise who tells us this intimate
little secret, and at the same time we discover that she too had
“THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN FRANCE” 155

suffered the same overwhelming annoyance in her own youth.
Long years after this, when writing of her granddaughter,
she says—

“It is a very fortunate thing that Pauline has not the defect
of blushing. It has been, as you say, a real drawback to your
beauty, as it was to mine when I was young. When I found
that I was not troubled with this ridiculous inconvenience, I
would not change myself for anyone else. This is a persecution
inflicted by the devil upon vanity. In short, my child, it forced
you to leave balls and assemblies, though everyone constantly
spoke of you as a beauty. .. . I really think people do not blush
so much as they used.”

But blushing in a beauty of sixteen is rarely regarded by
other people as a grave defect, in spite of the real annoyance
caused to its victim; and Mademoiselle de Sévigné, who had
inherited from her mother the grace of perfect dancing, had been
only a short time at Court when she was chosen by the King to
dance in the ballets given at the Palais Royal. At no time in
the history of France, or indeed of any other nation, have ballets
been given under quite the same circumstances as during these
and the few following years. The Grand Monarque who ruled
so autocratically, who gradually broke the pride of his courtiers
and nobles till there was only one will at Court—his own; who
was looked on as the source of all good and evil, and who, even
by the bold, rebuking Bossuet, was once referred to as a deity—
this Grand Monarque appeared before his courtiers, foreign
ambassadors, and those of the wealthy bourgeoisie who were
fortunate enough to gain admittance to the fétes, as a dancer, in
the same plays as Moliére and other actors! Well might the
cynical la Rochefoucauld remark that “Everything happens in
France!” Of course ballads were made on the subject and sung
by the Parisians, “ Pont-Neufs” as they were called, because all
scandals or events of importance found their way into ballads
and songs, which were hawked by thousands on the Pont-Neuf;
and Madame de Motteville records that all libels against the
Court, and presumably other libels too, were placed on a con-
spicuous post on the same famous bridge.

As everyone knows, there had been ballets before this. They
had been given during the reign of Louis XIII, and in the
156 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Regency; but never had such care, such resources, such
expenditure been lavished upon them, since never before had
the King appeared as a public dancer. The ballet was not
merely a play; it was a superb mdange in which the art of
the decorator, of the poet, of the musician, and of the actor
was called forth to its uttermost. Benserade, the Court poet,
composed the verses, but the brilliant Moliére frequently aided
him with flashes of suggestion, and was often among the players.
The scenery, the decorations, the costumes, were the most superb
that could be procured, and the great hall of the Palais Royal
on evenings when the ballets were given appeared a veritable
fairy-land.

The audience itself was part of the glittering spectacle. It
is not difficult to imagine that great crowd of brilliant courtiers ;
the ladies in velvets, rich brocades, and silks, their hair “ dressed
in a thousand curls”; patched, rouged, and powdered, with
priceless jewels gleaming from their necks and arms and hair,
or sewn with cunning embroidery among the laces of their
corsage. Can we not hear those dainty, perfumed, smiling
dames as, with bright eyes gleaming above their fans with
mischief, or love, or malice, they whisper comments, criticisms,
and satires to the admiring gallants nearthem? Those gallants
who, in their silken and velvet garments, their lace ruffles, their
shoes with red heels and diamond buckles, their plumed hats and
short embroidered mantles, were not one whit behind the ladies
in the matter of gaudy plumage! What a privilege it was to
those who were not of this brilliant world to be allowed to
witness these wonderful representations! Sometimes, by good
fortune, foreigners were admitted to the ambassadors’ seats, and
it is from the journal of two young Dutchmen that we havea
record of one such memorable evening.

They were so anxious to obtain good seats, that they went
as early as three in the afternoon, though the ballet did not
begin till nine. Through their eyes we see the grande salle
lighted with so many candles in the chandeliers that the hall is
as brilliant as if it were broad day ; we see young nobles showing
guests to their seats, and giving them a copy of the vers du
ballet, which ran to fifteen pages, printed by Robert Ballard, the
famous printer of music to the King, whose descendants inherited
A BALLET ROYAL 157

the valuable privilege, till the Revolution came and abolished
privilege of all kinds. But the Revolution was as yet undreamed
of! Was not the Roi Soleil about to dance before the eyes of
his adoring courtiers ?

It was on January 8, 1663, when Mademoiselle de Sévigné
was sixteen, that she first danced in a ballet with the King, the
famous Ballet des Arts about which so much has been said and
written and sung. An infant daughter of the King and Queen,
aged six weeks, had died just ten days before, but all the
preparations had been made for the ballet, and such an
unimportant event as the death of one of his legitimate children
was not allowed to interfere with the amusement of the
King!

The representation was given in the great hall of the Palais
Cardinal, that superb mansion built by Richelieu, which is known
to-day as the Palais Royal. In the first entrée the King came
on as a shepherd, dancing with the most lovely shepherdesses of
the Court. There was Madame, the wife of Monsieur the King’s
brother, the gay and gracious Princesse Henriette, young,
laughter-loving, frivolous, who, with the King, was constantly
seeking and inventing new pleasures and diversions; the
brilliant and haughty Mademoiselle de Mortemart, on the eve
of becoming Madame de Montespan, as yet unaware of her
future réle in France; the beautiful Mademoiselle de Saint-
Simon, parfaitement belle et sage, said her brother, the prince
of chroniclers; and the young, exquisitely fair Mademoiselle de
Sévigné, who surpassed them all in absolute perfection of
feature.

Benserade, the Court poet, wrote flattering verses for all these
fair ladies, and of Mademoiselle de Sévigné he said—

‘* Déja cette beauté fait craindre sa puissance,
Et pour nous mettre en butte 4 d’extrémes dangers,
Elle entre justement dans l’4ge of l’on commence
A distinguer les loups d’avecque les bergers.”

In the seventh extrée of the ballet the King and these same
ladies came on again; and this time Madame was Minerva,
while the demoiselles de Mortemart, de Saint-Simon, and de
Sévigné were her attendant Amazons, with Mademoiselle de la
158 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Vallitre, who to her shame and life-long sorrow loved the
King too well.

We may imagine something, though scarcely all, of Madame
de Sévignd’s maternal pride and delight in the brilliant success
of her lovely young daughter, who, as she confessed, was “the
only passion of her heart, the pleasure and sweetness of her life.”
Years after, she recalled these triumphs to her daughter, and
reminded her of the almost unique representation at which she
had assisted. “There were,” she wrote, “ four persons, including
the late Madame, whom it would be difficult to replace in whole
centuries for their beauty, their exquisite youth, and for their
dancing. Oh, what shepherdesses! what Amazons!”

The Ballet des Arts was superb, said everyone, and the King,
well pleased at its undoubted success, gave it again early in the
following year, with the same shepherdesses and the same
Amazons. A month after, in 1664, Mademoiselle de Sévigné had
the honour of being chosen to take part in another representa-
tion. This time she was a sea-nymph in the ballet entitled
Amours déguisés, and her companions were Madame de
Montespan, Madame de Vibraye, and Mademoiselle d’Elbceuf.
Monsieur the King’s brother was a sea-god, and the Marquis de
Villeroy and the Marquis de Rossan were sea-gods also. In the
verses for Mademoiselle de Sévigné on this occasion, Benserade
included her mother also—

‘* Vous travestir ainsi, c’est bien étre ingénu,
Amour ! c’est comme si, pour n’étre pas connu,
Avec une innocence extréme,
Vous vous déguisiez en vous-méme.
Elle a vos traits, vos feux et votre air engageant,
Et, de méme que vous, sourit en égorgeant.
Enfin qui fit Pune a fait lautre ;
Et jusques 4 sa mére, elle est comme la vétre,”

As may be seen from these lines, Madame de Sévignd was
not eclipsed even by the brilliant beauty and attractions of her
young daughter. Poets still sang the charms of the Marquise,
who, although she was thirty-six when she first introduced her
daughter at Court, yet appeared to her admirers “ always fresh
and always fair” ; and with her gay wit and cheery wisdom, her
warm and generous heart, which gave such a genial grace to her
SEVIGN

+

iy

 
MADEMOISELLE DE SEVIGNE AT COURT 159

charming manner, she was welcomed wherever she appeared,
and was unquestionably much more popular in society than her
beautiful and clever daughter.

In 1665, Mademoiselle de Sévigné danced yet once again
with the King. In the Jdallet royal of the Naissance de Vénus
the King came on in the second part as Alexander, the Marquis
de Rossan was Hercules, Madame was Roxana, and Made-
moiselle de Sévigné was Omphale. From Benserade’s verse
on the latter we gather something of the success of the young
beauty in that brilliant Court—

‘ Blondins accoutumés a faire des conquétes,
Devant ce jeune objet si charmant et si doux,
Tous grands héros que vous étes,
Il ne faut pas laisser pourtant de filer doux.
L’ingrate foule aux pieds Hercule et sa massue ;
Quelle que soit l’offrande, elle n’est point recue:
Elle verroit mourir le plus fidéle amant,
Faute de lassister d’un regard seulement.
Injust procédé, sotte fagon de faire,
Que la-pucelle tient de madame sa mére,
Et que la bonne dame, au courage inhumain,
Se lassant aussi peu d’étre belle que sage,
Encore tous les jours applique 4 son usage,
Au détriment du genre humain.”

It would have been scarcely possible, scarcely human,
indeed, for the brilliant young beauty to have passed through
such public triumphs without attracting marked and dangerous
attention. It was a great distinction to have been chosen to
dance with the King, but when to this was added her “ exquisite
youth,” her delicate beauty, her graceful figure and perfect
dancing, it is not surprising to learn that she roused a good
deal of interest among the Court gallants. The King’s favourite,
the handsome young Marquis de Villeroy, who, from his
personal attractions and notorious gallantries, had been nick-
named “the charming,” paid assiduous attention to this fresh
young beauty, and the circumstance was quickly noted by
watchful eyes at Court. From the Court, as was the invariable
custom, the news spread to the town, and chansons on the
subject were sung in the streets and sold on the Pont-Neuf.
But what else could have been expected ?
160 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“Who plays, pays,” and particularly when one plays on
a public stage! But Madame de Sévigné kept a jealous watch
over her daughter, and however undesirable and annoying it
might be to find her the subject of street songs, she took
every precaution to guard her from all actual harm or evil.
These were the humiliating penalties exacted by such a
pronounced public success; for Court life in those days was
so public, so exposed to the curious among the multitude,
that few events escaped the popular eye or tongue. Indeed,
it has been said that no history of that time could be complete
without consulting the street ballads.

In spite of these drawbacks, however, Mademoiselle de
Sévigné everywhere reaped the triumphs of her striking and
undisputed beauty; and these were brilliant years both for the
Marquise and her daughter. But unalloyed success and
unbroken happiness is no one’s portion for long, and Madame
de Sévignéd, in the height of her triumph at her daughter’s
success and distinction at Court, was deeply wounded again
by a disgraceful affair which she had been led to believe was
finished.
CHAPTER XVI

A reconciliation between the Marquise and her cousin Bussy—Letters of explanation
—The Marquise writes 4 clear summing-up of his offences—The Comte finally sues
for mercy, and is pardoned by his cousin

HEN, at the time of Foucquet’s arrest, the innocent
letters of Madame de Sévigné to the Surintendant
were causing so much undeserved gossip and scandal in Paris,
the Marquise had been especially grateful to her cousin, the
Comte de Bussy, for the valiant defence he had made of her
good name. She was particularly touched that, in spite of their
serious quarrel concerning her “villainous portrait,’ he had
apparently forgotten all the rancour her indignant reproaches
might have caused him, to come forward as her champion
against their too-censorious world. Then, having been assured
that the offending manuscript had been burned at the house
of Madame de Montglas, the Marquise, whose spirit was too
generous to harbour resentment long, allowed herself to be
reconciled to her cousin. She, whom he had called so
avaricious, so miserly towards her friends, had even lent him
four thousand francs, when Bussy, in perennial need of money,
went in August 1663 to join the army in Lorraine. Their
friendship was apparently on as firm a foundation as ever. In
the autumn of 1664, Bussy met his cousin at her manor of
Bourbilly in Burgundy, and, as the Marquise herself declares,
she was “more than ever enchanted with his society.”

But this happy renewal of friendship was not to last long,
As we have seen, though the original manuscript of the zsdozve
amoureuse had been burned, a copy of it had been taken by
a spiteful woman, Madame de la Baume, whom Bussy had once
loved and then neglected. To revenge herself, she treacherously
allowed copies to be taken of her copy; nor was this the worst.
Bussy had disguised the heroes and heroines of his Hzstoive

It
162 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

amoureuse under fictitious names, and though the originals were
easily guessed at, the artifice gave at least a little clothing of
decency, thin mask though it was, to the disgraceful facts; but
even this was now thrown aside. Scandalous truths were added ;
libels on the King, Queen, and ladies of the Court were inserted ;
a key, giving the real names of all the fictitious persons, was
appended, and in this aggravated form, infinitely worse than
the original, the book was printed at Liége early in the year
1665.

The consternation and wrath of those who were thus
publicly, without the least disguise, held up to ridicule, and
worse than ridicule, may be imagined without difficulty. They
demanded punishment for Bussy ; they declared that these libels
on the King and Court came from his hand; and Bussy was
conducted to the Bastille. Madame de Sévigné, deeply wounded
at what she considered the fresh treachery of her cousin, was
annoyed beyond measure at this new development. It had
been humiliating enough to know that her portrait in manuscript
had circulated among the society she daily frequented, but now,
as she said, to find herself in the libraries, to meet her portrait
everywhere, was almost beyond endurance. Perhaps, however,
someone represented to her that Bussy had not been quite so
blamable as appeared at first ; for we find that a year after, when
Bussy, seriously ill, was allowed to leave the Bastille to undergo
an operation, Madame de Sévigné was the first among his
friends who visited him. Then when Bussy, leaving the house
of Dalance, his surgeon, in September, was allowed to retire to
Chaseu, his estate in Burgundy, in place of being confined in the
Bastille, the Marquise, grieving that his career should be broken
by exile just at the time when his bravery and long service
should have been rewarded by promotion, wrote him sympathetic
letters, which reveal a true interest in his welfare, though the
old tone of confidence is lacking. In 1667, she says, “The
whole Court is at camp, and the whole camp is at Court....
My heart has felt most favourably towards you since I have
seen so many people eager to begin, or rather, to recommence
the profession in which you gained so much honour during the
time you were occupied in it. It is a sad thing for a man of
courage to be confined at home when there are such great doings
BUSSY IN EXILE 163

in Flanders. As you feel, no doubt, all that a man of spirit and
bravery can feel, it is not very wise of mé to revive so painful
a subject. I hope you will pardon me in consideration of the
great interest I take in your affairs.

“Tt is said that you have written to the King. Send me a
copy of your letter, and give me a little information concerning
your mode of life ; what you do to amuse yourself, and whether
the improvements you are making in your house do not greatly
contribute to it. As for me, I have spent the winter in Brittany,
where I have planted a great number of small trees, and a
labyrinth where one will require Ariadne’s clue to find the way
out of it. I have also purchased some land, to which I have
said, as usual, ‘I shall make you into a park.” I have ex-
tended my walks, too, but this has cost me very little. My
daughter sends you a thousand remembrances. I send mine to
all your family.”

The correspondence between the two cousins was continued
for some time, but there was no longer the old buoyant delight
and mutual sympathy. Once, when Bussy had waited six months
for an answer to one of his letters, he reproached her with the
delay, and Madame de Sévigné took the opportunity of
reminding him of the Italian proverb, “The offender never
pardons.” Taking this for a text, Bussy writes her a long,
grieved letter, in which he says, “ Why tell me that I do not
forgive the wrong I have done you, since I have asked your
pardon a thousand times, and you have promised as many times
to think no more about it? It’seems to me, however, that from
time to time you repent of having pardoned me.”

This intuition of Bussy’s was probably very near the
truth. Madame de Sévigné must have occasionally felt that
he had transgressed against her almost beyond complete
forgiveness ; and when, in the same letter, he accuses her of with-
holding her friendship and interest because he is in exile, and
“out of fashion,” she could no longer contain the just indigna-
tion, the bitter sadness of heart, that his base conduct had caused
her. About seven weeks after, she writes him a letter in which
she places all the circumstances of their difference before him,
and then asks him to judge impartially, as if he were a third,
uninterested person, wo is the real offender.
164 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“Paris, July 26, 1668

“T wish to begin by answering in two words your letter of
the oth of June, and then our case will be finished... .

“Learn from me, my cousin, that it is not customary to
accuse me of indifference towards my friends. I have many
other faults, but not that. Such a fancy exists only in your
imagination, and I have before this shown proofs of generosity
towards people who were in disgrace which have done me
honour among many I could name if I wished. I do not
believe, then, that I deserve this reproach, and you may strike
this item from the list of my shortcomings. But let us talk of
you.

“We are relations, and of the same blood. We please each
other, we love each other, we are each interested in the other’s
welfare. You asked me to advance money to you on the ten
thousand crowns which you were soon to receive as a legacy
from M. de Chalon. You say I refused you, while I say I lent
it to you; for you know well, and our friend Corbinelli is witness
to it, that my heart was at once willing, and that while we were
settling some formalities to obtain the consent of Neuchéze
that I might receive the legacy instead of you, you became
impatient. Then, having unfortunately found me sufficiently
imperfect in body and mind to be a subject for you to make
a very pretty portrait of, you made it; and you preferred the
pleasure of being praised for your work to our old friendship,
to our name, and even to justice itself. You know that a lady,a
friend of yours, generously obliged you to burn it. She believed
you had done so, and I believed it also; and some time after,
hearing that you had done wonders in the affair of M. Foucquet
and me, this conduct completely brought me round. I was
reconciled to you on my return from Brittany, and you know
with what sincerity! You remember also our journey to
Burgundy, and with what frankness I gave you again all the
share you had ever had in my friendship. I came away delighted
with your society. There were people who said to me at
that time, ‘I have seen your portrait in the hands of Madame
de la Baume; I have seen it’ I answered them only by a
disdainful smile, pitying those who were so absurd as to believe
A SUMMING-UP OF BUSSY’S OFFENCES 165

their own eyes. ‘I have seen it, I was told again a week after,
and again I smiled. I repeat it laughingly to Corbinelli. I
again put on the incredulous smile which has already served me
on two occasions, and I remain for five or six months in this
ignorance, pitying those who laughed at me. At last the
unhappy day came when I myself saw, and with my own
‘ parti-coloured’ eyes, what I had refused to believe. If horns
had grown out of my head I should have been less astonished.
I read and re-read that cruel portrait. I should have thought it
very clever if it had been written of anyone else than me, or by
any other person than you. I even found it so well introduced,
and so appropriately placed in the book, that I had not the
consolation of believing it could have been done by any other
than you. I recognised it by several things I had heard rather
than by the painting of my character, which I entirely disown.
Finally, I saw you at the Palais Royal, where I told you that
the book was in circulation. You tried to persuade me that
someone had made that portrait from memory and had it
printed. But I no longer believed you... .

“To be in the hands of everyone; to find oneself in print ;
to serve as a book of amusement for all the provinces,
where such things cause irreparable harm; to meet oneself
in the libraries, and to receive this injury from whom?
I will not extend my reasons further; you have a good
understanding, and I am sure that if you reflect for only a
quarter of an hour, you will see them, and you will feel them
as Ido. Nevertheless, what did I do when you were arrested?
With utter sadness in my soul I force myself to make you com-
pliments; I complain of your misfortune; I even talk of it in
society, and speak my opinion of the behaviour of Madame de
la Baume so freely, that I become embroiled with her. When
you come out of prison I visit you several times; I bid you
good-bye when I set out for Brittany; I have written to you,
since you have been at home, quite freely and without bitter-
ness. ...

“ This is what I wish to say for once in my life, and to beg
you to erase from your mind the idea that Iam in the wrong.
Keep my letter and read it again if ever the fancy occurs to you
to believe such a thing, and be as just as if you were judging
166 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

a case between two other persons. Do not let your interest
see what does not exist; confess that you have cruelly offended
against the friendship that was between us, and I am disarmed.
But do not believe that if you merely answer I can always
remain silent, for that would be impossible; I shall never cease
to write, and in place of the two words I promised you I shall
write two thousand; and at last I shall do so much by letters
of a cruel length and mortal dulness, that I shall compel you,
in spite of yourself, to beg for pardon, that is to say, to sue for
your life. Do so, then, with a good grace.

“For the rest, when you were bled I felt the effect of it.
Was it not the 17th of this month? Exactly: it did me all the
good in the world; pray accept my thanks for it. I am so
difficult to bleed that it is a charity on your part to allow your
arm to be bled instead of mine. .. .”

This last is a little bit of nonsense of Madame de Sévigné’s,
who always declared that there was such an affinity between
herself and her cousin, that when anything happened to the one
it affected the other. She probably wrote it at the end of her
long arraignment in order that the whole letter might not have
a bitter flavour throughout.

The Comte de Bussy, with more leisure than he wished in
his exile, the same day he received this letter wrote an answer
to Madame de Sévigné fully as long, justifying himself where
he could, explaining that what had made him so angry over the
desired loan was the attitude of her lawyer, who talked of
sending to make inquiries in Burgundy, while he was in press-
ing, immediate need of the money to take him to the seat of
war at once, that he might not be regarded as a laggard.
He also gave a new version of how the portrait: got into
print.

“T pass by your condemnation of the portrait, Madame, for
no one could possibly blame me for that more than I blame
myself; but you ought to learn something else about it that
you do not know. That friend so generous, who, you say,
obliged me to burn the portrait, obliged you very cheaply.
First, after having enjoyed the pleasure of having heard it read,
she begged me to tear it up; and this I did into a thousand
BUSSY CAPITULATES 167

pieces in front of her. To tell the truth, I had not left the room
when her husband, who was present, gathered together the
pieces, to the tiniest morsel, and put them together again so
well that he copied it, and showed it to me three days after.
I confess to you that I was seized with the desire of having it
again, and that some time after, being on friendly terms with
Madame de la Baume, she had the ridiculous brochure from
me, which she published as you know. . . .”

It was a sordid story in whatever form the Marquise heard
it; a story of bad faith, treachery, and meanness that must have
made her own frank and noble heart sick with disgust. Bussy
goes on trying to justify himself with his plausible and subtle
skill, but such repetitions and justifications, however interesting
they may have been to the two cousins, are of little interest to
us of to-day. One circumstance, however, that Bussy mentions,
gives us a piquant glimpse of the fashion in which prisoners at
the Bastille received visits. “All my friends except you,” he
tells her with reproach, “came to see me at the moat near the
windows of the Bastille. . . .”

Madame de Sévigné, when she answers this letter at her
leisure, scorns his excuses, and refuses to receive them. She
does not approve of his efforts at sheltering himself behind the
ladies of his acquaintance. “Do not tell me again,” she writes,
“that it is the fault of anyone else; it is not true... the fault
is entirely your own.” Indeed, the whole letter is very bracing,
though there is not a trace of malice or ill-feeling. She merely
shows him, by the plainest demonstration, what a disloyal friend
and faithless relative he has been.

Bussy feels himself vanquished, and at last sues for his life,
as she had demanded. “I have begged for life, and you would
kill me at your feet ; that is a little inhuman. I did not think
that pretty women could be so cruel except in love affairs.
Cease then, getzte brutale, to desire to whip a man who throws
himself at your feet, who confesses his fault and beseeches you
to pardon him. If you are not yet content with the terms I
use in this encounter, send me the model of the satisfaction which
you desire, and I will return it to you written and signed with
my own hand, countersigned by a secretary, and sealed with the
seal of my arms. What more would you have? .. .”
168 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

The Marquise did not desire more. She had written to him
fully of all the grief and chagrin and unhappiness his conduct
had caused her; she had had that satisfaction, so dear, it is said,
to women, of proving her opponent in the wrong, and, what
was more, of making him confess it; and now she was her
own gracious, kindly self again, willing to send him a full, free
pardon.

Paris, September 4, 1668

“Rise, Comte; I would not kill you at my feet, or take your
sword to renew the combat. But it is better that I should give
you life, and that we should live in peace. I exact only one
condition; that is, that you should own the thing just as it
happened. This is a very generous proceeding on my part, and
you can no longer call me a petite brutale. .. . Adieu, Comte.
Now that I have conquered you, I shall say everywhere that
you are the bravest man in France; and whenever remarkable

”

duels are talked of I shall relate ours. .. .
CHAPTER XVII

Suitors for the hand of Mademoiselle de Sévigné—A vain young beauty—
The Duc de Caderousse — Monsieur de Mérinville — ‘* The prettiest girl in
France” unmarried at twenty-three—She is betrothed to a widower with two young
daughters

Y an odd, malign chance, it was during the time when the
Comte de Bussy’s malice and treachery was bearing its
most bitter fruit, that Madame de Sévigné was, by her daughter’s
social success, most prominently before the society of the Court;
and to the Marquise, so keenly sensitive to impressions, the
trial must have been exceptionally severe. But probably her
own annoyance was partly atoned for by her daughter’s success.
Each year some fresh distinction awaited the young beauty. In
1666 La Fontaine dedicated to her his Lzon amoureux, which
was not, however, published till 1668. It begins—

** Sévigné, de qui les attraits
Servent aux Graces de modéle,
Et qui naquites toute belle,

A votre indifférence prés .. .”

The rather spoiled young lady had already shown herself to
be cold and proudly indifferent to those who sought her smiles,
and La Fontaine made a gentle and guarded allusion to this,
which was, however, well enough understood. The gallant
Ménage, always delighted to pose as the slave and adorer of
pretty young girls, addressed to her a madrigal in Italian, the
language which he had taught her mother; and the hunchbacked
poet, Saint-Pavin, whom she often met at Livry, now wrote
epistles in verse to the daughter, as years before he had written
them to Marie de Rabutin-Chantal.

But Mademoiselle did not receive all this homage with the

gracious and winning charm that had so endeared her mother
169
170 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

even to some of those whose advances she had been obliged to
check. She was cold and slightly haughty in her manner, with
much more intellect than heart. She would probably have
been something of a bluestocking if social affairs had not fully
occupied her time. Among her brother’s friends was the Comte
de Saint-Paul, that youngest son of the Duchesse de Longueville
who had been born at the Hotel de Ville, and the story goes
that he paid a good deal of attention to the clever young beauty,
who one day, in reply to his fleurettes, flippantly quoted in Latin,
“Saul, Saul, quid me persequeris?”

Her mother records, too, that another time when a foreigner,
M. Dietriechen, was mentioned, Mademoiselle de Sévigné gave
her opinion :

“He is very much like the Duc de Beaufort,” said she,
“except that he speaks better French!”

A witticism that was received with delighted laughter,
for the Duc de Beaufort was noted for his coarse language,
which was more suited to the streets than to the polished
society of his compeers.

She was fond of argument, too, and quite willing to uphold
a bad cause for this reason; in which she was singularly unlike
her mother and her brother, who always greatly preferred to
agree with their friends. And in many other qualities she was
a complete contrast to the charming Marquise. We never find
a trace of personal vanity in Madame de Sévigné’s letters; on
the contrary, she frequently laughed at her little defects, and
pretended to see her own flat-tipped nose in that of her grand-
daughter Blanche. But Mademoiselle, her daughter, was no
such unconscious beauty. She, whose face was so: perfect in
form and colouring that she might well have left the care of it
to Nature, was over-anxious to preserve it in all its freshness;
and, quite unintentionally, the Marquise has told for all time
the little artifices that her daughter practised. They are by no
means grave faults in a girl, however. They merely amusingly
serve to show that vain beauty is singularly alike in all ages
and conditions of life, whether the means used be the latest
concoctions of the “beauty doctors,” or the simpler methods
of the seventeenth century, before vanity was so systematically
exploited by business cunning.
A FETE AT VERSAILLES 171

“What is become of the time when you would eat nothing
but a woodcock’s head for fear of becoming too fat?” she asks
years afterwards. And another time she whimsically recalls
how, as a young girl, her daughter, in anointing her face to
get rid of her pimples, “had contemplated herself in essence,
like a chicken in a pie.”

The Abbé de la Mousse, her tutor, noting one day some
exhibition of girlish vanity, reminded her of the fleeting nature
of beauty. “ Mademoiselle,” he remarked gravely, “those charms
will all decay some day.”

“That may be, Monsieur,” pertly replied his pretty pupil,
“but they are not decayed yet!”

When Mademoiselle de Sévigné had been some years at
Court, and was about twenty-one or twenty-two, it was
whispered by jealous and malicious tongues that the King,
visibly colder to la Valliére, was thinking of choosing
Mademoiselle de Sévigné as her successor! His Majesty
was at this period undoubtedly giving great distinctions to
the young lady and her mother. On the 18th of July 1668,
they were both guests at the famous féte given at Versailles
in the chateau and gardens, as yet in an unfinished condition.
Only three hundred ladies were invited to this /éte galante,
which was one of the most exclusive given at Versailles by
Louis xIv. The guests, already dressed in festive costume for
the day, drove, early in the morning, from Paris to Versailles,
where they found that the apartments had been specially
decorated and perfumed for the occasion, and, so that the
visitors might not be embarrassed by the laws of etiquette,
the King and. royal family had retired to a pavilion in the
gardens. On their arrival, the guests sat down to a repast;
after which they descended to the gardens, where small carriages
were in waiting to drive them, accompanied by the young Queen,
round the park and gardens. These carriages, in fact, were
placed all day at the service of the visitors, to convey them
from one entertainment to another without fatigue or loss of
time. There were many English at this féte, the most notable
of whom was the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth, who paid conspicu-
ous attention all that day to the equally ill-fated Madame, the
beautiful Henriette of England. No entertainment at that
172 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

time was complete without a comedy, and the famous Georges
Dandin by Moliére was given for the first time in the park of
Versailles,

But the chief event of the day, or rather the evening, was the
supper; and at this banquet both Madame de Sévigné and her
daughter were at the King’s table, a distinction that we may be
sure was commented on freely. Curiously enough, Mesdames
de la Valliére, de Montespan, and de Maintenon, were all at this
féte ; de Montespan already scheming to supplant de la Valliére,
and the humble “widow Scarron” was suing for a small pen-
sion, entirely unaware of the barren and disappointing splendour
the future held for her.

These and similar distinctions from the King set the Court
gossips on the guz wve. Already reports of the King’s attentions
to Mademoiselle de Sévigné were finding their way into letters,
Madame de Montmorency, who sent to Bussy in his exile all
the gossip and scandal of the Court, wrote on the 15th of July,
three days before the féte, that the King was paying attention
to Mademoiselle de Sévigné with the intention of making her
the successor to Mademoiselle de la Valliére. “But this is still
very feeble,” she added. Bussy answered this at once, and he,
always seeking his own.advancement, frankly declared the
pleasure the news gave him: “I should be very glad if the
King did become attached to Mademoiselle de Sévigné,” he
wrote, “for that young lady is among my very good friends, and
he could not do better than take her for a mistress,”

Bussy’s troubles had not changed him. This nobleman of
long and honourable descent, who openly confessed that he sought
his own advancement when advising his cousin to smile graci-
ously on the attentions of Foucquet and the Prince de Conti, now
rejoices that his lovely young relative is attracting the notice
of the King; for through her, one guesses without difficulty, he
hopes to repair his damaged fortunes, and to get release from
his wearisome exile.

But Madame de Sévigné kept faithful guard over her young
daughter, and she who had been so jealous of her own reputa-
tion would not lightly have allowed her daughter to be robbed
of womanhood’s most precious jewel. “Her devotion to her
young sovereign had its limits,” sagely remarks a biographer.
MADEMOISELLE DE SEVIGNE 173

Nor had she waited till then to instil into her daughter the
precepts of honour and virtue. Mademoiselle de Sévigné had
been too well brought up to buy any grandeur at the expense
of her good name. She has been reproached by many writers
with too much indifference; of being so cold by temperament
that she found it no temptation to resist the King’s advances.
But the firmness that repels has nothing picturesque or dramatic
in its quality ; and those who can lightly bewail the lost virtue
of the frail and gentle Louise de la Valli¢re, or write with
pleasant deprecation of the magnificence of the haughty and
venal Montespan, would probably find such firmness a trifle
too austere for interest. But one doubts not that M. de
Grignan had full satisfaction in the unassailable honour of his
wife, and that he probably did not object to her coldness to
others—it was not acommon fault at the Court of Louis xrv !—
since she was a loving and faithful wife to him. The line of
simple duty and virtue has never made much stir in the world.

Many people, including the Comte de Bussy, have accused
the Marquise de Sévigné with being cold, and “too much in
love with her own reputation”; but her solicitous care that that
jewel of price should never be dimmed, has preserved, not
only for those of her own day, but for millions of posterity, a
striking and praiseworthy example. She was a woman of
brilliant attractions, with a frank enjoyment of the pleasures of
the world, and was not indifferent to its honours; she was sought
by a crowd of seductive triflers, and surrounded by potent
temptations, but she has come through the fire unstained and
untainted, a shining example of purity in a Court and society
where absolutely impregnable virtue was not reckoned among
the most estimable or popular attractions. How different
would have been the effect of the life of Madame de Sévigné,
had either she or her daughter succumbed to the evil influences
that beset them in the Court of Louis Quatorze!

Besides belonging to the exclusive circle near the person of
the King, Mademoiselle de Sévigné was taken by her mother
to many of the salons of Parisian society where the Marquise
had long been a welcome guest. Madame de la Fayette
was always ailing, but she was nevertheless always at home to
some of the “best talkers” in Parisian society; and though the
174 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Marquise and her daughter were among her most frequent
visitors, we hear more of the evenings they spent at the Hotel
de Nevers, which had taken the place, in some degree, of the
Hétel de Rambouillet. At this period there was no more cele-
brated hostess in Paris than Madame du Plessis Guénégaud.
Foucquet had been an intimate friend of the family, and M. du
Plessis Guénégaud, who was Secretary of State, and enormously
rich, was for a time involved in Foucquet’s disgrace and sent into
exile. But in 1665, when the late Surintendant was under safe
keeping in a dungeon at Pignerol, M. de Guénégaud was per-
mitted to return to Paris, and the Hétel de Nevers once again
opened its hospitable doors to a polished and brilliant society.

Madame de Sévigné always called her intimacy with Madame
du Plessis Guénégaud a veffected friendship, because they had
become acquainted though the Marquis de Pomponne, over
their mutual distress and interest at Foucquet’s trial. But the
Marquise was soon welcomed on her own account, and was
frequently at the Hétel de Nevers. When Pomponne was
recalled from exile, in 1665, he wrote a letter describing an
evening he had spent there after his return. Among the
numerous company were Madame de Sévigné and her daughter,
Madame de la Fayette, and the Duc de la Rochefoucauld ;
Boileau the critic, who pricked so many bubbles of reputation
with his caustic pen, was there also, reading one of his satires
before publication; and Racine read a part of his Alexandre,
which was not played till the end of the year. The Great
Century was now in its golden prime; the King, though furiously
devoted to pleasure, was governing well and wisely ; encouraging
the development of arts and manufactures, and by his gracious
approval and patronage stimulating the literary men to give of
their best. In place of Voiture, the Scudérys, and all the lesser
lights of the Hétel de Rambouillet, there was now at the Hotel
de Nevers, Corneille, the one star of magnitude that had given
a glory to the former salon, and, in addition, Moliére, Racine, La
Fontaine, de la Rochefoucauld, and Boileau—a very constellation
of brilliant literary stars, the like of which was never before seen
at any other period of French history.

Graceful little literary games were played at the Hétel de
Nevers, in which Mademoiselle de Sévigné and the two young
MADEMOISELLE DE SEVIGNE’S SUITORS 175

daughters of the house eagerly took part. Here, too, came the
Duc de Caderousse, who became one of the suitors for the hand
of Mademoiselle de Sévigné. But the Marquise, whose good
sense and penetration were rarely at fault, did not overlook the
fact that he was a dissipated young man who was a gambler,
and not likely to make a good husband; therefore, in spite of his
great position, this suitor was refused. The Duc de Caderousse,
however, determined to have one of this charming group of girls,
married the elder of the daughters of Madame du Plessis
Guénégaud, and in a few short years the unhappiness of this
marriage proved how wise the Marquise had been to refuse the
alliance.

Sometimes in summer the Marquise and her daughter would
pay a visit to Madame du Plessis Guénégaud at her country-
house at Fresnes, for two or three months atatime. Many of
their friends from Paris came there also, and little romances and
fairy-tales were played, in which the Marquise frequently acted,
and gained considerable success and applause. In a letter to
the Marquis de Pomponne, who had recently been appointed
Ambassador to the Swedish Court, Madame de Sévigné gives
a delightful little glimpse of the pleasant society at Fresnes. “TI
have M. d’Andilly at my left hand, which is the side of the heart,”
she writes ; “I have Madame de la Fayette at my right ; Madame
du Plessis is in front of me, and is amusing herself with daubing

-little pictures; Madame de Motteville, a little farther away, is
deep in thought; while Madame de Caderousse, her sister, and
Mademoiselle de Sévigné keep flitting in and out like bees.”

But, singularly enough, the lovely young Mademoiselle de
Sévigné, with all her beauty and unusual distinction, backed
up by the appreciable advantages of good birth and a rich
dowry, had considerable difficulty in finding a suitable husband.
After the Duc de Caderousse had been refused in 1665, another
Provencal presented himself. He was the son of the Comte de
Mérinville, Lieutenant-General of Provence; and this marriage
was brought very near to a conclusion, but Madame de Sévigné,
finding that her daughter did not greatly care about the match,
and that she herself did not wish her child to be settled in such
a distant province, broke off the marriage as diplomatically as

she could.
176 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Another suitor was the Comte d’Etauges, who was rich, it was
said, “ but something of a fool.” Nothing came of this, however ;
and the Marquise began to be somewhat weary, as well as sur-
prised, at still having her beautiful young daughter to chaperon ;
and when the Comte de Bussy asked in one of his letters about
“the prettiest girl in France,” his cousin wrote in reply, “The
prettiest girl in France sends you her compliments. It is a
charming name, but I am tired of doing the honours of it!”

Perhaps, like many another beauty, Mademoiselle de Sévigné
began by being too exigeant. Saint-Pavin, in a letter to the
Marquise, glances lightly at the truth in graceful, facile verse—

“*Votre fille est le seul ouvrage
Que la nature ait achevé.

Aussi la terre est trop petite
Pour y trouver qui la mérite ;
Et la belle, qui le sait bien,
Méprise tout et ne veut rien,”

Francoise de Sévigné was not the first beautiful girl who has
illustrated the truth of the homely proverb anent the crooked
stick. After seven years in which to make a choice, after
refusing a rich and handsome young duke, a rich young count,
and probably others, she became affianced to a man who had
been married twice before, who, it was remarked, “ abused a man’s
privilege of being ugly,” and who was burdened with debt. Yet,
let it be said at once, it was an entirely happy marriage, which in
all probability brought more solid satisfaction than either of the
others would have done. And it is also only justice to add that
the proud, cold young beauty, who as a girl had been so vain
and selfish, ripened into a thoughtful and capable woman,
entirely devoted to her husband and children, and to the
interests of the family into which she married.

Not long before the marriage took place, Madame de Sévigné
wrote the news to Bussy; she had probably not thought it
prudent to tell him sooner, although negotiations had been
going on for some time previously.

“Paris, December 4, 1668

“T must tell you a piece of news that I am sure you will be
rejoiced to hear; it is that at last the prettiest girl in France is
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS 177

to be married, not to the handsomest youth, but to one of the
worthiest men in the kingdom—to M. de Grignan, whom you
have known for a long time. All his wives died to give place
to your cousin, and, by extraordinary good fortune, even his
father and his son died too, so that he is richer than he has ever
been. Being besides, by birth, establishment, and by his good
qualities, everything that we could wish, we have not bargained
with him as is usual on such occasions, but have relied on the
two families which have preceded us. He seems very well
pleased with the alliance, and as soon as we have heard from
his uncle, the Archbishop of Arles, the affair will be concluded
before the end of the year, as his other uncle, the Bishop of
Uzés, is here. As I am a lady who loves decorum, I could not
fail to ask your advice and approbation. The public seems
satisfied, which is a great deal, for we are so foolish that we
are nearly always governed by its opinion.”

The “advice and approbation,’ which the Marquise so
decorously asked from Bussy, were asked for at a somewhat
late date, seeing that the arrangements for the marriage were
nearly concluded, but the etiquette that demanded such empty
compliments was apparently satisfied by the merest show of
attention,

12
CHAPTER XVIII

Mademoiselle de Sévigné is married to the Comte de Grignan—An ancient and
honourable family—-An imprudent mother—Charles de Sévigné—His campaign in
Candia against the Turks

RANCGOIS ADHEMAR, Comte de Grignan, who to
Madame de Sévigné seemed such a desirable husband
for her daughter, was the eldest son of an ancient and illustrious
family of Provence. He was descended from the House of
Castellane, and this family, being connected with the Adhémars
of Monteil, took the name and arms of Grignan in 1563, when
they inherited the Comté de Grignan. The Adhémar family
dated further back than the Crusades, and the exploits of one
of their ancestors in these wars were immortalised by the poet
Tasso. The Marquise was well pleased at having arranged such
a distinguished alliance for her daughter, and she delighted in
reading up the records of the family greatness.

“T see an Adhémar,” she wrote to M. de Grignan, “who was
one of the greatest seigneurs six hundred years ago. His death
threw an army of three hundred thousand men into mourning,
and made all Christian princes weep. I see also a Castellane,
but he is not so ancient; he is modern; it is only five hundred
years ago since he made such a grand figure in the world.”

The family of Grignan was still influential, with numerous
connections in good positions. Two uncles of M. de Grignan
were distinguished prelates, the Archbishop of Arles and the
Bishop of Uzés. Two of his brothers were also in the Church;
the elder, the Coadjutor of the Archbishop of Arles, and
the other an abbé, who became Bishop of Evreux. He also
had two brothers in the army, one a captain of a company of
Light Horse, and the other a Chevalier of Malta.

M. de Grignan was between thirty-seven and forty years old
at the time of his marriage to Mademoiselle de Sévigné, but his
THE COMTE DE GRIGNAN 179

exact age is not known. He was not handsome; indeed, his
pronounced plainness is frequently referred to by the Marquise,
who set a high value on her daughter’s loveliness, and passion-
ately admired beauty and grace wherever she saw it. But
notwithstanding this intense and innate love of beauty, she knew
that good qualities were of infinitely greater importance in the
matter of her daughter’s happiness; and, for the rest, M. de
Grignan had a tall and fine figure, his manners had the polish
of good breeding and the refinement that had been acquired
in the school of the Hétel de Rambouillet. He was an
accomplished musician, and, of more importance than all else,
he was an honourable and good man, who made her daughter
an excellent husband. “He was,” said the Marquise, “the most
desirable husband, and very agreeable in society”; later, too,
he gave her daughter a great position, which, in the Marquise de
Sévigné’s estimation, had only one drawback, it was far away
from Paris and from Court. M. de Grignan had two little girls
at the time of his marriage with Francoise de Sévigné, the
daughters of his first wife, Angélique Claire d’Angennes. His
second. wife had died in giving birth to a son who did not live.

But the Marquise had not been quite her usual prudent self
in arranging this marriage. Perhaps the alliance appeared to
her so desirable from all other points, that she wilfully shut her
eyes to one important fact. She had written to the Comte de
Bussy, “we have not bargained with him as is usual on such
occasions, we have relied on the two families which have pre-
ceded us”; and she had evidently written in the same strain to
Cardinal de Retz, who, as head of her husband’s family, was
one of the chief persons to be consulted about the marriage.
The Cardinal saw no reason for such blind confidence, and in
his reply he gave her a warning which was only too well justified
by the events of after years,

“ Great as are your daughter’s fears concerning the wedding
day,” he writes, “I doubt whether they can be equal to mine in
regard to what is to follow, since I see by one of your letters
that you have neither had, nor expect, any explanations, and
that you have, in a manner, trusted yourself to Destiny, who is
often most ungrateful, and ill requites the confidence placed
in her.”
180 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Notwithstanding this warning, it was a time of optimism and
pleasurable anticipation for Madame de Sévigné, even though
in the marriage contract, signed two days before the wedding,
it was agreed that of the two hundred thousand livres which the
Marquise gave in ready money as part of her daughter’s dot,
one hundred and eighty thousand livres should be handed over
to be used in payment of the Comte de Grignan’s debts!

The Marquise was wealthy at this period of her life; her
estates were in a prosperous, flourishing condition, and all her
pecuniary affairs had been kept in most excellent order by the
Abbé de Coulanges, Happily for her she could not foresee the
future married life of her daughter, which, ominously begun by
payment of the bridegroom’s debts, was, through luxury, ostenta-
tion, gambling, and much needless vanity, to bring debt and
discomfort to the chief persons concerned, and to reduce the
Marquise to comparative poverty.

But all this was far enough away when the wedding took
place on January 29, 1669, the day of Saint Francis de Sales,
as Madame de Sévigné reminded her daughter. It was
doubtless attended by a numerous company of friends and
relatives, as more than sixty persons signed the wedding con-
tract. The Comte de Bussy’s name is absent from the list, not
because he was in exile and unable to attend, but because he
was greatly annoyed that the Comte de Grignan had not written
to him as a near relative of the bride. Bussy had put himself
beyond the pale of all honest men’s regard by his scandalous
conduct in general, and to Madame de Sévigné in particular ;
and it is quite conceivable that the Comte de Grignan, who was
not conspicuously humble, considered that he did not deserve
the usual civilities. Bussy, swift to take offence, and always
willing to credit any coldness or neglect to the fact of his exile
rather than to his own shameful behaviour, wrote to the Marquise
to air his grievance. “Madame de Grignan has reason also to
complain of me; I ought to have written to her after her
marriage, and I beg her pardon and frankly confess the debt.
I must also be frank with you concerning M. de Grignan.
From whatever point you look at it, particularly when he
marries the daughter of my first cousin, he ought to write to me
first (for I suppose that being persecuted does not exclude me
BUSSY IS OFFENDED 181

from this favour; there are a thousand people who would write
to me all the more willingly on that account), his omission is not
like the politeness of the Hétel de Rambouillet. I know well
that friendships are free, but I was not aware that the things
which concern good breeding were equally free. This is what
comes of being so long away from Court, one unlearns every-
thing in the provinces, . . .”

The Marquise replied to this in gay mood, and cheerfully
tried to make peace between her relatives; telling Bussy of the
bridegroom’s happiness, and that if the latter did write, he
would probably only bore him, the Comte de Bussy, with a list
of her daughter’s perfections, as was the custom of the newly-
wed. Madame de Grignan would, she assured him, write instead
of her husband.

The young Comtesse did write, but not so graciously or so
tactfully as her mother had done. “M. de Grignan has not
written,” she says, “and so far from understanding that he ought
to send you a letter, he thinks it rather lacking in courtesy on
your part that you have not condescended to send your com-
pliments, because he is so happy he thinks that everybody
should congratulate him. These are his reasons, and I am vain
enough to repeat them to you myself.”

The Comte de Bussy made a quite considerable grievance
of this petty affair, for in the long days of exile he probably
exaggerated his own wrongs and the shortcomings of his friends.
He thought the Comtesse de Grignan’s letter “very sharp,” and
he consequently wrote a long, bitter complaint to the Marquise,
who, though only so recently reconciled to him, found to her
dismay that, owing to his vanity, they were now on the verge
of another quarrel.

“ Ah! Comte, was it you who wrote the letter I have just
received?” she replied soon after. “I was so astonished while
reading it that I felt distracted, and could not believe what I
saw. Is it possible that the most foolish letter in the world
could be taken in that manner by a man who understands
raillery as well as you, and who also knows how to give such
excellent explanations when a letter needs them ?”

Then she explains, almost sentence by sentence, the meaning
and intentions of the offending letter, and finishes with the little
182 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

reproach, “ Not only have I not recognised my blood in your
style, but I have not recognised yours.”

Bussy, only half appeased, finally did write first to M. de
Grignan ; but coolness had again sprung up between the cousins,
and the correspondence ceased for some months, till in the next
year, 1670, the President Frémyot died, leaving part of his
fortune to Madame de Sévigné. Then Bussy, probably missing
her friendly and charming letters during his interminable, empty
days of exile, wrote to congratulate her. The Marquise, whose
bright, healthy spirit was incapable of bearing malice, replied
to his letter almost immediately, saying, “I thank you for
having reopened the door of our intercourse, which had entirely
lost its handle. Incidents are always happening between us, but
we mean well, and perhaps we shall laugh at them some day.”

It is a little curious that during all this time there is
scarcely a mention, either in memoirs or correspondence, of
Charles de Sévigné, the only son of the Marquise. There is no
indication in all Madame de Sévigné’s letters as to where or by
whom he was educated; we only know that, like his sister, he
received a good and thorough education, and that, from his
mother, he inherited an enthusiasm for literature, though in his
youth he loved nothing but plays and romances ; and sometimes,
when he was with the Marquise, we find her gaily complaining
in her letters that he lured her from more serious reading to
listen to the romantic novels of Calprenéde, or to the many
comedies that he read so well.

In character, Charles de Sévigné was in all surface qualities
very like his mother, having an abundance of those charming
graces that make for success in society. “He accommodates
himself to the humour of everyone,” wrote the Marquise, “and
always agrees with the last speaker.”

In his delightful letters we catch more than a hint of
Madame de Sévigné’s own felicities of style; he has the happy
faculty of saying the right thing in the most pleasant fashion;
he is always amiable, perhaps a thought too amiable, and he
takes the second place in his mother’s affection with the most
graceful humility in the world. He was undoubtedly in all
superficial charm more like the Marquise than her haughty and
reserved daughter, and some biographers have said that Madame
SON AND DAUGHTER 183

de Sévigné would have done well to bestow her greatest love on
him. But even had she been able to love at will, she knew his
amiable, unreliable character too well, and must often have
unwillingly noticed his resemblance to his father in the mad
follies to which he gave up his youth. She was very patient ;
she paid his debts, and bore with all his youthful faults and
excesses; but though with the true mother-spirit she accepted
the present with resignation and hoped all things for the future,
she could not give her dissipated, erring son the honour and
respect which she gave in such full measure to her daughter,
and which must necessarily be the foundation of any great love.

Perhaps, since so many people say so, Madame de Sévigné
may have loved her daughter a little unwisely, but that is a
matter upon which it is impossible to dogmatise. Is any great
love wise, measured by ordinary, practical standards? Hers
was truly a great love, poured out without stint, one of the
world’s most celebrated, most unselfish loves, giving all and
asking little in return—a love which has enriched literature and
humanity with some of the finest letters in the world. And as
we read those letters, we cannot fail to grasp the difference
in character between her two children.

Between the lines we may discern some indication of the
clever, thoughtful mind of Madame de Grignan. Her mother
could write to her, sure of entire comprehension, of complete
understanding ; sure, from her absolutely upright character, that
she would never be betrayed. Could she have written with the
same freedom of maternal love to her son Charles, even if she
had had the same tenderness of feeling for him? Impossible.
She would never have known whether some mistress, who had
empire over him for the moment, might not obtain possession
of her most cherished secrets! Madame de Sévigné’s experi-
ence of men had not been calculated to inspire her with much
trust in them. Her husband, on whom she lavished all the
best of her young, unspoiled faith and affection, was base,
faithless, and utterly untrustworthy through his weakness. Her
cousin Bussy, between whom and herself the tie of kindred was
unusually strong, had, in a fit of pique, coldly and with wicked
deliberation held her up to the ridicule of the world among
whom she lived. Her son, as he grew to manhood, handsome,
184 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

witty, brave and charming though he was, had yet the weak
and fatal amiability of character that made him always ready
“to agree with the last speaker,” with apparently no solid or
settled convictions of his own.

He was a little over twenty when he joined the heroic and
adventurous expedition to Candia, which the Duc de Roannes
led to the assistance of Venice against the Turks. More than
four hundred young gentlemen volunteers, belonging to the
greatest families of France, took part in the campaign, and
Charles de Sévigné was in the brigade commanded by the young
Comte de Saint-Paul, that son of the Duchesse de Longueville
who had been born in the Hétel de Ville.

Though Francoise de Sévigné’s betrothal had not been
mentioned at the time of her brother's departure in August
1668, we know that before he set out he left a power of attorney
with the Abbé de la Mousse, so that he might sign in his place
in his sister's marriage contract. After he left, Madame de
Sévigné wrote to tell the news of his departure to the Comte de
Bussy, and we see the anguish of her true mother-love at the
first long separation from her son:

“You do not know, I believe, that my son is gone to Candia
with M. de Roannes and the Comte de Saint-Paul. He took
this fancy very strongly into his head, and consulted M. de
Turenne, Cardinal de Retz, and M. de la Rochefoucauld—you
see what important personages! All these gentlemen approved
of it so highly that it was settled and rumoured about before
I knew anything of the matter. In short, he is gone, I have
wept bitterly; I am terribly afflicted by it, and I shall not have
a moment’s peace during the whole expedition. I see all its
dangers, and am frightened to death by them, but I have not
been mistress; on such occasions as these, mothers have not
much voice in the matter.

It turned out to be a disastrous expedition. The brave
young volunteers knew little of the art of war, and a terrible
loss of men was the natural result. Then the pestilence broke
out, and carried off many of the men that battle had spared ;
but, fortunately for Charles de Sévigné and his mother, he
returned unhurt by wounds or pestilence, and with a reputation
for bravery in this his first campaign.
CHAPTER XIX

The Comte de Grignan is appointed Deputy-Governor of Provence—Madame de
Sévigné’s grief and disappointment—Model letters from a mother-in-law—The

Comtesse de Grignan remains a year in Paris with her mother—The Bishop of
Marseilles

NE of the greatest advantages of her daughter’s marriage
to the Comte de Grignan was, in Madame de Sévigné’s
eyes, that their home was in Paris, and that, in all probability,
they would remain there. M. de Grignan had influential friends
and relatives, he was a man of solid worth and good abilities,
and they hoped that in time he would secure some position
at Court. There is no doubt that in her visions of the future
the Marquise had dreamed of being always near her beloved
daughter, rejoicing in her happiness and success, helping to
lighten her troubles, and soothing her inevitable sorrows with
tender love and experience. The Comte was Lieutenant-General
of Languedoc, it is true, but as there were two other lieutenants-
general and a governor-general of the province, it was hardly
probable that he would be often called upon for military
service.

But Madame de Sévigné did not enjoy one whole year of
this tranquil, undisturbed happiness, which she hoped would
have lasted for her lifetime. On the 29th of November 1669,
the Comte de Grignan was appointed Lieutenant-General of
Provence.

It was the same title that he had held in Languedoc, but
with a wide difference in the office. The Duc de Vendéme, who
had succeeded his father as Governor of Provence, was only
thirteen years old, and consequently unable to govern in person.
In his absence the chief President of Parlement, the Baron
d’Oppéde, was a kind of provisional governor, but the Bishop of
Marseilles had so arrogantly taken advantage of this circum-
186 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

stance to usurp legal authority, that it was imperatively
necessary for some recognised government to be immediately
established in the name and authority of the King.

This was a great position for the Comte de Grignan and
for Madame la Comtesse his wife ; it was practically the govern-
ment of a little kingdom, with all the pomp and authority
belonging to the office. But to Madame de Sévigné all the joy
and honour of the prospect were swallowed up by the grief of
the imminent parting. In these days of swift and easy travel-
ling it is so difficult for us to imagine what a wide gulf of
separation lay between Paris and Provence! It took more than
a fortnight to get from one place to the other, and there were
real dangers in crossing the impetuous Rhone, in the bad roads,
and the many possible mischances of travel.

It was a sudden and distressing disappointment to all
Madame de Sévigné’s hopes, and an overwhelming grief to be
compelled to part with her daughter. But that painful duty
was deferred for some months after the Comte de Grignan’s
departure, which was a respite to the Marquise, embittered,
however, every day by the thought of the approaching separation.
M. de Grignan left Paris for Provence at the end of April 1670,
but as his wife was not then in a fit state of health to travel, he
left her in Paris with her mother till the end of the year. We
gather from Madame de Sévigné’s letters afterwards that the
young wife, parted from her husband, was so determined to be
entirely faithful to him, that instead of dressing herself in
beautiful costumes, as she had formerly done when she appeared
at Court, she now wore most unbecoming clothes. “Do you
not remember,” her mother writes some time after, “how you
used to weary us with the sight of that wretched black mantle?
That negligence was the action of a virtuous woman. M. de
Grignan might well be obliged to you for it, but it was most
annoying for those who saw it.”

Though the Marquise was delighted to have her daughter in
Paris for a time longer, she was too wise to wish to cause any
resentment from a sense of being neglected on the part of
the Comte de Grignan. She wrote frequently to him, and her
letters area model of what the letters of a mother-in-law should
be. They are most delicately diplomatic, saying with instinctive
LETTERS FROM A MOTHER-IN-LAW 187

tact all the things he would most desire to know. She dwells
on her daughter’s love for him, she takes the second place in
her daughter’s affection, she tells him that everyone speaks of
her correct and regular conduct, and dwells insistently on her
daughter’s desire to be with him.

“Paris, August 6, 1670

“Ts it not true that I have given you the prettiest wife in the
world? Can anyone be more virtuous, more regular in her
conduct? Can anyone love you more tenderly? Can anyone
have more Christian sentiments? Can anyone desire more
ardently to be with you? Can anyone be more devoted to her
duties? It is rather ridiculous of me to speak so well of my
own daughter, but it is because I admire her conduct as much
as other people do; and perhaps more, because I have more
opportunities of seeing it. To tell you the truth, whatever good
opinion I had of her on all important points, I did not think she
would be so scrupulous as she is on all minor matters, I assure
you everyone does her justice, and she loses none of the praises
that are her due.

“Tt is an old theme of mine, for which I shall be stoned one
day, that the public is neither foolish nor unjust, and Madame
de Grignan has too much reason to be satisfied with it just now
to dispute it. She has been in inconceivable anxiety about
your health, and I am delighted to hear that you have recovered,
for love of you as well as for love of her. I beg you, if you
expect any more attacks of your disorder, to prevail on them
to wait till after my daughter is confined. She complains every
day that we keep herhere, and declares very seriously that it was
extremely cruel to have separated her from you. One would
suppose that we had put two hundred leagues between her and
you for pleasure. I beg you to calm her mind on that point,
and to tell her what joy it gives you to hope that she will be
happily delivered here. It was absolutely impossible for her to
have accompanied you in her condition, and nothing will be so
good for her health as to be confined with the care she has here,
nor for her reputation as to remain in a placé where her conduct
is so admired. If, after this, she desired to become giddy and
coquettish, it would be more than a year before anyone would
188 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

believe it, as she has given everyone such a good opinion of her
wisdom. I call on all the Grignans who are here to bear
witness to the truth of what I tell you. My joy in all this
accords well with yours, for I love you with all my heart, and I
am delighted that the result has so well justified your choice.
I shall tell you no news, as that would be trespassing on my
daughter’s rights. I only beg you to believe that no one can be
more tenderly interested than I am in everything that concerns
you.”

It is almost impossible not to admire the Marquise from
almost every aspect, and in relation to almost every duty of life!
In the world she is brilliant, witty, amiable, and graceful; to
those who have the happiness of being near her heart she is
most tenderly affectionate; as wife, mother, niece, friend, she
is as nearly perfect as faulty human nature may be; even to
this difficult character of mother-in-law, which has been the
butt of vulgar wit since the beginning of the world, she adds a
new dignity, and invests it with a wise and thoughtful tenderness ;
showing an acute avoidance of giving offence that might well
be copied by those unhappy, untactful mothers- in-law, who by
an overweening, selfish affection for their daughters have
wrecked their happiness for life.

In another letter, written a few days after this, she tells him
that she writes so frequently to him only on condition that he
will not answer her letters. She rejoices in the honours that are
paid to him in his new office of lieutenant-general, and again
she writes most about his wife, knowing that of this subject he
will not soon tire. “I see that such a lively correspondence is
kept up between a certain lady and you that it would be
absurd of me to pretend to give you any news. There is not
the least hope of being able to inform you that she loves you;
all her actions, all her conduct, all her cares and anxieties tell
you so plainly enough. I am rather difficult to please in matters
concerning love, and profess to know something about it ; and
I own to you that I am perfectly satisfied with what I see, and
that I should not wish it to be different. Enjoy this pleasure
to the uttermost, and do not be ungrateful. If any little vacant
place remains in your heart, allow me the pleasure of occupying
LETTERS TO THE COMTE DE GRIGNAN 189

it, for you hold a very considerable place in mine... . I have
given my daughter a book for you, you will find it very
beautiful; it is by an intimate friend of Pascal’s; he writes
nothing that is not perfect; pray read it with attention. I have
also sent you some beautiful airs till I can get the other music.
Do not neglect either your voice or your fine figure; in a word,
continue to be amiable since you are loved so well.”

The intimate friend of Pascal, of whom she writes, is Nicole,
the author of Essazs de morale. Madame de Sévigné greatly
admired his writings, and she read and re-read his books many
times in the long leisure of her days at Les Rochers, He was
one of the celebrated band of writers at Port Royal, the head-
quarters of Jansenism in Paris. The Marquise was a good
Jansenist, as were so many of her friends. She always speaks
with love and reverence of the good Arnauld d’Andilly, who, in
spite of his almost aggressive Jansenism, was looked on with
favour by the King, though the latter, by his mother’s training
and his early education, leaned towards the Jesuits in doctrine.

Again, in September, Madame de Sévigné writes to the
Comte de Grignan to assure him of his wife’s health and well-
being, and above all of the love she shows for her absent
husband. These are by no means the most witty, or humorous,
or clever of her letters, but they record her tender anxiety to
foster the best possible feeling between the Comte and Comtesse,
so that this favour of having her daughter near her for these
few months shall not in any way cause unhappiness between
them. In nothing else that she has written does she show
herself more tenderly tactful, more affectionately desirous of her
daughter’s truest well-being and happiness.

‘Paris, friday, September 12, 1670

“TI do not write with the idea of beginning a correspondence
with you; I should be cautious of doing so, knowing how you
are overwhelmed with that from Madame de Grignan. I pity
you for having such long letters to read ; I never saw anything
so lively, and I believe that you would gladly have her with you
to be delivered from them, to such a state has she reduced you
by her importunity. She has just now separated herself from
190 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

us and retired to a corner of the room with a little table and
desk before her, not thinking M. de Coulanges or I worthy of
approaching her. She is in despair because you have written to
me; I have never seen such a jealous and envious woman.
However, I defy her, let her do what she will, to interrupt our
friendship. You have a great part in the care I take of her
health, .. .”

About two months later, on November 15, 1670, Madame
de Grignan gave birth to a daughter. They had all greatly
desired a son, but Madame de Sévigné, one may easily guess,
and M. de Grignan too, there is little doubt, were so happy to
find the young Comtesse out of danger that there was not much
room for regret. The baby was baptized Marie Blanche, and
for some time stayed with Madame de Sévigné, who called her
granddaughter her “little heart.” The child had for godfather
the Archbishop of Arles, and for godmother the Marquise de
Sévigné, who showed more tenderness to the child than its own
mother, who had so ardently hoped for a son, that, with a
coldness that was part of her nature, she was not very satisfied
with her baby daughter. Perhaps, too, she, who was so beautiful
herself, was rather piqued at the baby’s plainness; it is a point
on which young, foolish mothers are sometimes ridiculously
sensitive. Madame de Sévigné, with a soupcon of mischief, tells
her son-in-law that his third daughter resembles him rather
than its mother. “Malicious people,’ she writes, “say that
Blanche d’Adhémar will not be an extraordinary beauty, and
the same people add that she is very much like you. If this be
the case, you will not doubt that I love her dearly.”

Every week regularly, while her daughter was convalescent,
the Marquise wrote to M. de Grignan, giving him details of her
health and the news his wife was unable to write. In one of
these letters she gives him such excellent counsel that we read
in and between the lines a little of that art of savoir vivre of
which Madame de Sévigné was so completely mistress, and at
the same time we get a passing hint of that amiability, and
peace-loving feminine charm, which was one of the many graces
of her beautiful character,

The Bishop of Marseilles, who, through his arrogance and
THE BISHOP OF MARSEILLES 19!

usurpation of power, had been the immediate cause of the Comte
de Grignan’s appointment to the vice-government of Provence,
had evidently been mentioned to the Comte as likely to cause
him a considerable amount of trouble in his new office. He
had probably told this to Madame de Sévigné, and her advice
as to how to treat the Bishop is so admirable, so packed with
epigrammatic wisdom and knowledge of human nature, that it
might with advantage be taken as a rule of conduct in similar
difficult circumstances.

** Paris, Friday, November 28, 1670

“Let us speak no more of this wife of yours, we love her
beyond all bounds of reason. She is very well, and I want to
write to you entirely on my own account. I wish to talk to you
about Monsieur de Marseilles, and to beg you, by all the
confidence you have in me, to follow my advice in your conduct
respecting him. I know the manners of provincials, and I know
the pleasure they take in fomenting quarrels, so much that
unless we are always on guard against the discourse of these
gentlemen, we insensibly adopt their sentiments, which are very

‘often unjust. I can assure you that time, or other reasons, have
greatly altered M. de Marseilles’s disposition. For some days
he has been very mild, and if you do not treat him as an
enemy, you will not find him one. Let us take him at his word
till we find he does something to the contrary. Nothing is so
likely to destroy a good intention as to show a distrust of it; to
be suspected as an enemy often suffices to make a man one;
everything is then at an end, and there is no further hope of
management. Confidence, on the contrary, prompts us to do
good actions; we are pleasantly affected by the good opinion of
others, and will not willingly lose it. In God’s name be open-
hearted, and you will be surprised by a behaviour you did not
expect. I can never believe that this man conceals any venom
in his heart, when we consider all the professions of friendship
he has made us, and of which it would be better to be the dupes
rather than to be capable of suspecting him unjustly. Follow
my advice; it is not mine only, several capable persons
recommend this conduct to you, and assure you that you will
not be deceived. Your family is convinced of it; we see better
192 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

into these things than you; and so many people who love you,
and who have not a little good sense, can hardly be mistaken.”

It was excellent advice, but it is uncertain whether the
Comte de Grignan adopted it. If he did, the result did not
justify Madame de Sévigné’s expectations; as for many years
the Bishop of Marseilles proved a veritable thorn in the flesh to
M. de Grignan and Madame his wife.
CHAPTER XX

A celebrated letter—La Grande Mademoiselle and M. de Lauzun—A royal
love-story—Madame de Sévigné visits the Tuilleries, and is the confidante of
La Grande Mademoiselle—A Princess in tears

UST one month after the birth of Blanche d’Adhémar, and
while the Comtesse de Grignan was still staying with her
mother, an event occurred which threw Parisians into an
almost inconceivable state of excitement. Never had such a
thing been dreamed of before! The Court was indescribably
agitated by the news; it was the only possible topic in the
salons and ruel/es,in the Louvre and in the Luxembourg; in
short, all Paris was as excited as if the town had been on the
point of being besieged. Madame de Sévigné, who was greatly
attached to the principal personage in the drama, wrote what is
perhaps her most famous letter, on the occasion, to her cousin
Emmanuel de Coulanges, who was then staying at Lyons.

“Paris, December 15, 1670

“T am going to tell you of an event which is the most
astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvellous, the most
miraculous, the most magnificent, the most bewildering, the
most unheard-of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the
most incredible, the most unexpected, the greatest, the least,
the most rare, the most common, the most public, the most
private till to-day, the most brilliant, the most enviable ; in short,
an event to which there is only one parallel to be found in past
ages, and even that not an exact one; an event which we cannot
believe in Paris (how then can it be believed in Lyons?); an
event which makes everybody exclaim, ‘ Lord, have mercy upon
us!’ an event which causes the greatest joy to Madame de Rohan
and Madame d’Hauterive; an event, in fact, which will take

13
194 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

place on Sunday next, when those who are present will doubt
the evidence of their senses; an event which, though it is to
happen on Sunday, may perhaps not be accomplished on
Monday. I cannot persuade myself to tell you. Guess what it
is! I give you three guesses. Do you giveitup? Well, then, I
must tell you. Monsieur de Lauzun is to be married next
Sunday at the Louvre—guess to whom! I give you four
guesses, I give you ten, I give you a hundred. Madame
de Coulanges says, ‘It is not very difficult to guess, it is
Madame de la Valliére.’ You are quite wrong, Madame. ‘ It is
Mademoiselle de Retz then. No, it is not; you are very
provincial. ‘Dear me, how stupid we are, you exclaim, ‘it is
Mademoiselle de Colbert, of course. You are farther off than
ever. ‘Then it must be Mademoiselle de Créqui’ You are
no nearer. Well, I find I must tell you. He is to marry on
Sunday at the Louvre, with the King’s permission, Mademoiselle,
Mademoiselle de—Mademoiselle—guess the name! he is to
marry Mademoiselle, my faith! by my faith! my sworn faith!
Mademoiselle, la Grande Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle,
daughter of the late Monsieur; Mademoiselle, granddaughter
of Henri Iv; Mademoiselle d’Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes,
Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mademoiselle d’Orléans;
Mademoiselle, first cousin to the King; Mademoiselle, once
destined for the throne; Mademoiselle, the only person in
France worthy of Monsieur. Here is a fine subject for con-
versation. If you cry out, if you are beside yourselves, if
you say we are deceiving you, that it is false, that we are
laughing at you, that it is a pretty joke, that it is a very poor
invention ; if, in fact, you abuse us, we shall say you are right,
for we have done the same ourselves. Adieu. You will see by
the letters you receive by this post whether I am telling you the
truth or not.”

This amazing romance of royalty is almost too well known
to mention, were it not that Madame de Sévigné has given
the most inimitable account of it, and was, besides, as nearly
a personal friend of the Princess as anyone could be who was
not of royal blood.

There is no more prominent, and, in some respects, no more
 

HENRIETTE
DUCHESSE D’ORLEANS

 

THE DUCHESSE DE MONTPENSIER
‘““LA GRANDE MADEMOISELLE ”
LA GRANDE MADEMOISELLE 195

romantic, figure than that of La Grande Mademoiselle in all the
pageant of great personages who defile before us as we read the
history of France’s great century. The daughter of Gaston,
Duc d’Orléans, she was the cousin of the King, and when he
was born called him “her little husband,” till Richelieu scolded
her, then a girl of twelve, and told her she was too old for
pleasantries in such bad taste. Nevertheless, Mademoiselle
for many years cherished the hope of sharing the throne
of France, till that great day of the battle of Saint-Antoine,
when she earned her name of “Heroine of the Fronde” by
opening the gates of Paris to the King’s enemies, and by turning
the cannon of the Bastille on the King’s army. As Mazarin
heard the thunder of the cannon, he remarked with grim
humour, “Mademoiselle has killed her husband!” And,
truly enough, in place of sharing her young cousin’s throne,
she was very shortly after exiled to Saint-Fargeau, one of her
numerous estates, where Madame de Sévigné was among the
few friends who were loyal enough to visit her during her
disgrace.

Whom was not Mademoiselle to have married? Charles
tr of England, living in exile at Saint-Germain, would have
been glad of the vast wealth of this Princess, but he was then a
prince in poverty and exile, with not sufficient French to plead
his cause, though his mother was eloquent and anxious enough
on his behalf. Unluckily for him, at this time Mademoiselle’s
head was somewhat turned with the chimerical hope of
marrying the Emperor, and a bashful, out-at-elbows Prince,
metaphorically speaking, without even a kingdom, was quite
eclipsed by those dazzling imperial splendours which were
brought so tantalisingly near only to be snatched away. After
the failure of this brilliant scheme she had hoped to marry the
Great Condé. His wife was alive at the time, it is true, but so
near to death that Mademoiselle almost exultingly wrote in
her diary how slender were the chances of her recovery. She
did recover, however, and Mademoiselle had to look elsewhere
fora husband. There was some talk of a Prince of Bavaria;
but who was a petty prince, when Mademoiselle had hoped to
marry an Emperor? Then came the Prince de Savoie,
Alphonse vi of Portugal, then Monsieur the King’s brother,
196 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

who had just lost his wife, Henriette of England, the gay and
graceful Princess who had danced in the ballet royal, where
Mademoiselle de Sévigné had figured also, only a few years
before.

Monsieur was some thirteen years younger than Mademoiselle,
who was then over forty years of age. But disparity of age
had never been any bar to Mademoiselle’s matrimonial schemes ;
indeed, there was some talk of an alliance with the Comte de
Saint-Paul, who had just returned with Sévigné and others
from the expedition in Candia, and he was a full twenty years
her junior! These plans, however, came to naught, for at the
mature age of forty-three she had fallen deeply, violently, irre-
sistibly in love for the first and only time in her life. She who
had scoffed at love for so long as a bourgeoise passion, “ unworthy
of a noble soul,” was now to succumb to its autocratic power
with an abandonment of heart as reckless as could be shown by
the meanest of her tiring-women or kitchen-maids. Her love
would have been more dignified, more worthy of respect, had
she given her heart to a man who was morally or physically
attractive; but it was a part of the adverse fate of Mademoiselle,
who, in marriage at least, was always near to great things and
always missing them, that her grand passion, when it swept
her away from all the artificial moorings of royalty and left
her a mere human woman, ready to sacrifice everything for her
love, should be roused by a man who would have been utterly
ridiculous, had it not been for a certain sinister power which
was largely the result of giving way to his mad impulses
without an ordinary sane fear of consequences. This M.
de Lauzun, who by his projected marriage with Mademoiselle
gained more distinction than his own qualities could ever have
brought him, made his appearance at Court as a cadet of
Gascony, under the protection of his uncle the Maréchal de
Gramont. He was inconceivably impertinent and audacious,
but as audacity is said to be one of the ingredients of success,
he soon made his way, and short and plain though he was, he
was soon quite a favourite among the ladies. He was more
than ordinarily insignificant in stature; “the smallest man that
God has ever made,” wrote the Comte de Bussy to Madame
de Sévigné; and Mademoiselle’s own portrait of him when he
THE DUC DE LAUZUN 197

was thirty-seven is not attractive, though she saw him with the
eyes of love.

“He is a small man,” she writes, “ but no one can say that his
figure is not the straightest, prettiest, and most agreeable. His
limbs are fine, and he has a good air in everything he does. His
hair, which is blonde, mixed with grey, is rather scanty ; it is
badly dressed and somewhat greasy; he has fine blue eyes
which are generally red; he has a shrewd mien and a pleasing
countenance, His smile is agreeable. The end of his nose is
pointed and red ; there is something elevated in his physiognomy ;
he is very negligent in his attire, but when he thinks it worth
while to be careful he looks well. Behold the man!”

Saint-Simon gives us his moral attributes, which are even
less attractive. “A courtier who was equally insolent, spiteful,
and obsequious ; full of mean intrigues to gain his ends, and for
that reason dangerous to ministers; feared by all at Court, and
ever ready with sarcasms as witty as they were cruel, sparing no
one.” The same authority tells us that he was full of ambition,
whims, and fancies; that he was jealous of every distinction, and,
sullen and morose, he was never satisfied with anything; that
he had no knowledge of letters or mental culture, and even when
he was a good friend, which was seldom, he was a dangerous man.

Mademoiselle, who gives all the details of her love-affair quite
ingenuously and frankly, paints for us only too clearly the fact
that it was herself who made all the advances, and that when this
strange little person saw what advantages would really be his by
marriage with this tall spinster of royal blood, who was so
enormously wealthy, and of such personal distinction as to be
next the Queen in consideration, he fell in with her plans more
from a spirit of ambition than from any genuine affection. It
was long before Mademoiselle could bring herself to believe
that she, the granddaughter of Henri Iv, whose strongest
article of faith was her blind belief in the divine superiority of
royalty, could stoop so low as to become the wife of a noble
whom she regarded as definitely, tangibly, immeasurably inferior
to herself in the scheme of the universe. It is one of the
celebrated romances of the world; a touching story of a woman’s
great renunciation, though in the Memoirs of Mademoiselle the
pathos often gets perilously near to bathos, as she innocently
198 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

exhibits her amusing conception of the divinity of royalty; but
as she was close to the throne in the reign when royalty in France
reached its apotheosis, her times are probably more responsible
for this than she is.

When Mademoiselle had come to this great decision, and
had told Lauzun of the great honour she intended to confer on
him, there was yet the King’s permission to obtain. Louis XIV
neither forbade her nor gave his consent, but begged her to reflect
well on what she was about to do. She implored and entreated
him still more urgently, and at length the King sent word to her
by the Duc de Montausier that she might do as she pleased.
The messenger, a wise man, knowing much of Court intrigue and
of royal indecision, urged Mademoiselle to get married at once,
that very night, before the King should have time to change his
mind. Mademoiselle might perhaps have done so, but the vain
little Lauzun refused to forego the triumph of a grand wedding,
at which all the Court would be present to witness his semi-royal
grandeur; and they delayed fatally. Madame de Sévigné tells
the story so graphically, with such a warm, breathing human
interest in the Princess and her romantic marriage, that while
reading her letters the centuries fall away, and for the time we
are at the Tuilleries, sharing in La Grande Mademoiselle’striumph,
her bitter disappointment, and her despairing grief. Before M. de
Coulanges had received his cousin’s letter, giving him the news
of the “most astonishing” marriage, the Marquise wrote him
another containing a surprise which was almost as dramatic.

‘Paris, Thursday, December 19, 1670

“What is called falling from the clouds happened last night
at the Tuilleries; but I must relate things farther back. You
have already heard of the joy, the transport, the ecstasies of the
Princess and her happy lover. The affair was made public on
Monday, as I told you. Tuesday was passed in talking,
astonishment, and compliments. On Wednesday Mademoiselle
made a deed of gift to M. de Lauzun, with the design of giving
him certain titles, names, and dignities necessary to be inserted
in the marriage contract, which was drawn up that day. She
gave him, then, four duchies till she could bestow something better
on him; the first was that of the comté d’Eu, which entitles
A ROYAL LOVE-STORY 199

him to rank as the first peer of France; the dukedom of
Montpensier, of which he bore the title all that day; the duke-
dom of Saint-Fargeau, and the dukedom of Chatellerault, the
whole of which is valued at twenty-two million livres. The
contract was then drawn up, and he took the name of Montpensier,
On Thursday morning, which was yesterday, Mademoiselle was
hoping and expecting the King to sign as he had said, but
about seven o'clock in the evening the Queen, Monsieur, and
several old dotards had so persuaded the King that his reputation
would suffer in the affair that he resolved to break it; and
sending for Mademoiselle and M. de Lauzun, he announced to
them in the presence of Monsieur that he forbade them to think
any further of the marriage. M.de Lauzun received the prohibi-
tion with all the respect, submission, firmness, and, at the same
time, with all the despair one might expect at such a great reverse
of fortune. As for Mademoiselle, she gave vent to her feelings.
She burst into tears, cries, lamentations, and the most violent ex-
pressions of grief; she has not left her bedall day,and takes nothing
but a little broth. Whata fine dream is here! What a splendid
subject for a romance or a tragedy, but, above all, what a subject for
reasoning and talking eternally! That is what we do, day and
night,evening and morning, without end and without intermission.
We hope you will do the same, and with this I kiss your hand.”

Madame de Sévigné greatly appreciated the dramatic value
of the whole incident, and on Christmas Eve, writing again to
her cousin de Coulanges, who was so witty that he often called
forth her most sparkling letters, she tells him that they think it
a story well adapted for a tragedy, following all theatrical rules.
“The other day we laid out the acts and scenes, and taking four
days instead of twenty-four hours, the play was complete.” A
week later she gives him a few more interesting details, and we
see how familiar she was with the proud Princess, who doubtless
was glad to pour some of her sorrow and disappointment into the
sympathetic and discreet ear of Madame de Sévigné.

“Paris, Wednesday, December 31, 1670

“TI have received your answers to my letters. I can easily
understand your astonishment at what happened between the
200 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

15th and the 2oth of this month ; the subject well deserved it.
I admire also your penetration and judgment in thinking that
so great an affair could not possibly hold out from Monday till
Sunday. Modesty prevents me from praising you on this point,
because I said and thought the same things as you. I remarked
to my daughter on Monday, ‘ This will not go on happily till
Sunday ; I will wager that though everyone talks of nothing but
this wedding it will never happen.’ In fact, the sky was over-
cast on Thursday, and at about ten in the evening, as I told
you, the cloud burst. That same Thursday I went at about
nine in the morning to Mademoiselle’s house, having been
informed that she was going out of town to be married, and that
the Coadjutor of Rheims was to perform the ceremony. These
were the plans on Wednesday evening, but affairs had been
determined otherwise at the Louvre since Tuesday. Made-
moiselle was writing; she told me to enter, and when she
had finished her letter she made me kneel at her bedside.
She told me to whom she was writing, and why; she
told me of the beautiful presents she had given the evening
before, and the titles which she had conferred ; that there was
no match for her in the Courts of Europe, and that she was
determined to provide for herself. She related to me, word
for word, a conversation that she had had with the King;
and appeared transported with joy at the thought of making
aman so happy. She spoke to me with tenderness of the
worth and gratitude of M. de Lauzun, and to all this I said,
‘Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, you seem very happy, but why
was not this affair promptly finished on Monday? Do you not
perceive that such a great delay will give time to the whole
kingdom to talk, and that it is tempting God and the King, to
put off such an extraordinary affair for so long?’ She told me
that I was right, but she was so full of confidence, that what
I said made hardly any impression on her at the time. She
spoke again of the family and of the good qualities of M. de
Lauzun.... She embraced me tenderly. This conversation
lasted an hour, and it is impossible to repeat all that passed
between us, but I may say without vanity that my”company
was very agreeable to her, for her heart was so full that she
was glad to talk to anyone, At ten o’clock she devoted her
A PRINCESS IN TEARS 201

time to the rest of France, who came to pay their compliments
upon the marriage. She waited all the morning for news from
the King, but none came.

“ After dinner she amused herself with putting M. de Mont-
pensier’s rooms in order with her own hands. You know what
happened in the evening. The next day, which was Friday,
I went to see her, and found her in bed; she redoubled her
cries on seeing me, she called me to her, she embraced me, and
made me all wet with her tears. ‘Alas!’ she said, ‘do you
remember what you said to me yesterday? Ah, what fore-
sight ! what cruel, cruel foresight!’ She made me weep to see
her weep so violently. I have been to see her twice since; she
is in great affliction, and she always treats me as a person who
sympathises with her grief, and in this she is not mistaken,
for I feel for her on this occasion such sentiments as one rarely
feels for people of such exalted rank. All this, however, is
between ourselves and Madame de Coulanges; for you can
understand how entirely ridiculous these things would sound to
other people. Adieu.”

It is generally supposed that Mademoiselle married Lauzun
privately, but in any case the strange little man, after ten
years at Pignerol, in the cell above that of Foucquet, treated
the Princess so badly when he was released, that with all her
love and desire for self-sacrifice, she made the resolve, and kept
it, of never seeing him again.
CHAPTER XXI

A bitter parting—The perilous journey to Provence—A tender mother—‘‘ A
pretty pagan ”—Spring at Livry

NDERLYING allthe excitement and interest that Madame
de Sévigné felt in the dramatic affair between La Grande
Mademoiselle and Monsieur de Lauzun, was the sad prospect,
daily growing nearer and more formidable, of parting with her
idolised daughter. In early December she already laments the
need for separation, and whimsically says to M. de Grignan,
with a light reference to her grief when she first heard of his
appointment, “I shall soon be in the same state that you saw
me in last year. I must love you greatly to send my daughter
to you at this inclement season. How foolish it is to leave a
good mother, with whom you assure me she is so satisfied, to
go to find a man at the farthest end of France! Nothing could
be more indecorous than such conduct!”

As Madame de Grignan daily regained her health, there was,
however, no longer any reason for detaining her in Paris, and
her departure was fixed for the 1oth of January 1671. The
journey was nevertheless postponed a little longer because of
the heavy rains, and Madame de Sévigné writes a most
apologetic letter to her son-in-law, assuring him with such full
and detailed reasons that she had no joy in keeping his
young wife now that she ought to be in Provence with him,
that the most unreasonable husband should have been con-
vinced.

“ Alas!” she writes on the 16th of January, “the poor child
is still with me, for it was utterly impossible for her to have set
out on the loth of this month as she had intended. The rains
have been, and are still, so violent, that it would have been the
greatest folly to have attempted it. All the rivers have over-
flowed; all the highroads are under water; all the carriage-
A POSTPONED JOURNEY 203

tracks are so hidden, that she would have run the risk of being
overturned at every ford.”

Another reason for delaying the departure was that the
Coadjutor of the Archbishop of Arles, the Comte de Grignan’s
brother, with whom the Comtesse was to travel, had been
commanded by the King to perform the marriage ceremony
between Mademoiselle d’Harcourt, a cousin of the Grignans,
and the Duc de Cadaval, a Portuguese nobleman. Madame de
Sévigné was most anxious that her daughter should be accom-
panied by her brother-in-law, partly as a protection for the
young Comtesse, partly for the sake of /es convenances, and
was greatly disturbed at the postponement of the marriage.

“The affair has been put off day after day,” she goes on,
“and may not be concluded this week. However, I see that
my daughter is so impatient to be gone that the time she now
passes with us cannot be called living, and if the Coadjutor
does not excuse himself from this marriage, I can see that she
is quite ready to commit the folly of going without him. It
would be so extraordinary to travel by herself, and, on the
contrary, such a fortunate thing to have the company of her
brother-in-law, that I shall do my utmost to arrange for them
to travel together, and in the meantime the waters may have
somewhat subsided. But I assure you that I have no pleasure
in her company ; I know that she must leave us, and all that she
does now are her duties and the preparations for departure.
We see no society; we go to no amusements; our hearts are
always heavy, and we talk of nothing but rains, bad roads, and
melancholy stories of people who have lost their lives in travel-
ling on them. In a word, though I love her as you know, our
present condition is dull and disagreeable. We have had no
pleasure in these last few days. Iam greatly obliged to you, my
dear Comte, for all the friendship and sympathy you feel for
me. You understand better than anyone else what I suffer,
and what I shall suffer. I should be sorry, however, that the joy
you will have in seeing her should be troubled by thoughts of
that. These are the changes and sorrows with which life is
chequered. Adieu, my dearest Comte. I weary you to death
with my long letters, but I hope you will understand the reason
why I write them.”
204. THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

It was almost three weeks after this charming letter of
apology was written that Madame de Sévigné endured the first
terrible parting from her daughter, a separation that to her
loving and sensitive heart seemed to contain nearly the bitterness
of death. On the 5th of February Madame de Sévigné held her
daughter in her arms for the cruel farewell, weeping, “ without
knowing what she did.” One of the Marquise’s most faithful
and affectionate friends was there to assist them in those little
welcome offices at parting, when the principals are too absorbed
in grief to remember necessary details; the good d’Hacqueville,
the kind, officious friend who divided his days among so many
friends, who so multiplied himself in their service that he was
sometimes, in affectionate mockery, spoken of in the plural as
“les d’Hacqueville.” He had been a college friend of the
Cardinal de Retz, and through him had become acquainted
with Madame de Sévigné. He was devoted to her and her
daughter; he was sometimes even too attentive, but always
with such praiseworthy intentions, that when most annoyed
they could only laugh at him and his bad writing and his stale
news, and love him for his kind, unselfish devotion. When
everything necessary for the long journey had been packed
into the travelling carriage—a bed, which the Chevalier de
Grignan, another of her husband’s brothers, had lent her, food,
kitchen utensils (the coffee-pot was unluckily forgotten !),
besides books for the long monotonous days of travelling—
Madame de Sévigné saw the man who was to drive her
daughter bringing his horses round, and, her eyes streaming
with tears, she went to implore him to take care of her
daughter. She asked him his name, and when he had told
her—

“Monsieur Busche,’ said I, sobbing all the time” (it is the
Marquise who tells this afterwards to her daughter), “‘I recom-
mend my daughter to your care; do not overturn her, I pray;
and when you have taken her safely to Lyons, come and tell
me the news and I will give you something to drink.’”

Even when the good-byes had all been said, and Monsieur
Busche was just driving off, Madame de Sévigné could not let
her daughter go without one last anguished embrace, then,
watching her from an upper window as she finally drove away,
A CRUEL SEPARATION 205

she felt, as she afterwards declared, “fit to throw herself out of
the window after her.”

Distracted at her loss, she went from her own desolate house
to the Convent of Sainte-Marie, in the Faubourg de Saint-
Jacques, and in this retreat she remained for hours, unable to
do anything but weep. The next day she wrote to her
daughter, and in her own vivid words we recognise the sincerity
and depth of her grief.

“Paris, Friday, February 6, 1671

“My grief would be very light if I could give you a descrip-
tion of it; I shall not therefore attempt it. I search everywhere
in vain for my dear child, and I find her not; every step she
takes carries her farther away from me. I went to Sainte-Marie,
half dead, and weeping all the way; it seemed to me that my
very heart and soul had been torn from me. Mon Dieu! what
a cruel separation! I begged to be alone; and they took me
into Madame du Housset’s room, where they made me a fire.
Agnes stayed with me, but without speaking, for that was our
bargain; and I remained there till five o’clock without ceasing
to weep; every thought brought death with it. I wrote to
M. de Grignan, you may easily guess in what style. Then
I went to Madame de la Fayette, who redoubled my sorrows
by sharing in them. She was alone, and ill and sad, because
of the death of a sister, a nun, which was exactly as I would
have wished to find her. Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld came
in, and we talked of nothing but you, and of the good reason
I had to be in distress... . At about eight o’clock I came
home, but, bon Dieu! can you understand what I felt on going
upstairs? The doors were open of that room which I always
entered with such happiness, but everything was in disorder and
desolate, and only your poor little girl was there in place of
mine. Can you understand all that I suffered? The night
passed in mournful vigils, and the returning light brought me
no peace of mind... .”

The abandonment of grief that Madame de Sévigné felt for
the absence of her daughter has probably been endured by
thousands of mothers at bitter separations, but which of them
has ever painted her grief in such living, convincing words?
206 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“] thought my very heart and soul had been torn from me,”
“every thought brought death with it.” Can anyone who has
endured like partings fail to recognise the wonderful word-
painting of a passion which is generally too overwhelming,
too numbing to be articulate? There is perhaps nothing
more astonishing in Madame de Sévigné’s charming letters
than this extraordinary faculty of giving definite and clear
expression to the most fleeting thoughts, the most ephemeral
and vague impressions, common enough to most people, but which
rarely take form either in speech or in writing.

A few days after this the Marquise received the first letter
from her daughter, and she is touched and delighted at her
expressions of love. “I am in tears while I read them,” she
says, “ my heart feels as if it would be torn in two. You love me,
my dear child, you love me; and you tell me so in a way that
makes my tears flow in torrents. ... You think of me then,
you speak of me, you like better to write- your sentiments to
me than to talk of them. In whatever way they come they are
received with a tenderness and emotion known only to those
who love as I do. You make me feel the greatest tenderness
for you that it is possible to experience ; but if you think of me,
my poor darling, be assured that I am continually thinking of
you; it is what devotees call an habitual thought; it is what
we ought to have for God if we did our duty. Nothing is
capable of diverting me from it; I see your carriage con-
tinually driving on, never coming nearer to me; I am always
on the highroads, and sometimes I fear that the carriage
will be overturned. The violent rains we have had these last
three days have reduced me to despair; the very thought of
the Rhone gives me horrible fears, . . . I have a mass said for
you every day, and this is no superstitious devotion. . . .”

The Comtesse de Grignan has so often been called cold, and
unworthy of her mother’s great love, that it isa distinct pleasure
to trace in Madame de Sévigné’s letters the growth of the
daughter’s love in response to the mother’s passionate outpourings
of tenderness. We get a glimpse in the above extract of the
more reserved, colder nature of the young Comtesse, who found
it impossible to express her affection for her mother in phrases
when she was with her, but who, as soon as she had been
 

THE COMTESSE DE GRIGNAN
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 207

separated from her a single day, could send warm, loving words
that were so sweet and affecting to the elder woman. As
a young girl Mademoiselle de Sévigné had, without doubt, been
wrapped in a youthful armour of pride and egotism—but are
not most girls Undines more or less till love and sorrow have
awakened their better selves ?—she had, in vain girlish fashion,
given much attention to her beauty; for beauty is not usually
unconscious, though poets would sometimes have us think so;
and, surrounded by adulation and constant flattery, even from
her mother, it is scarcely surprising that she appreciated her
charms at their due value. But when the Marquise, many
years later, reminded her how careful she had been of it, she
added at the same time, “who would have thought then that
you would have grown into such a sensible and superior
woman!” An addition that should not be overlooked in the
estimate of Madame de Grignan’s character.

The Comtesse was probably not far from the truth when
she accused her mother of being a curtain that concealed her.
“T will not have you say that I was a curtain that concealed
you,” writes Madame de Sévigné in reply, “so much the worse
if I did hide you; you appear still more amiable now the curtain
is drawn aside; you require to be discovered to appear in your
true perfection; this is what we have said of you a thousand times.”

It is quite conceivable that the brilliant social gifts of the
Marquise de Sévigné did eclipse those of her daughter, and had
the double effect of making her appear proud and almost
disagreeable in comparison. The Marquise delighted in being
amiable and gracious to everyone, from her friends at Court
to the gardeners and workmen on her estate; she had the
charming instinct of wishing to please, which is one of the most
valuable birth-gifts that the fairies can bring to a baby’s cradle ;
“she loved to be loved,” said her malicious but astute cousin
Bussy; she had, moreover, an exquisite talent for expression,
not only in writing, but in speech and action. “The simplest
compliments of politeness from you seem like protestations of
friendship, and all who leave your presence remain persuaded
of your esteem and goodwill, without being able to explain
to themselves what evidence you have given to them of either.”
That delicate little piece of analysis by Madame de la Fayette
208 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

tells us so much of Madame de Sévigné’s radiant personal
charm, and, in a manner, explains much of her social success,
but not all; for we who see her life whole, as it were, and know
of her loving, generous heart, her fine and penetrating intellect,
her sane common-sense and practical wisdom, her spotless
integrity, her constant aspirations towards the truly spiritual
life, her Christian goodwill to all the world—save those one
or two people who had wronged her beloved daughter !—we
know that Nature is not prodigal of such women, and that not
for centuries, perhaps never again, will she reproduce that subtle
fusion of heart and mind, of body, soul and spirit, of wondrous
gifts and graces, known as Madame de Sévigné. What wonder
that her daughter, who was her precise opposite, her complement,
in whose qualities of heart and mind she found the most
complete satisfaction, did not shine beside this radiant mother!
In place of Madame de Sévigné’s magnificent health, and con-
sequent energy, the Comtesse had been an ailing and delicate
child, difficult to rear, and often languid and indolent. Her
loving mother, following with the eyes of affection all her duties
and pleasures in her new character of Madame la Gouvernante
de Provence, wonders how she manages to indulge this indolence,
and gives us a passing glimpse into her habits.

“But what becomes of your indolence amid all this stir and
bustle? It suffers, it retires into some little room, it is almost
dead with apprehension of losing its place, it waits for some
leisure moment in which you may remember it, to give you a
word in passing. ‘Alas!’ it says, ‘but you have forgotten me,
Remember that I am your oldest friend, the one who has never
abandoned you; the faithful companion of your most happy
days, that which consoled you for all pleasures, and who
sometimes have made you hate them. It was I who prevented
you from dying of exmuz when you were in Brittany. . . . Some-
times, indeed, your mother would interrupt our joys, but I knew
I should have you again; besides, too, she respected me. But
now I do not know where I am, the dignity and importance of
your husband will be the death of me if you do not take care
of me.’ I think I hear you say a little friendly word to it in
passing, you give it some hope of possessing you at Grignan,
but you go very quickly and have not the leisure to say more,
A SERIOUS BEAUTY 209

Duty and reason are round you, and do not give you a
moment’s repose.”

Where Madame de Sévigné was brilliantly expressive, her
daughter was thoughtful and reflective as a natural result of this
indolence. She was somewhat seriously intellectual too,and would
certainly have been called a das bleu had the term been invented.
As we have seen, she wasa devoted disciple of Descartes; and when
she was yet in her early twenties she began a translation of Tacitus,
and, though there is no record of its completion, it was an indication
of the solidity of her intellectual tastes. She was, too, it must be re-
membered, a woman of strict virtue in the days when, more than
at any other period of her century, vice was the royal road to pre-
ferment for a favoured few. She fulfilled with credit all the duties
of her great position, she was an excellent wife, and though she
certainly did not spoil her children with excessive fondness—
indeed, her maternal coldness is one of her greatest faults—she
brought them up well. But beside the glowing and positive
charms, mental and moral, of her mother, her virtues seem dull
and negative, and as a consequence she has scarcely received
justice from some of Madame de Sévigné’s biographers. The
Marquise herself, who had a discriminating, intuitive judgment of
character, had the highest opinion of her daughter, and she was
not so entirely blinded by her love as some would have us
believe ; indeed, a careful study of her letters brings one to the
conclusion that her love, like all great and worthy and lasting
love, was founded on a firm basis of honour and respect, and
that the Comtesse de Grignan was one of those people whom
the many find unattractive, but who for a few chosen spirits
have a compelling charm at which others can only wonder. In
the first few days of their separation, the Marquise scolds her
daughter gently for having so rarely expressed her affection.
In her grief of parting she hungers for expressions of love and
tenderness. “You must be aware,” she says, “that in the way
you write I cannot read your letters without weeping. To
understand how I love you, join to my natural inclination and
affection for you the little circumstance of realising that you
love me with equal warmth, then judge what I must feel.
Wicked girl! Why do you sometimes hide from me the
precious treasures of your heart? You fear that I shall die

14
210 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

of joy, but ought you not rather to fear that I should die of
grief when I imagine the contrary? D’Hacqueville will bear
witness to the state in which he has formerly seen me. . . .”

In the empty days of grief that followed the parting, the
Marquise spent much of her time in writing to her daughter,
and in trying to satisfy her heart-hunger by the letters she
received from Madame de Grignan, which seemed, to her
impatient love, so long in coming. “ How I should like to have
a letter from you!” she exclaims. “It is nearly half an hour
since I received the last!”

It is scarcely surprising that Madame de Sévigné’s friends
should sometimes blame her gently for the excessive devotion
she gave to her daughter. On one occasion she repeated to
Madame de Grignan the reproof that the good Arnauld
d’Andilly had given her when she dined with him at the
house of his son, the Marquis de Pomponne, on her way to
Livry.

“TI set out early yesterday morning from Paris,” she writes,
“and went to dine at Pomponne, where I found our good old
man, who awaited me; I would not on any account have gone
without bidding him good-bye. He is more pious than ever;
I am astonished at him; the nearer he approaches death the
more holy he becomes. He scolded me very seriously, and, in
the warmth of his zeal and friendship, he told me how wrong it
was not to think of changing my course of life; that I was a
pretty pagan, and that you were the idol I had set up in my
heart; that this kind of idolatry was quite as dangerous as any
other, though it might appear less criminal to me; and he con-
cluded by admonishing me seriously to consider my state. He
said all this so impressively that I had not a word to say.
After six hours of very agreeable, though very serious, con-
versation, I left him, and came here, where I found May in all
the triumph of its beauty ; the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the
linnet have already brought spring to our woods. I have
devoted part of this afternoon to writing to you in the garden,
where I am almost deafened by three or four nightingales which
have perched just over my head. This evening I shall return
to Paris, and make up my packet to send to you.”
CHAPTER XXII

Baron de Sévigné—His dissipated life in Paris—‘* He wears the chains of Ninon ”
—An actress’ love-letters—‘“ A fool in head but not in heart”—Description of a
féte at Chantilly—The death of Vatel

| 7 HEN the Baron de Sévigné, as Madame de Sévigné’s
son was called during her lifetime, returned from the
fruitless expedition into Candia, he was stationed for some time
at Nancy. His mother had bought for him the post of cornet
in a company of Gendarmes-Dauphin, which was commanded
by his cousin, the Marquis de la Trousse. In February 1671 he
returned to Paris, where he stayed during the spring and early
summer.

It is at this time that we get the first real introduction to the
young Baron; we see his disposition, his tastes, his habits, all
faithfully and unconsciously painted for us by his mother’s pen
as she writes those intimate letters to her daughter. They are
almost too intimate for other eyes to see; one sometimes feels
a sensation of eavesdropping as one reads what Madame de
Sévigné would assuredly never have written to anyone else
about the follies and indiscretions of her son, whom she loved
with true maternal tenderness, though the first place in her
heart, as they all recognised, was held by his sister. Indeed,
these letters, read in full, give a hint of an explanation at least
of the preference the Marquise always showed for her daughter.
“We think,” once said the Marquise de la Fayette, meaning the
Duc de la Rochefoucauld and herself, “that your son is not
made of the wood by which strong passions are kindled;
nothing would give him greater pleasure than to die for a love
he did not feel.” And he was no more able to rouse a strong
passion than to feel it.

His first letter of which there is any record is to his sister,

and reveals at once something of his light, pleasure-loving
aii
212 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

nature, besides introducing us to some of the company among
whom he spent his days.

“JT take the opportunity,” he writes to his sister, “in the
interval of two repetitions, to let you know that I have just come
from a most delightful concert given by the two Camuses and
Ytier. You know that music generally has the effect of soften-
ing the soul, but though I have no need for that in your case,
yet it has recalled a thousand little circumstances that one
would have thought our long separation might have sent into
oblivion. But do you know what company I have been in?
There were Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, Madame de la Sabliére,
Madame de Salins, Mademoiselle de Fiennes, Madame de
Montsoreau, and they were all at Mademoiselle de Raymond’s
house. After this if you do not think me a fine fellow you will
be to blame; for you have not the same reason as they have for
thinking otherwise, since from where you are you cannot see my
black wig, which makes me look frightful; but I shall have
another to-morrow which will make amends for it, and give me
the air of a gallant cavalier. Adieu. I congratulate you on
having escaped the perils of the Rhone, and on the grand
reception you received in your kingdom of Arles. I made
Monsieur de Condom [Bossuet] shudder by giving him an
account of yout adventure; he loves you always with all his
heart.”

Most of these ladies mentioned by the young Baron had
a reputation more or less damaged; and Ninon had for thirty
years been a celebrity in her own particular, disreputable way,
for her wit and beauty, her free-thought and free life. We
gather from the letter to his sister that Sévigné, then about
twenty-three, was rather proud of frequenting such company;
we also find that Ninon is now “Mademoiselle” de 1’Enclos,
and that ladies of birth seek her society.

Madame de Sévigné was at this time sorely troubled by her
son’s dissipated habits. She sadly recalls that it was Ninon
who led his father astray ;. but his mode of life was so common,
so general among young gentlemen of fashion, that she occa-
sionally makes light of his follies and laughs at them in her
letters to her daughter. A few days after this, she tells
Madame de Grignan of her brother’s infatuation with Ninon,
THE COURT OF LA GRANDE MADEMOISELLE 213

and in the same letter she reproduces a little scene in the
Luxembourg, where, it will be seen, La Grande Mademoiselle
held her miniature court with all the minute distinctions of
honour that were observed at the Louvre; and which were
accompanied, it will be noticed, by the same petty jealousies,
the same absurd eagerness to do the most trifling service for
royalty.
* Paris, March 13, 1671

“... Tenclose you a letter from M.de Condom, who sent it
to me with a very pretty note. Your brother wears the chains
of Ninon, and I fear they are no good to him. There are minds
who consider her worthless; she corrupted the morals of his
father. We must commend him to God. A Christian, or at
least one who wishes to be a Christian, cannot view these
irregularities without concern. Ah Bourdaloue! what divine
truths did you not tell us to-day on the subject of death!
Madame de la Fayette was there for the first time in her life,
and was carried away by her admiration of him. She is
delighted with your remembrance of her, and embraces you
with much affection. I have given her a beautiful copy of your
portrait, it decorates her room, where you are never forgotten.
Adieu, my amiable daughter. Should I tell you that I love
you? It would be folly to tell you that again; however, as I
am enchanted when you tell me of your affection, I will assure
you of mine in order to give you happiness if you feel about
those things as Ido. ...

“ A circumstance occurred yesterday at Mademoiselle’s which
gave me considerable pleasure. Who should come in but La
Gévres, pretty, charming, and elegant. I fancy that she ex-
pected me to offer her my place, but, my faith! I owed her
a little grudge for her conduct to me the other day, and I
paid her with interest, for I did not move. Mademoiselle was
in bed, and Madame de Gévres was obliged to place herself at
the lower end of the room, which was most annoying to her.
Something was brought to Mademoiselle to drink, and it was
necessary to present the serviette. I saw Madame de Gévres
drawing the glove from her thin hand, upon which I touched
Madame d’Arpajon, who was above me. She understood at
once, and taking off her glove she advanced a step, and, with
214 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

a charming grace, got in front of the Duchess, took the serviette,
and presented it. The Duchess was quite embarrassed and
ashamed of her part in the affair. She had mounted on the
estrade and pulled off her glove, only to be able to see a little
closer Madame d’Arpajon present the serviette. My dear
child, I am very wicked, but this has delighted me, it was so
very well done. Would anyone have thought of depriving
Madame d’Arpajon of a little honour that was naturally her
due as she was in the vwelle? ... As for Mademoiselle, she
did not dare to look up, and my own countenance was not
very straight. After this a thousand kind things were said to
me about you, and Mademoiselle commanded me to tell you
that she is very glad to hear you escaped being drowned, and
that you are in good health.

“T shall send you the two volumes of La Fontaine, even
though I make you angry by so doing. There are some
charming, very charming passages; and some that are dull.
We are never satisfied with having done well, and in trying
to do better we do worse.”

Shortly after this the Marquise wrote again to her daughter,
still distressed about her son and the influence Ninon has over
him—

“T have been greatly amused with our hurly-burly head-
dresses,” she writes ; “some of them look as if they could easily
be blown away. Ninon said that La Choiseul looked as much
like the sign-painting of spring outside an inn as one drop of
water is to another, and the simile is excellent. But how
dangerous she is, that Ninon! If you only knew how ‘she
argues about religion you would be horrified! Her zeal to
pervert the minds of young men is like that of a certain M.
de Saint-Germain whom we once met at Livry. She says
that your brother has the simplicity of a dove, and that he
resembles his mother. It is Madame de Grignan, she says,
who has all the se/ of the family, and who is not so foolish as
to be so docile. A certain person would have taken your part,
and robbed her of the esteem she has for you, but she told him
to hold his tongue, and that she knew more of the matter than
he did. What depravity! Fancy! Because she knows you are
SEVIGNE’S WILD OATS 218

handsome and witty, she must needs endow you with that other
good quality without which, according to her maxims, one could
not be perfect! I am greatly concerned because of the harm
she does my son in this matter, but do not say anything to him
about it. Madame de la Fayette and I do our best to draw him
from this dangerous entanglement.”

Besides spending much of his time with Ninon, whose daring
opinions on free-thought made her so dangerous to young men,
Sévigné was often in the company of the actress Champmeslé,
who in the preceding autumn had enchanted all play-going
Paris with her acting in the play of Bérénice. Racine, it was
said, wrote his plays for Champmeslé; and the Marquise on
another occasion bore witness to her fine acting. “She is, in
my opinion, the best performer I ever saw; as for me, though
I am supposed to have some talent for acting, 1 am not fit to
light the candles when she appears. When you come near
her she is ugly, but when she recites verse she is adorable.”
Sévigné frequently gave suppers to the poet and the actress,
while the witty Boileau, the cynic and satirist, often made a
fourth. The young Baron made no attempt to keep his excesses
from his mother’s knowledge; in fact, he not seldom made her
his confidante; laughing meanwhile at his own follies, making
her laugh, resolving sometimes to give them up, and inevitably
committing the same follies as soon as the temptation presented.
itself. Almost every letter the Marquise writes to her daughter
at this period contains some reference to her son, and to the
wild oats he was sowing so freely.

“He made no Easter, no Jubilee,” she writes sadly; “and
the only good thing I know about him is that he avoids sacri-
lege; indeed, I do my best to persuade him from it. God
directs all for the best, and I hope this journey into Lorraine
will break up all these shameful connections. ... He relates
all his follies to me; I scold him and insist on hearing no
more, and yet I still listen. He amuses me, he does all in
his power to please me, and I know he has a kind of regard
for me. He professes to be delighted with the affection you
show for me, and often laughingly accuses me of the preference
I have for you; and I confess to you, my dear child, that it is
great, even when I hide it. And I will confess yet another
216 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

thing: it is that I believe you love me also; you appear to
me to be steadfast, and I believe that your word may be relied
on ; in a word, I esteem you highly.”

While the Marquise makes her daughter the confidante of
her fears and vexations regarding her son, she paints for us his
character in all its pitiable weakness; and it is easy to under-
stand that Madame de Sévigné can place no reliance on his
word or his promises; that she cannot help drawing comparisons
between his failings, and the more solid, though not so agreeable,
qualities of her daughter. Sometimes he tells the Marquise that
he is intensely sick at heart of his own conduct, and his mother
declares frankly that he makes her sick at heart too. “He
agrees to all I say while I am talking to him, and then goes
on exactly as before.” Through all his confessions, which
must indeed have made her mother-heart ache, she throws
in “a little word of God,” which the young man receives
quite amiably, and even, by his compliance and reception of
her good counsel, deludes her into the belief that he means to
lead a more manly and Christian life.

But occasionally the Marquise had to use sharp measures
to induce her son to act honourably. He was not even sincere
in his attentions to the actress; though, because it was the
fashion, he would profess to be dying of love for her, and the
moment he left her he would turn her into ridicule. He once
gave the letters she had written to him to Ninon, and when the
Marquise heard of this, she talked to him with the horror that
her just mind felt at such dishonourable conduct, even towards
an actress and a light woman.

“When your brother told me what he had done,” she writes,
“I represented to him how base it was to treat the poor girl so
badly for merely having loved him ... that it was shameful
treason, base and unworthy of a man of quality, and that there
was a degree of honour to be observed even in things that were
dishonourable in themselves. He admitted the justice of this,
and ran to Ninon’s lodging, and partly by cunning, partly by
force, got the poor girl’s letters out of her hands, and I made
him burn them directly he came home. You see by this what
a regard I have for the name of an actress. It is a little like
the Visionary in the play. She would have acted just like this.
A FOOL NOT IN HEAD BUT IN HEART 217

My son has told all his follies to M. de la Rochefoucauld, who
loves originals. He approved of what I said to him the other
day, that my son was not a fool in head but a fool in heart ;
his sentiments are all true and all false; all cold and all warm ;
all deceitful and all sincere ; in short, it is his heart that is so
foolish. We laughed a good deal at all this; my son with the
rest, for he is very good company and always agrees with what
the others say. We are on very good terms. I am his con-
fidante, and I keep this disagreeable office which brings me
very disagreeable confessions, merely to have the opportunity
of telling him freely what I think of his conduct. He listens to
me as well as he can, and begs me to give him advice, which I
do as a friend. He wishes to go with me to Brittany for five or
six weeks, and if there is no camp in Lorraine I shall take
him.”

Madame de Sévigné hoped that by taking her son to
Brittany she “would restore him body and soul,” and in the
meantime she and the Abbé de la Mousse prevailed on him
to go to confession as had been his habit. What a picture we
get in these letters of the anxious, tender mother-heart of the
Marquise! She listens to her son’s sorry confidences with a
deep sadness underlying all the lightness, thinking, perchance,
that he may have inherited his taste for vicious companions
from his father; and to the daughter, whom she loves with an
overwhelming, unquiet affection, she gives advice with a gentle
unobtrusiveness on those points where it is most necessary.
She begs her to be careful how she treats the ladies of Provence,
to be sure to give each her due in the matter of precedence
and the little attentions that befit their rank; she reminds her
frequently of the people she ought to mention in her letters to
Paris; while,on her own part, she remembers her duty as a
grandmother, and sends to Provence frequent details of the little
Blanche d’Adhémar, whom the young mother naturally wishes to
hear about. She tells her daughter that she has procured such
a nurse for the child as has not been known since the days of
Francis the First, that she pays her 250 francs a year, with food
and clothing—the last “quite modest.” She describes how the
baby is brought in all her finery to do the honours of her room,
and she begs the baby’s mother to send a pleasant message to
218 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“little Pecquet,” the physician who was so faithfully attached to
M. Foucquet, and who was now attending the child with much
care.

Madame de Sévigné was heedful of her servants’ interests as
well as of those of her children. In her household was a man
named Hébert, a good, reliable man, who evidently deserved a
better situation than she was able to give him. She mentioned
him to Gourville, that Gourville who had been a servant of the
Duc de la Rochefoucauld, till the turmoils and intrigues of
the Fronde revealed him as a man of infinite resource, judg-
ment, cunning, and calm prudence; who. was so clear-sighted
that he could see straight to an end, which would probably have
to be gained by the most tortuous turnings. He was one of
the very few who had risen in the upheaval of the Fronde, and
he was now a man of considerable property and much quiet in-
fluence, who gave suppers and country-house parties at his estate
Saint-Maur, and was on terms of equality with the great world.

A few weeks after, when Madame de Sévigné had forgotten
her request, Gourville told her that he had obtained a place for
Hébert at Chantilly, to look after the linen in the house of the
Prince de Condé. But he kept this place only a very short time,
because of the death of the maitre d’hétel who had engaged
him, which happened at Chantilly, and of which the Marquise
gives a most realistic account.

It was the fashion at this time to give magnificent enter-
tainments to the King; and the Prince de Condé, who in the
Fronde had resisted his Majesty with so much determination,
was now most anxious to prove his loyalty by giving a grand
féte to the King at Chantilly. The Marquise, who knew that
her daughter, in the depths of Provence, liked to hear all that
was going on at Court, sends her a detailed description of the
brilliant affair,

“* Friday evening, April 24, 1671
‘*AT M. DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD’S HOUSE

“Here then I make up my packet. I had intended to tell
you that the King arrived yesterday evening at Chantilly ; and
that he hunted a stag by moonlight. The illuminations were
wonderful; the fireworks were a little eclipsed by our friend
THE DEATH OF VATEL 219

the moon, it is true, but the evening, the supper, and the enter-
tainment, all went off admirably. . . . But what do you think I
learned when I came here? I am not yet recovered, and hardly
know what I write. Vatel, the great Vatel, late mattre d’hétel
to M. Foucquet, and now acting in that capacity to M. le
Prince, that man of such distinguished capability above all
others, whose abilities were equal to governing a State; this man
whom I knew so well, finding that the fish did not come, ran
himself through with a sword. .. .”

On Sunday the Marquise, having learned more details, con-
tinues the story—

“T wrote to you last Friday that he had stabbed himself,
and here are the particulars of the affair. The King arrived
there on Thursday evening, and the hunt, the illuminations, the
moonlight, the promenade, the banquet in a place strewn with
jonquils, were all that could be desired. Supper was served, but
there were some tables at which there was no roast meat,
because Vatel had had to provide several dinners that had not
been expected. This greatly troubled Vatel, who was heard to
say several times, ‘I have lost my honour ; I cannot endure this
disgrace!’

“« My head is quite bewildered, he said to Gourville; ‘I have
not slept for twelve nights; I wish you would help me to give
orders.’

“ Gourville did all he could to assist and console him, but the
failure of the roast meat—which, however, did not happen at the
King’s table, but at some of the other twenty-five—was always
in his mind. Gourville mentioned it to the Prince, who went to
Vatel’s room, and said to him—

“¢ Everything is admirably managed, Vatel; nothing could
be better than the King’s supper.’

“Your goodness overwhelms me, Monseigneur,’ replied
Vatel, ‘but I know there was no roast meat at two tables.’

“Not at all,’ said the Prince; ‘do not distress yourself, and
all will be well...

“ At four o’clock the next morning, Vatel went round and
found everyone asleep. He met one of the under-purveyors, who
had just brought in a load of fish,
220 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“¢Ts this all?’ asked Vatel. ‘Yes, sir,’ said the man, who did
not know that Vatel had ordered fish from all the seaports
round.

“He waited for some time, but the other purveyors did not
come; his head grew distracted, he believed there was no more
fish to be had. He then went to Gourville and exclaimed—

“«Sir, I cannot outlive this disgrace; I shall lose my honour
and reputation’; but Gourville only laughed at him.

“Vatel, however, went to his room, and, placing the hilt of his
sword against the door, after two ineffectual attempts, succeeded
the third time in forcing the sword through his heart, and he
fell dead.

“ At that instant the purveyors arrived with the fish, and search
was made for Vatel to distribute it. They went to his room;
they knocked, and, receiving no answer, they broke open the door,
and discovered him lying in a pool of blood. . . .”

Poor |Vatel! Some praised, some blamed his courage ; the
Prince de Condé said to the King that he had acted from a high
sense of honourable pride; while the King declared that he had
delayed coming to Chantilly for five years entirely because of
the expense and embarrassment it would cause; and that two
tables would have been sufficient ; but, as the Marquise remarks,
“it was too late for poor Vatel!”
CHAPTER XXIII

The Marquise and her household go to Brittany for the ded/e sazson—Her cavalcade
of carriages, pack-horses, and postilions—The tenantry assemble on the wrong day to
welcome the young heir—Dancing Bohemians—Sévigné leaves for the camp in
Lorraine

“ T FANCY you will like to knowof what my travelling equipage

consists, so that you may see me pass by as I have seen M.
Busche. I shall have two coaches, seven carriage-horses, a pack-
horse for my bed, and three or four men on horseback. I shall
be in my own carriage, drawn by my two beautiful horses ; and
the Abbé will sometimes be with me. In the other, which will
have four horses and a postilion, will be my son, the Abbé de la
Mousse, and Héléne. Sometimes the Abbé will take a second
place, and make room for a certain breviary of Corneille’s which
both Sévigné and I are longing to repeat.”

Just five days later, after having had a friendly farewell supper
given in her honour by her cousin Emmanuel de Coulanges, she
writes to Madame de Grignan on May 18, 1671: “Just going
to set out. At last, my dear child, I am ready to step into my
carriage. There! I amin. Adieu.”

Thanks to the Marquise’s desire that her daughter should
know exactly how she travelled to Brittany, we also, more than
two hundred years after, are able to picture the stately procession
of carriages, and fine horses, and postilions in livery, that
accompanied this charming chételaine with her friends and
dependants, as they rattled along the rough roads to spend the
belle saison at her beautiful estate Les Rochers in Brittany. It
is a long journey from Paris for one day now, even by a fast train,
and in those leisurely, spacious, far-away days—before the wildest
imagination had dreamed of the trains and motor-cars that were
to be evolved from the keen brains of posterity—it meant con-
stant, wearisome travel for more than a week; and on this
222 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

particular journey we find that they did not reach Les Rochers
till May 27, but they had stayed for a day at Malicorne,
where M. de Lavardin, the son of one of her intimate friends in
Paris, had a beautiful estate. On the way she lost one of her
fine horses from the heat, and she herself declares that she
needed all the water Malicorne could supply to refresh her after
the dreadful heat they had endured while travelling. They tried
to forget the monotony of travelling by reading Corneille and
Nicole’s Essazs; but it was a long, fatiguing journey, and the
Marquise says that if people always kept in the same mind that
they found themselves at the end of a journey, they would never
travel again. A vexatious little mistake, too, occurred at Les
Rochers. The tenantry had all been assembled by Vaillant,
the land-steward, to give a welcome to the young heir, who had
not been there for some years—but, as usual, the Marquise tells
the story so well that paraphrase would spoil it.

“The people here intended to give a triumphal reception to
myson. Vaillant had called out more than fifteen hundred men
under arms, all well dressed, with new ribbons at their necks,
and they awaited us in good order about a league from Les
Rochers. But what do you think happened? Monsieur the
Abbé had written to say that we should arrive on Tuesday, and
then forgot to mention it to us. Accordingly the poor people
were waiting all Tuesday till ten o'clock at night, when they
returned to their homes very disappointed ; and the next day,
which was Wednesday, we came in quite peaceably, without
dreaming that a little army had been brought out to meet us.
We were greatly vexed at this mistake, but there was no help
for it.”

Perhaps Madame de Sévigné is never more charming than
when we see her, through the medium of her letters, in the
gracious and soothing solitude of her country home. She had
not stayed there for five or six years, and we see how, step by
step, she renews her acquaintance with all the old, delightful,
familiar haunts and people. At first she is saddened by the sight
of her daughter’s rooms, by her books, her little ornaments, the
trifles which she had prized as a young girl. “Can I see these
walks, can I look at these ornaments, this little study, these
books, these rooms, and not die with grief?” But she does not
ANVLLING NI SWOH S,ANDIAAS AG aNVaVIN
SY@HOOU Sut

 

iB

Pat aL

 
THE MARQUISE AT LES ROCHERS 223

dwell too long on these sad recollections. We see her talking
to Pilois, her good, sensible gardener, whom she loves to help
when he is planting trees, and laying out fresh walks in her park
and garden. She is as eager about her grounds as the most
enthusiastic “garden-wife” of to-day, but there is something of her
own grand and stately times in the way she plants magnificent
allées and labyrinths, and waits patiently for the growth of her
young trees. She tells her daughter, too, of the mottoes that are
hung about; one is Vago di fama, All for fame; another Bella
cosa far niente, How sweet to do nothing! for just then mottoes
were the “high mode”; like epigrams and maxims, they were in
the air, and most of her young and intelligent visitors were
looking out for mottoes to adopt.

The two abbés and her son were pleasant company for the
Marquise in the long, bright summer days. The Bien-Bon was
well occupied with overseeing the building of the chapel, and
as the Marquise watches the men running about the scaffoldings,
she thinks how wise are the ways of Providence, in arranging
that some men are willing to risk their lives in doing things for
a few shillings which others would not do for a thousand pounds.
The abbés and her son are always seeking the Marquise, and if
at any time she is called away they think it strange that she
should prefer talking business with a farmer to hearing a fable
by La Fontaine. While her son reads, she works an altar-cloth ;
but whenever she is alone, she puts her sewing aside, and reads
or writes, or goes and talks business with the Abbé in his study.
Mademoiselle du Plessis comes to see her much oftener than
she is welcome, but she professes to be so devoted to the lady
of Les Rochers that she is tolerated, and laughed at unmercifully
by Charles de Sévigné. Of the latter the Marquise writes to
her daughter—

“Your brother is a treasure of folly who does very well here.
We have now and then a little serious conversation which
might be of advantage to him, but his mind is rather too much
like whipped cream; if it were not for this he would be amiable
enough.”

Another day she tells her daughter that her uncle the Abbé
de Coulanges has made his will in her favour, and that even
without counting on this she is worth about five hundred and
224 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

thirty thousand francs! These were good and prosperous years
for the Marquise; her tenants were able to pay their rents,
Brittany was flourishing, and there was not even a hint of those
lean black days that were to come upon the province all too
soon.

But, notwithstanding the flourishing state of her affairs, the
Marquise was not at all disposed to stay long at Les Rochers,
for she looked with no little apprehension towards the coming
of the Brittany States; at which she would be expected to
dispense an almost boundless hospitality.

“TI do not know what the States intend doing,” she tells her
daughter, “ but I think I shall run away for fear of being ruined.
It is a pretty thing to put myself to the expense of nearly a
thousand crowns in dinners and suppers, and all for the honour
of keeping a summer-house for M. and Madame de Chaulnes,
M. de Rohan, M. de Lavardin, and half Brittany, who, without
knowing anything of me, will honour me with their company
for the sake of being in the fashion.”

The following extract from a letter written to her daughter
gives a good idea of how her days were spent in the cultured
leisure and quiet of a country-house. We see her reading in
Italian, listening with a kind of protest to the romantic novels
of Calprenéde, which her son insists on reading to her; talking
to visitors, walking in her woods, and allowing a troop of
Bohemians—gypsies we call them—to come and amuse the
quality by their dancing. But everything recalls her daughter.
Even among that roving band of vagrants she finds a girl who,
to her mother-eyes, looks something like her daughter, the
“little queen of Provence.”

**Les RocHers, June 28, 1671

“We read Tasso with pleasure, and I am fairly proficient in
the language, thanks to the excellent masters I have had. My
son makes La Mousse read Ciéopatre, and I listen to him
whether I will or not,and am amused. My son is going to
Lorraine; we shall be very dull in his absence. You know
how it vexes me to see the breaking up of an agreeable party,
and how delighted I am when I see a carriage driving off with
people who have wearied me to death all day; upon which we
A GYPSY DANCER 225

might make the observation that bad company is more desirable
than good. I recollect all the odd things we used to say when
you were here, and all you said yourself, and all you did; the
thought of you never leaves me; and then, again, I suddenly
remember where you are, my imagination represents to me an
immense space and a great distance; suddenly your castle
bounds the prospect, and I am displeased at the walls that
enclose your mall. Ours is surprisingly beautiful, and the
young nursery is delightful. I take pleasure in rearing their
little heads to the clouds; and frequently, without considering
consequences or my own interests, cut down the tall trees
because their shade is bad for my young ones. My son looks
on at all these proceedings, but I do not allow him to interfere.
Pilois continues to be a great favourite with me, and I prefer
his conversation to that of many who have the title of chevalier
in the Parlement of Rennes. I have grown rather more uncere-
monious than you, for the other day I let a carriageful of the
Fouesnel family go home through a tremendous rain for want
of a little pressing them with a good grace to stay; but I could
not get the compliment to pass my lips! ... I have just been
writing to Vivonne about a captain of a troop of gypsies, whose
confinement I have begged him to make as easy as possible,
without detriment to the King’s service. You must know that
among the band of Bohemians I mentioned to you the other day,
was a young girl who danced extremely well, and who put me very
much in mind of you. I was pleased with her, and she begged
me to write to Provence in favour of her grandfather. ‘Where is
he?’ I asked. ‘He is at Marseilles,’ said she, with as much
composure and unconcern as if she had said ‘He is at Vincennes,’
He was a man of singular merit, it appears, in his way ; in short,
I promised to write about him. I immediately thought of
Vivonne, and I send you the letter I have written to him. If
you are not on such terms with him as will allow me to jest,
you may burn it; but if you are friendly with his corpulency,
and my letter will save you the trouble of writing one, seal it
and send it to him. I could not refuse this request to the poor
girl, and to the best-danced minuet that I have seen since the
days of Mademoiselle de Sévigné. She had just your air; with
good teeth and fine eyes, and was about your height.”

15
226 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Madame de Grignan had quite recently written to her mother
about Marseilles, where she had been received with a salute
of cannon, and had been given great honours as the Vice-
Governor’s wife. A compliment had been paid to Madame de
Sévigné, too, by giving her name as the watchword for one
night. Madame de Grignan had written to her mother a
most interesting account of the place; and with an intelligent
observation that proved her to be kin, at least in some things, to
her brilliant mother, she had described so movingly the terrible
state of the galley-slaves, that Madame de Sévigné declared
she felt great curiosity to come and see “this new hell” for
herself. “Alas, that there should be men groaning night and
day under the weight of their chains!” she exclaims. One of
the dreadful sights that might have been witnessed in Old Paris,
was the gangs of galley-slaves being driven in chains through
the streets on their way to Marseilles. On one such occasion,
the Marquise told her daughter that she had mingled with the
crowd that surrounded them, and had spoken to one or two of
the convicts, merely because they were going to breathe the air of
Provence where her daughter lived. “But why not have come
with them?” her daughter laughingly replies in answer.

Sometimes the Marquise and her son paid visits to their
country neighbours, but not more frequently than politeness
exacted, for she loved better than all else to be at Les Rochers,
One day she went to return the visit to the Fouesnel family,
and she tells her daughter, “ Fouesnel is a delightful place; my
son and I went there yesterday in a coach and six; nothing
can be more enchanting; we seemed to fly. We made some
little songs as we went along, which I send you.” But by July
her son is obliged to go to camp in Lorraine, and the Marquise
writes to her daughter of the leave-taking, and of her hopes,and
fears on his account.

“ My son set out yesterday, greatly concerned at parting with
us. I tried to inspire him with every good, just, and noble
sentiment that I could remember, and to confirm all the good
qualities I had observed in him. He received my advice with
all the sweetness imaginable, and with every mark of approba-
tion ; but you know the weakness of human nature. I leave him,
therefore, in the hands of Providence, reserving to myself the
SEVIGNE GOES TO CAMP 227

comfort of having nothing with which to reproach myself on his
account. He has such a fund of wit and humour that we shall
miss him extremely. We are going to begin a moral treatise of
Nicole’s. If I were at Paris I. would send it to you; I am sure
you would admire it. We continue to read Tasso with pleasure.
I am almost afraid to tell you that I have returned to Clopatre,
and, by good fortune, the short memory I have makes it still
pleasing to me; I have a bad taste, you will say, but I cannot
affect a prudery which is not natural to me. As I am not yet
arrived at that time of life which forbids the reading of such
works, I allow myself to be amused with them under the
pretence that my son brought me into it. He used to read us
some chapters of Rabelais, too, which were enough to make us
die with laughing. In return, he seemed to take a good deal of
pleasure in talking with me; and if he is to be believed, he will
remember what I said to him. I know him well, and can often
discern good sentiments through all the levity of his conversa-
tion. If he is dismissed this autumn we shall have him again.”

The Marquise goes on to confide in her daughter concerning
a subject which is giving her much thought for the moment.
The States of Brittany were this year to be held at Vitré, only
four miles away from Les Rochers, and the question that
torments her is, shall she stay, or flee from Les Rochers and
a heavy expense. All the gentlemen of Brittany, with their
womenfolk, came to Vitré on these occasions for a month, and
there was a bewildering succession of balls, comedies, and ban-
quets in prospect. Every person in the town and neighbourhood
was expected to show boundless hospitality ; indeed, some were
occasionally almost ruined by it. The Marquise, with a little
of the hauteur of the great lady who frequents the best society
in Paris, cannot tolerate the want of culture in provincial people,
even in those of good birth and position. She frequently laughs
at their pretences, their absurd mistakes when copying Parisian
phrases or aping Parisian airs; and, with the true sentiment of
the great lady in all ages, she likes to be a chdtelaine in her
country solitude, surrounded by her own dependants, or amongst
the crowd at Court, who are all supposed, at least, to be well-
bred, with a knowledge of the manners and usages of the polite
world.
228 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“TI am very much perplexed about the States,” she writes,
“My first intention was to avoid them to save myself the
expense. But you must know that while M. de Chaulnes is
making the circuit of the province, his wife intends to remain at
Vitré, where she is expected in ten or twelve days, which will
be a fortnight before M. de Chaulnes arrives, and she has begged
me not to set out till she has seen me. There is no getting out
of this without breaking with them at once. I might, indeed, go
to Vitré to avoid the annoyance of having them here, but I
cannot bear the thought of passing a whole month in such
noise and confusion. When I am not in Paris I should prefer
to be wholly in the country.”

Finally, after much consideration, the Marquise resolved to
stay at Les Rochers for the States, and one wonders whether
she wore the dress that she told her daughter she had bought
to wear in Brittany. The Marquise is in one of her most
whimsical and charming moods when she writes of this Paris
purchase—

“T have bought some stuff like your last petticoat to make
a morning-gown, and it is very beautiful. There is a shade of
green in it, but violet predominates; in short, I could not resist
the purchase. They would have had me line it with flame-
colour, but this appeared to me inconsistent; for while the
outside is expressive of frailty the inside would have signified
impenitence, even obduracy, so I fixed on a white taffety. I
have put myself to very little expense, as I hate Brittany, and
shall be most economical till I come to Provence, that I may
then support the position and dignity of the middle-aged
wonder that you have represented me to be.”
CHAPTER XXIV

The States of Brittany—A seventeenth-century town—The Duchesse de Chaulnes
visits the Marquise at Les Rochers—A humorous criminal—A grand banquet at the
Castle of Vitré—A doorway heightened to admit pyramids of fruit—Guests at Les
Rochers—A collation in the garden

iy Te will be July as long as it pleases God, and I believe the

month of August will be longer still, for it will be the
time of the Assembly of the States ; and with all respect to the
company, it will be a continual slavery to me to be obliged to
join them at Vitré, or to live in constant fear of their coming
here. It is embarrassing, as Madame de la Fayette says, and my
mind is not in tune for it; but I must make the best of it and
pass my time like the others.”

So wrote Madame de Sévigné to her daughter at the end of
July, with no very bright anticipations concerning the strenuous
gaieties of the States, in which she would be forced to join without
much inclination for such amusements. She was even in the
beginning a little annoyed at being disturbed in her loved
solitude at Les Rochers, and with a touch of the haughty
exclusiveness of the grande dame she remarks to her daughter,
“When I leave Paris and my friends, my poor merit, small as it
is, has not yet reduced me to the necessity of hiding myself in a
country town like a company of strolling players.”

Fortunately, however, for us who read and enjoy her letters,
she did go to the States, and they came to her; and she has left
such a vivid and detailed account of what happened, that, carried
along by her magic pen, we are transported back to the seven-
teenth century, among that gay provincial company of Bretons
who danced, and drank, and flirted, and gambled day after day
with primitive endurance, almost without cessation, for four or

five weeks. ;
The States were held every two years, sometimes at Nantes,
229
230 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

sometimes at Dinan, sometimes at Vitré; and, for some reason,
it was sixteen years since they had been held at the latter town,
Though they were not a political power, and though they were
not able to do much more than decide on enormous grants of
money being made to the King, all good Bretons had a pride in
this tremendous function as the remains of their former inde-
pendence ; it was the one reminder of their power as a separate
kingdom from France, lost on the day that their good Duchess
Anne of Brittany was united to Charles vi of France. The
Assizes of the States of Brittany was a grand and imposing
function. It was composed of all the Commissioners of the King;
that is to say, the Governor, who at this time was the Duc de
Chaulnes, the Lieutenant-General, the First President of Parle-
ment, the Intendant, the Advocates-General, the Grand Master
of the Waters and Forests, and the Receivers-General of
Finance, in all about twenty-five people. Then came the great
Church dignitaries to the number of twenty-two; those of the
order of the nobility, about one hundred and seventy-four, with
the Duc de Rohan at their head; and, finally, about seventy
deputies of the people.

But these were only the nucleus of the enormous crowd.
The Marquise, who was accustomed to big crushes in Paris,
remarked to her daughter, “I thought all the stones in Vitré
were metamorphosed into gentlemen; I never before saw such
crowds assembled together.” As many gentlemen of condition
were lodged in the Castle as it was capable of holding ; and guests,
in those days, were not exacting. Some people on such
occasions did not object to sleeping in big, almost communal,
beds, which would accommodate what sounds to modern ears
like a fabulous number of people; then every little hole and
corner was utilised as a sleeping-room ; everyone brought their
own toilet necessaries, and numbers their own beds; and as for
valets and men-servants of every description, they were simply
dealt with ex masse,and made themselves as comfortable as
circumstances permitted, passing the short summer nights in
barns or stables, or on the kitchen floor of an inn, absolutely
indifferent as to where they slept off the fumes of the wine they
passed their days in drinking.

Lodgings, it need hardly be said, were at a premium in the
A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY TOWN 231

town of Vitré; the visit of the States was a veritable mine of
gold for the townspeople. By good, and most uncommon,
fortune, a great part of Vitré still remains almost exactly as it
was in the days when Madame de Sévigné drove over in 1671
to the grand entertainments given at the Castle. The chateau
itself has been turned into a prison, but the Tour de Saint
Laurent still remains, with its drawbridge and portcullis, by
which one enters ; its suites of rooms all beautifully polished and
shining, and filled with treasures which are now curios, but which
then formed part of the daily furniture of the Castle; fine brass
fire-dogs, steel ratchets hanging in the chimney, damascened like
swords in beautiful arabesque designs; quaint Breton pottery
and magnificent tapestries ; laces, miniatures, and enamels; with
burnished arms and armour gleaming from every corner.

Descending from the Castle plain one enters the old Rue
Poterie, and finds oneself at once in the heart of the seventeenth
century. Out of those crazy old houses with the quaint roofs,
and carved porches of brown timber, one would scarcely be
surprised to see a Breton gentleman step forth “laced to the
very eyes” in his wonderful native costume, Through the
windows one gets a glimpse of Rembrandtesque interiors,
beautiful warm brown shadows from which gleam white pillows
belonging to the immense wooden family bed; or glints of
copper vessels hanging above the wide hearth, or the lace and
linen of Madame’s cap as she is busied about her household
tasks.

Nowhere in France is there a town with so many ancient
houses, for its size, as Vitré. You pass an enormous outside
wooden staircase, which winds round in easy flights like the
marble staircases at Versailles; here there is a loggia with a
miniature balustrade; a little farther on a big porch with a room
above, the whole supported on weather-worn, roughly carvéd
wooden pillars slowly crumbling to dust. The very people, too,
have an antiquated air, as they sit outside their doors on the
narrow pavement, and knit and gossip industriously, as if they,
too, belonged in spirit to the same period as their dwellings.

Madame de Sévigné has peopled these old streets, and the
Castle plain, with a whole company of her Breton friends and
neighbours. There is first, as is fitting, the President of the
232 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

States, the Duc de Chaulnes, and Madame la Duchesse his wife,
two charming people, whom Madame de Sévigné had known
only slightly in Paris, but who from this time onward were
among her most intimate and admiring friends. Mademoiselle
de Murinais, who was staying with them, a tall beauty of twenty-
two, speaking Italian like a native, who had just returned from
Italy with the de Chaulnes. There was the Marquis de Lavardin
too, the son of one of Madame de Sévigné’s Parisian friends; he
also was a great official at this gathering, next, in fact, to the
Governor. Then there was M. d’Harouys, a generous and hospit-
able man, the treasurer to the Estates; he was a connection of
her cousin, Emmanuel de Coulanges, and a valued friend of the
Marquise. The Duchesse de Rohan was also there, the proud and
haughty dame who, nearly twenty years before, had behaved with
such arrogance in the affair between her husband and Tonquedec
in the vuelle of the Marquise. That same Tonquedec, as a
patriotic Breton, was at the States; and it is pleasant to find that
Madame de Sévigné, instead of the utter weariness she expected
to endure while the States lasted, found herself so féted and
welcomed whenever she appeared, that she grew to think even
some of the Breton country gentlemen quite tolerable people,
though they had never been to Court, or even to Paris. The
most amusing person at the States, to the Marquise, was
Pomenars, who had frequently to appear before the courts for
crimes—actual crimes. The Comte de Créance was prosecuting
him for the abduction of his sister, and sincerely hoped to see
him hanged; he was tried for coining false money, and, it is
said, he paid the costs and fees in the spurious coin of his own
manufacture. He was altogether such a witty, absurd, and
ridiculous felon, that Madame de Sévigné can never write to her
daughter about him without laughing; and the oddest and most
inconceivable part of all is, that the Marquise and Madame de
Chaulnes, both ladies of high birth and position, could counten-
ance such an unmitigated rogue, could accept him as an equal,
and greet him as a welcome guest among the best society at the
States. But in those days people of good birth, like the King,
could do no wrong. There was at least an absolutely different
standard of conduct for people who were nobly born and for
those who were only of the bourgeoisie or peasantry. Madame
A LIGHT-HEARTED CRIMINAL 233

de Sévigné sends her daughter an account of the first visit of the
Duchesse de Chaulnes, a lady who was charming and well
educated, and on occasion somewhat unconventional.

**Les RocuHErs, July 26, 1671

“ Yesterday, as I was sitting alone in my room with a book in
my hand, I saw my door opened by a tall, good-looking woman,
who was almost choking with laughter; behind her was a man,
who was laughing even more than she was; he was followed
by a young lady with a good figure, who was laughing also;
and seeing them all in this merry humour, I laughed with them,
without knowing why, or recognising who they were. Though
I was expecting Madame de Chaulnes, who is to spend two days
with me, I could not believe that it was her ladyship. She,
however, it was ; and she had brought Pomenars, who, on arriving
at Vitré, had put it into her head to surprise me in this fashion,
The Murinette beauty was of the party, and Pomenars was in
such high spirits that he would have forced a smile from sorrow
itself. At first they played at battledore and shuttlecock ; and
Madame de Chaulnes, I find, plays it like you. Then we had a
slight repast, and afterwards we took a walk, during which we
talked of you. I told Pomenars that you were very much in-
terested in his affairs, and that you had said to me in your letters
that if he had nothing more to fear than the present affair, you
would be under no apprehension for him... . We kept up this
jest a long time. In short, I never saw anyone so mad as
Pomenars; his gaiety increases with his crimes, and if one charge
more is brought against him he will certainly die with joy.”

But late that same evening Pomenars went to Madame de
Sévigné’s room and had a little quiet conversation with her.
“ Pomenars has just left my room,” she writes; “we have been
talking over his affairs very seriously : they are questions of life
and death. The Comte de Créance is resolved to have his head
at all events, but Pomenars will not submit to this. Such is the
state of things between them. .. . He does not take a single
step which is not likely to be his last ; and every time I bid him
good-bye I do not know whether it will not be for the last time.”
"234 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

On Sunday, the 2nd of August, the Duc de Chaulnes made
an imposing entry into the town, attended in the most solemn
state by all his fellow-officials in their gorgeous robes of
office, and welcomed by, cannon, trumpeters, heralds, and
church bells, in one confusing and deafening roar. <A few
days after Madame de Sévigné writes to give an account
of what part she took in the opening of the States.

‘*Les ROCHERS, August 5, 1671

“«,., And now I will give you news of the States, as a reward
for being a Breton. M.de Chaulnes made his entry on Sunday
evening, with all the noise that Vitré could supply. On Monday
morning he sent me a letter by a gentleman, which I answered
by going to dine with him. There were two tables in the same
room, forty covers at each table; M. de Chaulnes presided at
one, and Madame at the other, which made a fair-sized dinner-
party. The good cheer was excessive; whole dishes of roast
meat were carried away untouched, and the doors were obliged
to be made higher to admit the pyramids of fruit. Our fore-
fathers had certainly no idea of these articles, for they imagined
that if a door was high enough for them to enter it was sufficient.
A pyramid was about to be taken in (one of those, for instance,
that oblige you to write notes from one end of the table to the
other; but that in this case was no inconvenience; on the
contrary, one is very well pleased at not seeing what they hide),
—this pyramid, with about twenty pieces of china on it, was so
completely overturned at the door, that the noise it made
silenced the violins, hautbois, and trumpets. After dinner
Messieurs de Locmaria and de Coétlogon danced some marvellous
passe-pied and minuets with two Breton ladies in a style that
was far beyond our best dancers at Court; they danced their
Bohemian and Bas Breton steps so lightly and precisely that
I was quite charmed. I thought of you continually, and had
so tender a recollection of your dancing that this pleasure
became a grief to me. I am sure you would have been
enchanted with Locmaria’s dancing; the violins and passe-pied
at Court are absurd in comparison; it is really extraordinary
how they make a hundred different steps and always keep such
THE STATES OF BRITTANY 235

excellent time ; I never saw any man perform this kind of dance
so well as Locmaria.

“ After this little ball was finished, we saw arriving together
in a crowd all the gentlemen who were to open the States the
next morning: Monsieur the first President, the procurators and
advocates-general of Parlement, eight bishops, Messieurs de
Molac, la Coste, and the elder Coétlogon; M. Boucherat from
Paris, fifty Bas Bretons laced and gilded up to the eyes, and
a hundred of the commons. Madame de Rohan and her son,
and M. de Lavardin, were expected that evening, at which I was
much astonished. JI did not see the latter, for I was determined
to return here to sleep after having been to the Tour de Sévigné
to see M. d’Harouys and Messieurs Fourché and Chésiéres,
who had just arrived. M.d’Harouys will write to you; he is
delighted with your attentions; he received two letters from
you at Nantes, for which I am even more obliged to you than
he is. His house is going to be the Louvre of the States; there
will be such play, such good cheer, such liberty day and night,
that everyone will be attracted to him. I had never seen the
States before ; it is a very pretty sight; I do not believe that
the States of any other province have a grander appearance
than this. This province is full of nobility, and none of them
are at Court or in camp except our little cornet, who may rejoin
them before long. I shall go soon to see Madame de Rohan;
I should quickly have a number of people here if I did not go
to see them at Vitré. There was great rejoicing to see me at
the States, as I never was there before; but I was not at the
opening ceremony, for it was too early in the morning. The
Assembly will not stay long; there is nothing to do but to ask
what are the King’s commands; noreply is made, and the affair
is finished. As for the Governor, he secures, but I do not know
how, more than forty thousand crowns. A number of other
presents, of pensions, of repairs of highways and towns,
fifteen or twenty big tables, continual play, balls without
number, comedies three times a week, and a great deal of display
and magnificence : these constitute the States. I have forgotten
three or four hundred pipes of wine which are drunk there ; but if
I forget this trifling article, others do not, I assure you, for with them
it is the first consideration. These, my dear, are what you maycall
236 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

tales to make you sleep standing, but they run to the end of your
pen when you are in Brittany, and there is nothing else to say.”

The Marquise was very well entertained when she drove
over from Les Rochers to Vitré to see the fine company that
swarmed in the town, but she was determined to keep visitors
from coming to see her at Les Rochers as long as was possible.
The Duc de Chaulnes, with the true spirit of friendship and
self-sacrifice, kept the States sitting twice a day on purpose to
keep the gentlemen from riding or driving the short four-and-a-
half miles to Les Rochers; but whenever Madame de Sévigné
appeared among them at the Castle she was received with the
utmost cordiality and enthusiasm. “I am ashamed to tell you
what honour they pay me at the States,” she writes, “it is
absolutely ridiculous.”

They tried their hardest to induce her to sleep at Vitré, but
this she resolutely refused to do; their entreaties had no weight
when she thought of the luminous green solitudes of her woods
and allées, doubly delightful in the hot August weather ; of the
tranquil calm of her own home after the noisy racket of the
“dirty little town”; of the freedom and blessed silence which
awaited her after the fatigue of talking and being amiable to
a dozen people at once.

But it was not in the friendly human nature of the Breton
gentlemen to have so charming a neighbour less than five miles
away, without contriving somehow to see her amid her beautiful
gardens and woods; and as there were no States to be held on
Sunday, even her thoughtful friend the Duc de Chaulnes, could
keep them away no longer—indeed, it was he who headed the
procession there himself. The Marquise gives a gay account
of their visit, incidently revealing on what a formidable scale
hospitality was exercised among the nobility of Brittany two
or three hundred years ago. The letter describing it to her
daughter is dated from Vitré, to which town she had been
compelled to escape.

“VITRE, Wednesday, August 12, 1671

“At last, my dear child, I am in the midst of the States,
otherwise the States would have been in the midst of Les
A GAY COMPANY AT LES ROCHERS 237

Rochers. Last Sunday, just as I had sealed my letters, I saw
four coaches-and-six drive into my court-yard, with fifty
mounted guards, several led horses, and several pages on
horseback. These were M. de Chaulnes, M. de Rohan, M. de
Lavardin, Messieurs de Coétlogon, de Locmaria, the Barons de
Guais, the Bishop of Rennes, the Bishop of Saint-Malo, the
Messieurs d’Argouges, and eight or ten more whom I did not
know. I forgot M. d’Harouys, who is not worth mentioning.
I received them all, and a great many compliments were paid
on both sides, Finally, after a walk with which they were very
well pleased, a very good and elegant repast appeared at one
end of the mall, and above all there was Burgundy as plentiful
as the water of Forges. They declared it must be the work of
enchantment. M.de Chaulnes pressed me to go to Vitré, and
I therefore arrived here on Monday night. Madame de
Chaulnes entertained me at supper, with the comedy of Tartuffe
after it, not badly played for a strolling company; and then we
had a ball, at which the fasse-pzed and minuet almost made me
weep: they brought you so vividly to my recollection that I
could scarcely resist the impulse, and was obliged to do some-
thing to divert my thoughts. They talk to me of you very
frequently here, and they do not have to wait long for an
answer; for I am generally thinking of you at the time, so that
I sometimes fancy they can see my thoughts through my
bodice.

“Yesterday I received all Brittany at my Tour de Sévigné.
I was at the play again; it was Anudvomaque, which made me
cry more than six tears; quite enough for strolling players!
In the evening we had supper, and then a ball. I wish you
could see the elegance of M. de Locmaria, and in what style he
takes off and puts on his hat, with what lightness! what
precision! Upon my word he could excel all our courtiers and
put them toshame. He has 60,000 livres a year, and has just
come from the Academy; he is all that is handsome and
agreeable, and would gladly have you for a wife. For the rest,
do not think that your health is not constantly drunk here;
the obligation, indeed, is not great, but such as it is you owe it
every day to half Brittany. They begin with me, and then
Madame de Grignan comes, of course. The civilities they show
238 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

me are so ridiculous, and the women of this country are so
foolish, that you might suppose I was the only lady of quality in
the town, though it is full of them. . . . My Abbé goes on with
his building, and cannot be persuaded to stay at Vitré; he
sometimes comes, however, and dines with us... .

“Now, thank God, you are very well instructed in all that
relates to your good country. But all this time I have had no
letter from you, and consequently nothing to answer, so I must
naturally talk to you of what I see and hear. Pomenars is a
most extraordinary creature ; there is no man to whom I more
willingly wish two heads, for he will never be able to carry his
own safely away. For my part, my daughter, I long to see the
end of the week, that I may repay all the civilities I have received
from everybody in a proper manner, and then retire to enjoy
myself at Les Rochers.”
CHAPTER XXV

The ‘* Féte de Marie” at Vitré—A drinking province—The Marquise takes refuge
at Les Rochers—An exhausted hostess—Madame de Sévigné is escorted back to Vitré
by the Governor’s guards

BY Madame de Sévigné could not escape from Vitré to

her dear Les Rochers as easily as she had hoped. The
Duc and Duchesse de Chaulnes were most unwilling to let their
charming guest depart, and they treated her with much distinc-
tion, and did everything they could think of to make her prolong
her visit. “But for this,” she says, “you can well understand
that I should hardly stay at Vitré, where I have no business.
The comedians have amused us, the dancers have diverted us,
and our walks and drives have supplied the place of Les
Rochers, But to-morrow I shall go to Les Rochers, where
I shall be enchanted to see no more fétes, and to be a little to
myself. I am dying of hunger in the midst of all their dainties,
and the other day I actually proposed to Pomenars to order
a leg of mutton to be prepared for us at midnight at the Tour
de Sévigné after leaving Madame de Chaulnes. In short,
whether it is from hunger or disgust, I long to be once more in
my mall, from whence I shall not stir for eight or ten days.
Our Abbé, la Mousse, and Marphise are in great need of my
presence; the two first, indeed, come here and dine sometimes.
Madame la Gouvernante de Provence is often talked of; for
you must know that it is by this title that M. de Chaulnes
always calls you when he drinks your health.”

Besides the ordinary business—and pleasure—of the States,
the Day of the Assumption, the grand Féte de Marie, was on the
15th of August, and one can understand that with such an
immense company of decorative people to hand—bishops, lesser
clergy, Governor, officers of all grades, and in a bewildering
variety of costumes—mous Simes de grandes dévotions, as the
240 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Marquise told her daughter. What a sight would have been
that long, gorgeous procession filing through the narrow, quaint
old streets with brown, over-lapping storeys, up the massive stone
steps and into the magnificent church of Notre Dame!

At last, however, Madame de Sévigné did manage to escape
from the pressing attentions of the Governor and his wife, and
from the overwhelming gaieties of Vitré. Her next letter is
dated from Les Rochers, and she gives a vivid picture of what
happened the day before she left, and makes a passing, but
very amusing, reference to some hanging sleeves of a Provencal
gentleman of which her daughter had given her a description,

‘Les ROcHERS, Wednesday, August 19, 1671

“. , . I have seen sleeves like those of your chevalier. Ah!
what a charming picture they make, dancing in a plate of soup
or sweeping over a salad bowl! But though they draw every-
thing with them, I question whether they would draw me; in
spite of my weakness for fashion, I have a great aversion to
slovenliness. Vitré would be an excellent place for him; I have
never seen such profusion. There is not a table at Court that
could be compared with the least of the twelve or fifteen that
are constantly kept up here; and, indeed, this is necessary, for
there are three hundred people to be provided for who have
nowhere else to eat. I left this good town on Monday, after
having dined with Madame de Chaulnes, and I gave your
compliments to her and to Mademoiselle de Murinais. . . .

“All Brittany was drunk that day. We dined apart.
Forty gentlemen dined in a lower room, each of whom drank
forty toasts; the King was the first, and then the glasses
were broken, All this was done under the pretext of extreme
joy and gratitude for the hundred thousand crowns which the
King had returned to them from the free gift the province had
made him, wishing to reward them for having so cheerfully
complied with his request. There is now, therefore, only two
millions, two hundred thousand livres to pay, instead of five
hundred thousand. The King, too, has written a letter with his
own hand, with a thousand kind wishes for his good province of
Brittany. This letter the Governor read to the assembled
A DRINKING PROVINCE 241

States (a copy of it was registered), and they shouted Vive le
Roi to the skies, and immediately fell to drinking; and drink
they did, God knows! M. de Chaulnes did not, on this grand
occasion, forget the health of la Gouvernante de Provence; and
a Breton gentleman, wishing to toast you by name, and not
remembering it correctly, got up, and said in a loud voice,
“Here’s to the health of Madame de Carignan!’ This
ridiculous mistake made MM. de’ Chaulnes and d’Harouys laugh
till the tears came. The Bretons drank it, thinking it was
all right, and for a week to come you will be Madame de
Carignan; some called you the Comtesse de Carignan, and
this was the state in which I left them.

“T have shown Pomenars what you say ofhim. He means to
write to you, and while awaiting his letter, let me assure you
that he is so bold and hardened that every day he makes the
First President, who is his enemy, leave the room. He makes
the Procureur-Général go also; but that is nothing, it is just like
Bussy over again. ... There was a pretty ball on Sunday.
We saw a girl of Lower Brittany, who, they assured us, carried
offthe honours, My faith! she was the most ridiculous creature,
who threw herself into such attitudes that we burst out laughing ;
but there were others, both men and women, who danced
exquisitely.

“Tf you ask me how I like being at Les Rochers after all this
noise, I shall tell you that I am transported with joy. I shall
stay here at least eight days in spite of all their endeavours to
get me back again. I want rest more than I can tell you; I
want to sleep, I want to eat (for I am starved at all these fétes) ;
I want the fresh air; I want silence, for I was attacked on all
sides and my lungs are almost worn out with talking. In short,
my dear, I found my Abbé, my Mousse, my dog, my mall, my
Pilois, and my masons; and all these are the only things which
will do me good in the state in which I am at present. Wheén
I begin to be tired of them I will take another trip to Vitré.
Among that immense crowd of Bretons there are some who
have a good share of wit ; there are some, even, who are worthy
of talking to me of you... .”

The Marquise, as we may see, was inexpressibly glad to be
16
242 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

back again to her tranquil retreat, which she infinitely preferred
to all the noise and pageantry of Vitré. On the 23rd of August
she says to her daughter: “I have been here a week in a
tranquillity, which has cured me of a frightful cold; I drank
nothing but water; I have talked very little, I have left off
suppers, and by these means, without having shortened my
walks, I am quite well again.”

It was scarcely surprising that several people among such a
numerous company should be ill. The late hours, the excessive
drinking, the continual excitement, and the necessarily cramped
and unwholesome accommodation, would be sufficient to account
for many disorders, One has only to glance at the narrow streets
that remain of old Vitré, to guess what the atmosphere would be
like more than two hundred years ago, when sanitation was an un-
discovered science ; when refuse of every description was thrown
from the windows into the street; when any attempt to interfere
with everyone's right to be a nuisance to his neighbour was
regarded as an unheard-of impertinence.

Madame de Sévigné was fortunate to escape with merely a
cold: Towards the conclusion of the States, she is constantly
mentioning one or another of their friends who have been taken
ill. Now it is Chésiéres, “who is completely cured by the noise
of the backgammon table at M. d’Harouys’.” Then M. de
Chaulnes, just as he was stepping into his carriage to go to
a dinner that M. d’Harouys was giving in his honour, was
suddenly taken with shivering and fainting, the unpleasant
preliminaries of an attack of fever and ague. Happily he
recovered from this; but the Bishop of Léon, a great friend
of the Marquise, had an attack of fever also, and, after lingering
for some time between life and death, late in September “set
out for a more pleasant country than this,” as the Marquise told
her daughter.

Madame de Sévigné describes very well the utter weariness
and exhaustion of Madame de Chaulnes, who, as the Governor's
wife, had-not been able to flee from the gaieties of the States for
a period of healing serenity at Les Rochers.

“Madame de Chaulnes, Mademoiselle de Murinais, Madame
Fourché, and a fine young girl from Nantes, came here last
Thursday. Madame de Chaulnes told me, as she came into
MADAME DE CHAULNES AT LES ROCHERS 243

my room, that she could no longer exist without seeing
me; that she had the weight of all Brittany upon her shoulders,
and that, in short, she would die of fatigue. She then threw
herself upon my bed; we sat round her, and in one minute she
was fast asleep from sheer fatigue, though we continued talking
all the time. At last she woke, delighted with the charming
liberty we enjoy at Les Rochers. We then took a walk,
during which she and I seated ourselves in the heart of the
wood, and while the others, were playing at mall, I made
her tell me all about Rome and how she came to marry
M. de Chaulnes, for I always love to seek for something by
way of amusement. In the midst of our talk there came on
a treacherous shower, like the one we once had at Livry,
so that we were nearly drowned. The water ran from our
clothes in streams ; it came through the trees in a moment,
and the next minute we were wet through to the skin. We
all ran as fast as we could, screaming, slipping, falling; but
at last we reached the house, and a great fire was made,
and we changed all our clothes, I providing everything; we
dried our shoes, and were ready to die with laughter all
the time. And this is how the Gouvernante of Brittany
was treated in her own province. After this we had a good
meal, and then the poor woman left us, more worried, I dare-
say, at the part she had to play when she got back to Vitré
than at the affront she had received here. She made me
promise to relate this adventure to you, and to go to-morrow
to assist her in entertaining the States, which will finish in about
a week... .”

The Marquise was not long permitted to enjoy the serenity
of her woods and gardens, On the Sunday following this visit,
M. de Chaulnes despatched his company of mounted guards to
Les Rochers with a note to tell Madame de Sévigné that she
was wanted on His Majesty’s service, and that Madame de
Chaulnes expected her to supper. Little as the Marquise
desired to go, she did not like to refuse the amiable and
friendly Duchess, so, though it was getting rather late, she
ordered her carriage, and was soon driving towards Vitré
escorted by the Governor's guards.

It is amusing to find that Madame :de Sévigné, with all her
244 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

tact and savoir faire, occasionally made the same social mistakes
that harass the lives of less fortunate individuals.

“JT must tell you of an absurd mistake I made the other day,”
she writes to her daughter. “I was at M. de Chaulnes’ house,
and I saw a man standing at the end of the room whom [I
believed to be the maitre d’hétel. I went up to him and said,

My good sir, do let us have dinner ; it is one o’clock, and I am
fit to die with hunger.” ‘Madame,’ he said, looking gravely at
me, ‘I should be very happy to give you a dinner at my house;
my name is Pécauditre, and I live only two leagues from
Landerneau.’ My child, it was a gentleman of Lower Brittany,
and you may imagine how foolish I felt at the discovery; I
cannot help laughing even while I write it.”

The States were gradually drawing to a conclusion, as may
be seen from Madame de Sévigné’s letters. We get a glimpse
of the young Duc de Rohan paying conspicuous attention to
-a beauty of Lower Brittany, who dances beautifully, and who
entirely neglects her betrothed to listen to the flattering
nothings of the young nobleman, in spite of her mother’s evident
frowns and disapproval. Monsieur Locmaria has lost none of
his fascination ; his dancing, his figure, his face, his manners are
all captivating; and she tells her daughter that the “ Murinette
beauty,” that is to say Mademoiselle Murinais, would accept
him willingly, but that he has not the same inclination for her.
Pomenars has grown bolder than ever, and sends word to
Madame de Grignan that he is sure he will not be hanged now
because he has escaped so long. We catch, too, a glimpse of the
tender heart of the brilliant mistress of Les Rochers, who
is always ready with a jest, always ready to laugh at the
jests of others, whose spirits are always bright and buoyant in
company. “I am ready to die sometimes,” she tells her
daughter, “for want of giving vent to my tears at a ball where
I am reminded of you ; and sometimes I actually enjoy my tears
unobserved. There are some airs and dances that almost
always produce that effect on me. Our States may sing and
dance and drink as long as they please, but your dear
picture finds its way through all, and fixes itself in my heart
as on its proper throne.”

The Marquise is drily sarcastic over the large sums of
“THE FORTUNATE MOMENT” 245

money voted by the Breton gentlemen, in addition to that
already promised to the King. “They must think they are
going to die, and are disposing of all their effects,” whispered a
Breton gentleman in her ear, at one of these generous and
enthusiastic moments ; and the Marquise cotdially agreed. She
knew that all this money would have to be raised somehow, and
indeed, only a few years later, Brittany was so impoverished by
its “free gifts” to the King, that the province was well-nigh
bankrupt.

“The contract our province made with the King was signed |
last Friday, but before that we had given two thousand louis-
d’or to Madame de Chaulnes, besides many other presents. Itis
not that we are so rich here; but we have courage, we are very
obliging, and between twelve and one at noon we can never
refuse anything to our friends. That is the fortunate moment ;
the odours of your orange-flowers do not produce such fine
effects. I do not know how you are at present, but your health
is drunk here every day by more than a hundred gentlemen who
never saw you in their lives, and in all probability never will... .

“ Provincial splendour appearshere in all its glory, but the other
day M. de Grignan’s post was admired and envied by everyone
for being without this parade... . While the rage for making
presents prevailed, we had a desire to propose to the States to
give ten thousand crowns to M. and Madame de Grignan.
M. and Madame de Chaulnes declared that they would listen to
the proposal; the others that they would actually make the
present. Finally, we agreed to have it whispered about, to
make a few of the Bas Bretons murmur, to soften them down
at table, and make them promise to propose it.”

But, needless to say, this proposal was never made; the
States had promised all they could perform to the great officials
of Brittany. It is amusing to find that as the States drew near
the end the Marquise told her daughter that she did not dare
to keep at Les Rochers any longer, as the way there was
too well known. On the last Sunday in August, a day of
leisure, no less than five carriages-and-six came to give her
a surprise visit. However, a week after this, on September 6,
the Marquise was very happy to be able to write to her daughter
of the actual conclusion of the Assembly.
246 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

“<The best of company must part,’ said M. de Chaulnes, on
dismissing the Bretons to their homes. The States broke up
about midnight. I was present, with Madame de Chaulnes and
some other ladies. It was a very fine, very grand, and very
magnificent assembly. M. de Chaulnes spoke to everybody
with great dignity, and expressed himself extremely well.
After dinner we all go to our own places. I shall be rejoiced
to find myself again at Les Rochers. I have had an opportunity
of obliging several people; I have made a deputy and a pen-
sioner; I have spoken for several unfortunate folk, but of
myself not a word, for I cannot ask without a reason.”
CHAPTER XXVI

Wolves in the woods at Les Rochers—The birth of a grandson—The Marquise
and her household return to Paris—A warm welcome given to the mére-beauté—A
charming society—A brilliant group of writers

pes Marquise was so overjoyed to leave Vitré, to be able

at last to bid good-bye to her pleasant friends, and to the
crowds of Breton ladies and gentlemen whose acquaintance she
had made during the States, that she tells her daughter—

“T am going back to Les Rochers, so delighted to go that I
am almost ashamed of being so tranquil in your absence.”

She had really enjoyed the festivities, however, and it is
pleasant to find that a closer acquaintance with the people
of her own province—by marriage—had given her a cordial
liking and respect for their good qualities.

“Tlike your Bretons very much,” she says; “they smell a
little of wine, it is true, but your orange-flower perfumes do not
hide such good hearts.”

The rest of the month of September was passed in the
serene solitude of Les Rochers, which the Marquise had so
yearned for in the midst of the entertainments of the States.
Day after day she wandered in her mall, her labyrinth, her
walks and woods ; sometimes taking a book, sometimes “ plough-
ing the mall with her eyes,” or reading and re-reading her
daughter’s letters. She occasionally varied these occupations
by going to see how the chapel, in which the Bien-Bon was
so interested, was progressing, or she talked business with her
tenants, or discoursed on religion and philosophy with her two
abbés.

In October she mentions the nut-gathering; a sober harvest
enough, she thinks, in comparison with the lovely fruits and
flowers of her daughter’s little kingdom.

“T know Provence only by is pomegranates, its orange-trees,

24
248 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

and its jessamines,” she writes; “for that is how it is described
to me; but for us, chestnuts are our greatest ornament. The
other day I had three or four baskets full of them round me;
some I boiled, some I roasted, and with others I filled my
pockets; they are served up at table, they are trodden under-
foot; this is Brittany in all its glory.”

We have another most piquant glimpse of this beautiful and
stately chédtelaine as she wanders in her woods, under the
alluring rays of the October moon. She. loves her woods and
gardens with a passion that causes her to seek them every spare
hour of the day when the weather is fine; she watches the young
trees growing, with an almost maternal solicitude; and when
Pilois, her chief gardener, and his men are planting, she some-
times holds up the saplings for the sheer pleasure of helping
at so congenial an occupation. Even in the evenings, moonlight
in her woods is so seductive that, to the alarm of her household,
she stays there till late at night. But she takes precautions—

“ Apropos my woods are infested with wolves; I have two
or three guards to follow me every night with their muskets
upon their shoulders; Beaulieu is their captain, and for these
two days past we have honoured the moonlight with our
presence between eleven and twelve at night. The night before
last I saw a black man coming towards me; I thought of the
Augur of whom you told me, but, on approaching, it proved
to be la Mousse. A little farther on we saw a white
body extended along the ground; we came up to this quite
boldly, and, behold! it was a tree I had had cut down a week
ago. These are extraordinary adventures!”

Finally, on November 29, she received the news for which
she had been waiting so long at Les Rochers, with deep
anxieties and silent tears, with continual prayers of her own,
as well as daily masses at church—the safe delivery of her
daughter. Everyone concerned was especially delighted, because
this time it was a son; and the Marquise, in the excess of her
emotion, wept for joy, and immediately went to have as many
masses said by way of thanksgiving, as she had ordered before
when hoping to ensure the safety of her daughter. Her first
impulse was one of devout thankfulness.

“TI am now so entirely happy,” she writes, “that I cannot
THE MARQUISE RETURNS TO PARIS 249

help returning thanks to God without ceasing for the peace
of mind which I did not expect so soon. I have received
letters of congratulation, without number and without end, from
Paris and Brittany, and the baby’s health has been drunk for
miles around. I have distributed money for drink, and have
feasted my people on the occasion, exactly as if it were Twelfth-
night. But nothing gave me greater pleasure than the com-
pliment I received from Pilois, who came this morning with his
spade upon his back, and said to me, ‘Madame, I have come
to tell you how heartily glad I am to hear that Madame la
Comtesse has a fine boy.’ That, to me, is worth all the fine
speeches in the world. . . . Adieu, divine Comtesse; I kiss the
little child whom I love tenderly, but not so well as Madame
his mother ; it will be a long time before he attains to that degree
of affection.”

After having stayed nearly seven months at Les Rochers,
Madame de Sévigné set out for Paris on December 9, with
the Bien-Bon, the Abbé de la Mousse, her waiting-women,
and her pet dog Marphise. They had four horses to each
carriage, and though they “flew like the wind” they were nine
days on the road, including a short stay at Malicorne. The first
thing she did on reaching Paris was to write again to the
daughter who was never long absent from her thoughts. She
gives a vivid picture of her meeting with her friends and
relatives, particularly with Emmanuel de Coulanges, her cousin,
who while staying at Lyons had gone for a short visit to
Madame de Grignan; indeed, the part that relates to him is
an extraordinary impressionist picture of the emotions.

“Paris, Friday, December 18, 1671

“T have just arrived, my dear child, and am at my aunt’s
house, surrounded, embraced, and questioned by all my family
and hers; but I have left them all, resolved to say good-day to
you as well as to other people. M. de Coulanges is waiting to
take me home with him, where he says I shall stay because one
of Madame de Bonneuil’s sons has the small-pox. . . . Suppose
me now arrived at M. de Coulanges’, whom I adore because he
is always talking to me of you ; but can you guess what happens?
Why, I cry, and my heart is so strangely oppressed that I make
250 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

a sign with my hand for him to be silent, and silent he is. My
eyes are red, and we speak quickly of other things, on the con-
dition, however, that one day I shall give myself up entirely
to talking of you, to the exclusion of everything else. He tells
me that when he saw you, you shut your eyes and said you were
in my room; yes, certainly you were in Paris, for there was
M. de Coulanges! He acted this very charmingly, and I am
delighted to find that you have still a little foolishness left, for
I was terribly afraid lest you should always be Madame la
Gouvernante, ...”

Then the amiable, witty, frivolous Emmanuel de Coulanges
—the cousin, eight years younger than the Marquise, whom she
remembers as a baby, when she, a little orphan, was staying
with his mother at Sucy—takes up the pen to write to Madame
de Grignan, and from his note we gather something of the ex-
quisite beauty of the young Comtesse, who is now about twenty-
five, and of the gracious charm and affection of her whom he
generally calls méve-beautdé,

“I shut my eyes, and on opening them again, I see that
mere-beauté who is your delight and mine; and this assures
me that I am at Paris, I am going to entertain her with all
your perfections, Do you know that I am more bewitched
with you than ever, and that I am afraid I shall take the
Chevalier de Breteuil’s place? I know that this would not
please M. de Grignan, and it is the only thing that keeps
me from so great an undertaking. But in truth, Madame la
Comtesse, you are a master-piece of Nature, and it is thus I

‘ speak of you whenever I mention you. I was yesterday at M.
de la Rochefoucauld’s, where I met M. de Longueville [the
Comte de Saint-Paul, who had recently taken the title of the
Duc de Longueville when his elder brother entered the Church],.
and we talked of nothing but Provence and you. Adieu, my
charming Comtesse ; I can see your room, I am looking at that
man in the tapestry who is opening his breast; believe me, if
you could see mine at this moment, you would see my heart
as you see his, a heart which is yours, which languishes for you;
but do not tell this to M. de Grignan. Your daughter is a little
brown beauty; she is very pretty; there, she is kissing me and
THE MARQUISE AND HER GRANDDAUGHTER 251

prattling to me, but she never cries. She is beautiful, but I
do not love her so well as I love you. There is no such thing
as talking to your mére-beauté about you; the great tears fall
from her eyes. Mon Diew! what a mother!”

The little Blanche d’Adhémar, now about a year old, is fre-
quently mentioned by the Marquise, whose graphic pen-sketches
to the Comtesse (who had not seen her daughter since she
was a few months old) bring the baby vividly before us.
Sometimes she says she can hardly leave the child’s bedside,
even to write to its mother, because of its sweet and fascinating
baby-ways ; at other times we see her, by means of the magic
pen of the Marquise, chattering baby-talk to her mother’s picture ;
and in May, when Blanche is just about a year and a half old,
Madame de Sévign¢é gives a delightful portrait of her tiny
granddaughter.

“You tell me,” she writes to the Comtesse, “that your son’s
beauty diminishes, and that his merit increases. I am sorry for
the loss of his beauty, and I am rejoiced to find that he loves
wine; this is a little spice of Brittany and Burgundy together,
which will produce a charming effect with the prudence of the
Grignans. As for your daughter, she is just the reverse; her
beauty increases and her merit lessens. I assure you she is
very pretty, but as obstinate as a demon; she has her little
will, and intentions, with which she diverts me extremely. She
has a beautiful complexion, blue eyes, black hair, a nose that
is neither handsome nor ugly; her chin, her cheeks, and the
contours of her face are faultless. I shall say nothing of her
mouth, it will do very well; she has a very sweet voice, and
Madame de Coulanges thinks it suits her mouth.”

The Marquise sends yet another delightful little picture of
baby Blanche to her mother in Provence. On Monday, 23rd
of May, she writes to Madame de Grignan—

“.,. Yesterday I dined at the la Troches’ with the Abbé
Arnauld and Madame de Valentine. After dinner we had
le Camus, his son, and Ytier, and together they gave us a
charming little concert. After that Mademoiselle de Grignan
arrived with her equerry Beaulieu, her governess Helene,
her waiting-woman Marie, her little page Jacquot her nurse’s
son, and her nurse Mére Jeanne, dressed in her Sunday clothes ;
252 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

she is the most amiable country-woman I have ever seen. This
little procession made a fine appearance. We sent them into
the garden, and we all watched them with much pleasure; I
was much charmed with her little household. . . .”

Poor little Blanche d’Adhémar! These early years that she
passed with her loving grandmother were probably the most
sunny days of her life. There is no actual record of the date
when she was taken to Provence by her mother, but we gather
from the Letters that it was soon after her fifth birthday.
M. de Grignan then expresses his satisfaction with his little
daughter, and shortly after she was placed in the convent at
Aix, founded by her ancestress Sainte-Chantal. Fleeting
mention is now and again made of her in Madame de
Sévigné’s letters. We gather that the child was sometimes
jealous, sometimes a little rebellious; sometimes chafing at
being away from home where her brother and sister were so
happy. Occasionally the Marquise pleads for her, but evi-
dently the Comtesse de Grignan had never felt much affection
for her eldest-born, and she had no scruple in devoting her to
a religious life. One child at least, in good Catholic families,
was often “ given to God”; and it mattered not at all that her
daughter Blanche did not evince any “vocation,” that the
Rabutin blood in her young veins desired ardently to be released
into the world; it was necessary, so the Comtesse thought, that
one child at least should be economically provided for, and as the
baby Pauline promised to have beauty as her dower, the unfortun-
ate little Blanche, who was plainer, was chosen for the sacrifice.

Back again in Paris among her friends, the Marquise gives
many most interesting glimpses into the charming and varied
society among which she spent her days. The friend whom
she most frequently visits is Madame de la Fayette, by whom
she is sincerely loved and always cordially welcomed. Here,
the Marquise tells her daughter, is the prettiest little garden in
Paris, where they sit and breathe the perfume of the flowers,
and enjoy the lovely spring evenings, because Madame de la
Fayette is so delicate that she cannot even venture into a
carriage. Madame de la Fayette is visited every day by the
cynical Duc de la Rochefoucauld, who is a martyr to gout, but
who always contrives to limp or drive to see his friend, where
THE DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 253

they both sit and talk so sadly, or groan over their sufferings,
till, the Marquise de Sévigné tells her daughter afterwards,
“Madame de la Fayette is always ailing, M. de la Rochefou-
cauld is always lame, and we sometimes talk so dismally, till
it seems that there is nothing to be done but to bury us.”

Very often, too, the Marquise goes to the house of the Duc de
la Rochefoucauld, which is also in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,
and though the Duke does not hold a salon, he frequently
arranges for dramatists and authors to read or act their new
pieces to a select company of his friends. What a group of
authors were then amusing Paris! The brilliant Moli¢re, whose
glance noted every absurdity, whose every play was a satire on
some existing abuse; Racine, Corneille, La Fontaine, whose
names, after the test of centuries, proudly hold their places
among the greatest in France! One day the Marquise
happened to be at the Duke’s house when Corneille was
giving one of his plays, and, as was her usual custom, she
writes her daughter an account of it.

“The other day at M. de la Rochefoucauld’s, Corneille read
one of his comedies, which showed us what he once had been.
I wish you had been with me that afternoon, I am sure you
would not have been wearied or indifferent; indeed, you would
have dropped a tear or two, since I myself shed twenty. The
Duke was behind the scenes, and Pomenars was above with the
lackeys, wrapped in his cloak up to the eyes for fear of the Comte
de Créance, who is resolved to have him hanged at all costs.
The Jeaux were all upon the stage; the Marquis de Villeroi was
in a masquerade dress, the Comte de Guiche was as obscure as his
own wit, and all the rest were in cloaks like so many banditti.”

The Duc de la Rochefoucauld frequently sent messages to
Madame de Grignan, and on one occasion he sent her his
famous MJaximes. “Were are M. de la Rochefoucauld’s
Maximes, revised and corrected with additions; it is a present
to you from himself,” writes the Marquise. “Some of them are
exquisite ; but there are others that, to my shame, I cannot
understand at all. God knows whether you will.”

But the Marquise does not confine herself to visiting these
two friends. We must not overlook the fact that she sometimes
goes to visit the sick, who, she says, are as full of sorrow and
254 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

vexation as herself when she remembers her separation from
her daughter. There is Madame Scarron too, “who sups with
us almost every evening, and is the most agreeable companion
imaginable. She knows perfectly well how to please me, by
talking to me of you. She admires you greatly.”

Cardinal de Retz, too, has returned to Paris, and is now the
Abbé of Saint-Denis. The Marquise has a great affection for
this relative, and often mentions him in her letters. “We do all
we can to amuse our dear Cardinal,” she says. “Corneille has
read him one of his comedies, which is soon to be produced, and
which recalls the fine works he has written. On Saturday,
Moliére is to read him Tvzssotin [les Femmes Savantes], which is
a very amusing comedy; and Despréaux will read him his
Lutrin and his Poétique; this is all we can doforhim. He loves
you with all his heart, and often speaks of you; and we are not
so ready to finish your praises as we are to begin them.”

It was always the same; wherever she went she was sure to
talk of her daughter, and, in that agreeable, charming society,
which she herself said “was the kindest in the world,” they did
not fail to mention the subject that concerned her most, even
though they might not be so interested in Madame de Grignan
as was her mother. “ Everybody talks to me of my daughter,”
innocently declared the Marquise.

“Do you see that good woman?” said her cousin Emmanuel
de Coulanges one day. “She is for ever in the presence of her
daughter !”

Besides talking of her daughter, and writing to her almost
-every day, she delighted in sending her presents. Sometimes it
is a parcel of books; sometimes a fan, which she thinks charming
because it is decorated with a group of little chimney-sweeps
instead of the fashionable cupids ; or it is a pair of pincettes for
M. de Grignan’s “incomparable beard.” But she loves to
adorn her beautiful daughter, and once she sends her a lovely
pearl necklace, which always appears in Madame de Grignan’s
portraits after this date.

“TY forbid you, my dear child,” she writes, “to send me your
portrait. If you are looking pretty, have it painted, but keep
the delightful present for me till I come to see you, for I should
be very sorry to leave it here. In the meantime, accept one
THE PEARL NECKLACE 255

from me that surpasses all presents, past and to come; this is
not saying too much, my child, for it is a pearl necklace worth
twelve thousand crowns. It is a large sum, but not greater
than my love and goodwill towards you. Examine it well,
weigh it, see how beautifully it is set, and then tell me your
opinion of it. It is the finest I ever saw; it belonged to our
late neighbour, the Venetian ambassador, who is dead; and it
has been greatly admired here.”

Through all the letters she rings the changes on the same
theme, her intense longing to visit her daughter; to see her
in her own home, in the new and strange surroundings of
Southern France. But her aunt, Madame de la Trousse, who
had watched over her with constant care and affection since the
first days of her widowhood, was ill, and her love and duty
would not allow her to leave her, even though she had the
utmost care and attention from her daughters, Mademoiselle de
la Trousse and Mademoiselle de Méri. Of the Marquis de la
Trousse, who had not been a very loving son, but who now
expressed affection for his mother, she says: “I do not place
much value on such deathbed affections, and I would not thank
those who only began to love me then. My child, we must
love during life, as you do so well; we must make the existence
of those we care for calm and happy, not fill it with bitterness
and grief. It is too late to change at the point of death.”

Madame de Sévigné was kept for months in a state of un-
certainty. Sometimes her aunt, who was suffering from dropsy,
rallied a little, and the doctors said she might linger for some
time; then the Marquise would think that she and the Bien-Bon
might leave her, and perhaps even find her recovered on their
return. Following this, Madame de la Trousse grew so much
worse that her death seemed only a question of hours; but,
though sorely tempted, the Marquise always kept her post, and
through the long, bright spring days sat by the bedside of her
aunt—whose terrible sufferings she described most movingly to
her daughter—and only left her for short periods while she
paid brief visits to her ailing friend the Marquise de la Fayette.
At length, on the last day of June, the Marquise de la Trousse
died, and Madame de Sévigné was free to think of her visit to

her daughter in Provence.
CHAPTER XXVII

The Marquise visits her daughter in Provence—Madame de Sévigné at Marseilles
—Her return to Paris—A midnight walk with Madame de Scarron—The death of
Turenne

HE Marquise de la Trousse died on the 30th of June 1672,
T and by the 13th of July Madame de Sévigné, who for
months previously had been making preparations for her visit
to Provence, was able to set out on the journey, accompanied
by the Bien-Bon and the Abbé de la Mousse. They arrived at
Grignan in the beginning of August, and the Marquise spent
the whole of the following year with her daughter. We hear
very little of this visit, because most of the letters that the
Marquise sent to her friends in Paris and elsewhere have been
lost, but we gather from one or two notes to her daughter that
she visited Marseilles with M. de Grignan, and was delighted
with the reception accorded to the Governor of Provence. With
her usual keen interest in everything novel or strange, she im-
mediately wrote to her daughter, who was at Grignan, with a
charming vivacity, her impressions of the place and people.

“T sit down to write to you between a visit from Madame
the Intendant’s wife and a very fine harangue. I am now
expecting a present, and the present expects my pistole. I am
charmed with the singular beauty of this town. Yesterday was
a glorious day, and the place from which I could see the sea,
the bastions, the mountains, and the town, is a most remarkable
spot.... The crowd of chevaliers who came to see M. de
Grignan on his arrival—some with names that are familiar, like
Saint-Hérem, others unknown adventurers with swords and fine
hats—gave a suggestion of war and romance, of embarkations
and adventures, of chains and irons, of slavery, of captives and
captivity; and all this, to one who loves romance as I do, is

inexpressibly delightful.”
256
THE MARQUISE IN PROVENCE 257

It was probably on this same journey that she was detained
at Lambesc, from whence she wrote to her daughter, with her
own inimitable charm, of the difficulties that beset travellers in
Provence.

‘*LAMBESC, 10 o'clock Tuesday morning
°° December 20, 1672

“When we reckon without Providence, my dear daughter, we
are often obliged to reckon twice. I was all ready dressed by
eight o’clock; I had drank my coffee, heard mass, bidden good-
bye to everybody, the little mules were loaded, and the tinkling
of their bells reminded me that it was time to get into my litter ;
my room was full of people, who begged me not to set out
because of the heavy rains of the last few days, and because it
had rained without cessation the whole of yesterday and this
morning. But I resisted all their arguments, determined to keep
the promise I made you in my letter of yesterday, of being with
you on Thursday, when suddenly in came M. de Grignan in his
dressing-gown, and talked to me so seriously of the rashness of
my undertaking—saying that the muleteer would not be able to
follow my litter, that my mules would fall into the ditches, that
my people would be too fatigued to be able to assist me—that
I at once changed my mind and yielded to his wise remon-
strances .. . and now J shall depart when it pleases Heaven and
M. de Grignan, who governs me entirely.”

While staying in Provence, Madame de Sévigné was kept
well posted with what was going on at Court by her friends
Madame de la Fayette and Madame de Coulanges. The
Marquise on one occasion scolded Madame de la Fayette for
not writing oftener, and that ailing lady, who always “ enjoyed”
miserable health, wrote back, “You love writing to everyone;
I hate it just as much, and if I had a lover who expected a letter
every day I should certainly break with him.”

Madame de Coulanges tells her how her letters are appreciated
by everyone who has the privilege of reading them, and it is
pleasant to us, who are so charmed with them to-day, to find
that even during her lifetime this delightful writer was not
without honour in her own country.

“But I must not forget what happened this morning,” writes

17
258 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Madame de Coulanges. “A footman from Madame de Thianges
[sister to Madame de Montespan] wanted to speak to me, |
ordered him to be shown in, and this is what he said. ‘Madame,
I have come from Madame de Thianges, who begs you to send
her the letter about the Horse, and the one about the Meadow,
from Madame de Sévigné. I told the lackey that I would
take them myself to his mistress, and so I got rid ofhim. Your
letters have the reputation they deserve, as you see; it is certain
that they are delightful, and you are as delightful as your
letters.”

During the time that the Marquise was staying in Provence,
Madame de Grignan’s youngest daughter, Pauline, was born.
On October the 5th, 1673, Madame de Sévigné left her daughter
with much grief, especially as the latter was not in good health.
On the way home she stayed for a short while at Bourbilly, her
castle in Burgundy, and arrived in Paris on All Saints Day,
She was welcomed by numbers of her friends: Madame de la
Fayette, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Madame de Scarron,
who was steadily and stealthily rising in favour at Court, the
Archbishop of Rheims, the Abbé de Grignan, d’Hacqueville,
the Abbé Tétu, and a host of others, all eager to welcome the
charming Marquise to their society after her long absence, The
next morning, as early as nine o'clock, M. de la Garde, the
Abbé de Grignan, Brancas, and d’Hacqueville crowded into her
room to have a little private conversation, for at this period
Madame de Sévigné was much occupied in Paris with supporting
the interests of M. de Grignan, as the Bishop of Marseilles, his
old enemy, was secretly working against him.

Madame de Sévigné in giving her daughter the news that
would be sure to interest her, did not forget Madame de Scarron,
whom they had both known in the days of her poverty and
obscurity. During Madame de Sévigné’s absence she had been
promoted, and instead of existing on a small pension in an
appartement in the Marais, she was now governess to the children
of the King and Madame de Montespan, and lived in the utmost
privacy in a beautiful house on the confines of Paris. The
Marquise gives her daughter an account of a perfectly safe mid-
night walk through the streets of Paris, for by this time—in fact
since the year 1666—Paris was lighted with candle lanterns
THE WIDOW SCARRON 259

suspended in the middle of the street, except on moonlight
nights, of course! On December 4 she writes—

“We supped yesterday with Madame Scarron and the Abbé
Tétu at Madame de Coulanges’. We talked a great deal, and
you were not forgotten. We took it into our heads to accompany
Madame de Scarron home at midnight to the farthest end of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, past Madame de la Fayette’s, almost
as far as Vaugirard in the country. She lives in a fine and
beautiful house, where no one is allowed to enter. She has a
large garden, handsome apartments, servants, a carriage and
horses, and she dresses neatly but richly, like a. woman who has
passed all her life with people of rank. She is amiable, pretty,
good, and free from affectation ; one can converse very pleasantly
with her. We returned gaily by the light of the lanterns, and in
no danger from thieves.”

About two months after this, however, to Madame de
Sévigné’s great satisfaction, she wrote no more letters to her
daughter for a whole year, for Madame de Grignan came to
Paris on a long visit to her mother; and it was then, no doubt,
that she renewed her interest in the people about the Court, for
after her return to Provence in May 1675, the Marquise writes
more frequently than ever about the happenings at Versailles
and at Saint-Germain. But it is particularly noticeable that at
this period Madame de Sévigné writes with especial caution
whenever she mentions her friends who have any interest at
Court. “It is sometimes necessary to write in cypher,” she tells
her daughter, for letters were frequently opened as they passed
through the post. She also speaks in terms of eulogy of the
King whenever she has occasion to mention him ; for Louis XIV
was ruling with a strong hand; rewarding and punishing with
such autocratic power, that all his subjects feared him, and few,
very few, dared to be as outspoken as the brusque Marquis de
Montausier, who one day remarked angrily, “No one but
mistresses and ministers has any influence nowadays!” We
therefore find that Madame de la Fayette, who had considerable
political influence in a quiet way, in connection with the Princess
of Savoy, is sometimes mentioned as the d/zs¢, Madame de
Coulanges is the Leaf—a term well suited to her airy and
frivolous character—Madame de Montespan is Quaniova, M.
260 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

de Pomponne is the Raiz, while the Torrent and the Dew are
names for persons who have not been very clearly identified.

Soon after Madame de Grignan’s return to Provence, an
event occurred at the seat of war which seems to have affected
Madame de Sévigné with a deep personal grief, the death of
the Maréchal de Turenne. It would be particularly interesting
to know what degree of intimacy existed between the Marquise
and the great hero; we know they were personal friends, for
Madame de Sévigné mentioned to her daughter one day that
she had been to visit him with Madame de la Fayette. It is
somewhat curious that of Foucquet, and of the brave Maréchal,
Madame de Sévigné has left the most touching and interesting
records; especially noticeable because both these men, as we
know from Bussy’s letters, during the earlier, more brilliant days
of her widowhood, would fain have become her lovers, Their
intentions — neither of them honourable—seem not to have
shocked the Marquise in the least degree, though when her
more severe daughter wrote with expressions of horror on the
subject of adultery, she cordially agreed with her. The truth
is that Madame de Sévigné, to use a common phrase, “ took her
world as she found it,” and her world thought it a light, almost
venial sin to break the seventh commandment. It was this
easy and graceful adaptability of mood and temper that made
Madame de Sévigné such a charming companion. “If I hada
little more warmth in my disposition I should be angry,” she
wrote on one occasion, and it was probably the decision and
emphasis—not always agreeable!—in Madame de Grignan’s
character that caused Ninon to declare that she had all the
sed of the family.

M. de Turenne was killed in July 1675, and all Paris was
shocked and grieved when the news reached the city. Madame
de Sévigné tells the sad circumstance to her friends, and continu-
ally mentions incidents of his life, and always with loving and
admiring affection. There is something singularly good and
attractive in his portrait, a look of far-seeing wisdom and human
sympathy combined, which distinguishes him from the other
nobles of his day; indeed, most of his actions were totally
unlike those of his compeers, especially in matters relating to
the poor soldiers under his command, As the Marquise relates,
 

MARECHAL TURENNE
THE DEATH OF TURENNE 261

he clothed a whole regiment at his own expense ; and on another
occasion he sold his plate that his soldiers might be fed.
Madame de Sévigné uses a very happy phrase in mentioning his
death to her cousin Bussy, which informs us at the same time
that she was a fatalist.

“You are an excellent almanac,” she writes to Bussy, “you
predicted like one of the profession all that happened in
Germany; but you did not foresee the death of M. de Turenne,
nor the cannon-ball, shot at random, which singled him out of
ten or twelve others. But I, who see the hand of Providence in
everything, I see that cannon loaded from all eternity. I see
that everything combined to lead him to that fatal spot ; and I do
not consider it very terrible for him, supposing him in a fit
state of mind to die. What more could he have desired? He
died in the midst of glory.”

As the Marquise was on intimate terms with Cardinal
Bouillon, his nephew, and Madame d’Elbceuf, his niece, she was
invited by them to meet some of the gentlemen and soldiers
who had witnessed his death, and the day after she writes a
most touching account of the meeting to her daughter, giving, at
the same time, a detailed description of the hero’s death.

“‘PaRIS, Wednesday, August 28, 1675

“In truth, my daughter, I am going to write to you yet once
again of M. de Turenne. Madame d’Elbceuf, who is staying for
a few days with the Cardinal de Bouillon [her brother], invited
me to dine with them yesterday to talk of their sad loss.
Madame de la Fayette was there also, and we did what we
proposed to do, till there was not a dry eye among us.
Madame d’Elbceuf had a portrait, exquisitely painted, of the
hero, whose people all arrived at eleven o’clock. They were
already clothed in mourning, and all were bathed in tears;
three gentlemen came in who were fit to die with grief at the
sight of the picture; they could not utter a word, and their cries
pierced one to the heart. His valets, his lackeys, his pages
and trumpeters, were all in tears, and made everyone weep to
see them. The first who was able to speak answered our sad
questions ; we made him tell us the manner of his death. M.de
Turenne wished to confess, and when he retired for that purpose,
262 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

he gave his orders for the evening, and intended to communi-
cate the next day, which was Sunday. He thought about
giving battle,and mounted his horse at two o’clock on Satur-
day, after he had eaten his dinner. He had several people with
him, but he left them all at about thirty paces from the height
where he intended to go, and said to young d’Elbceuf, ‘ Nephew,
stay you there; you keep so close to me that I shall be recog-
nised.’ M. d’Hamilton, who was near the place where he was
passing, said to him—

“* Monsieur, come this way; the enemy is directing the fire to
the spot where you are!’

“*T will do as you say, replied M. de Turenne, ‘I do not
wish to be killed to-day. This place will do admirably,’

“He turned his horse, and perceived Saint-Hilaire, who,
coming up to him with his hat in his hand, said—

“* Will you look at that battery I have placed over there,
Monsieur ?’

“The Maréchal turned back, and, without having time to stop
his horse, his arm and part of his body were torn to pieces by
the same ball that carried away Saint-Hilaire’s arm, and the
hand in which he held his hat. That gentleman, who was
looking at him attentively, did not see him fall, for the horse ran
away with M. de Turenne to the spot where he had left young
d’Elbceuf; he was then leaning with his face over the pommel
of the saddle. At this moment the horse stopped, and he fell
into the arms of his people; twice he opened his eyes wide, and
moved his lips, and then remained silent for ever. Only to
think that he was dead ; that part of his heart was carried away!

“His people burst into tears and loud cries, but M.
d’Hamilton quieted them, and took young d’Elbceuf away from
his uncle’s body, where he had thrown himself, almost fainting
with grief. A cloak was placed over the body, which was
carried to the shelter of a hedge, where they kept watch over it
in silence, till a carriage was brought to convey it to the tent.
There it was met by M. de Lorges, M. de Roye, and several
others, who were almost dead with grief; but they were obliged
to control themselves, and to think of the great responsibility that
had fallen upon them.

“A military service was held in the camp, where tears and
THE FUNERAL OF TURENNE 263

cries made truest mourning; all the officers had crape scarves,
all the drums were covered with crape also, and they beat only
a single stroke; the soldiers marched with their pikes trailing
and their muskets reversed, but the cries of a whole army
cannot be described without emotion. ...

“When the body was removed from the camp to be brought
to Paris, the weeping and lamentations were renewed ; and in
every place through which it passed there was nothing but grief
and mourning. At Langres, however, they did more than this:
the sad procession was met by more than two hundred of the
chief inhabitants, clothed in mourning; these were followed by
the people, and all the clergy in their vestments, who held a
solemn service in the town. A voluntary contribution was
immediately made to defray this expense, which amounted to
five thousand francs. What do you say to these marks of
natural affection founded upon an extraordinary merit?

“He is to be brought to Saint-Denis this evening or to-
morrow; his people are all gone to meet the body at a place
about two leagues distant, from whence they will escort it to a
chapel where it will be placed for the present. There will be a
service at Saint-Denis, and afterwards one at Notre Dame,
which will be very solemn.

“What do you think of our entertainment at the Cardinal’s
house? We dined, as you may imagine, sadly enough, and till
four o’clock we did nothing but sigh... .”

Two days after writing this, the Marquise went with
Madame d’Elbceuf and the Cardinal to the service at Saint-
Denis, of which she writes a sad and moving account to her
daughter. Perhaps the most noticeable difference in the
mourning of that day and this, was the utter lack of restraint
among relatives, friends, servants, and people of every degree.
At this service Madame d’Elbceuf “filled the chapel with
her cries” ; nor is this occasion singular, for Madame de Sévigné
relates that at the death of the Princesse de Conti, all her
ladies-in-waiting gave themselves up to grief in the most
extravagant fashion, some of it, as she noted, most evidently

in use for the occasion. : ;
Shortly after the funeral service at Saint-Denis, Madame de
264 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Sévigné left Paris to spend the autumn in Brittany, against the
wishes and advice of all her friends, for Brittany was in revolt
against authority; castles were pillaged, seigneurs were hanged,
raids were made on government offices, the Governor was
stoned, and the whole country was in inexpressible confusion and
uproar. Indeed, said the Marquise, the whole province held the
Governor, her good friend the Duc de Chaulnes, in unspeakable
hatred. The poor ignorant Bretons, who did not know a word
of any other language except their own patois, naturally enough
blamed their Governor for the crushing taxes under which they
groaned, and especially for a new tax on tobacco, which was the
immediate cause of the rising. But Madame de Sévigné, more
enlightened, knew that these taxes had year after year been
augmented till they had grown unbearable, not by the
Governor, but by the King, whose journeys, whose magnificent
entertainments, whose palaces, whose vices of gambling and
adultery, whose extravagance, in short, was a bottomless pit of
expenditure, into which the funds of the nation continually
disappeared. Brittany was ruined, said the Marquise. Of the
“gift”—a gracious name for taxes—to be given to the King
that year, they were nine hundred thousand francs short; and
this general poverty and distress had a marked influence on
Madame de Sévigné’s own fortune. “The Abbé is continually
counting,” she told her daughter, “but we are not a penny the
richer for all his reckoning.” Tenants could not pay their rents,
but the landlords had to find the money somehow, and the
Marquise expresses her own indignation very forcibly. “Our gift
to the King is increased, and I thought I should have beaten the
honest Boucherat when I saw the augmentation . . . I do not
see how we are to pay half of it. Rennes is like a desert; the
punishments and taxes are unmerciful; I might write from this
time till to-morrow if I were to repeat the tragic stories that
I hear.”

Some of the tragic stories she did relate, and she has some-
times been accused of indifference in speaking of the sufferings
of the peasantry. But it is impossible not to understand the
indignation which breaks out now and again, as she writes of
the outrageous punishments that are being inflicted. “You
perceive,” she tells her daughter, “that I have grown quite
THE RISING IN BRITTANY 265

Bretonne, but you will understand that it is because of the air
we breathe, and also due to something else, for everyone is
affected... . Do you wish to know the news from Rennes?
They have levied a tax of one hundred thousand crowns to be
paid by the bourgeois, and if this is not done in twenty-four
hours it will be doubled, and the soldiers will extort the pay-
ment. They have banished all the inhabitants of one big
street, and have forbidden all the townspeople to receive them
under pain of death; and one may see all those miserable
creatures, old men, women who have been torn from a sick-bed,
and young children, wandering in tears outside the town, not
knowing where to go, or how they will find food, or where to
sleep. The day before yesterday a pedlar was broken on
the wheel; he had begun the dance with the pillage of the
stamp-office. Sixty of the bourgeois have been arrested,
and to-morrow they will begin the hangings. M. de Chaulnes
has been received like the King, but it is only fear that has
made them change their tone; and M. de Chaulnes does
not forget all the shocking things they have said about
him, of which the sweetest and most familiar was gros cochon,
without counting the stones thrown at his windows and into
his garden, and the threats, which God alone prevented from
being put into execution.”

The hangings did indeed go on, and what disgust and
irony is in the letter of the Marquise in which she replies to
her daughter’s comments on affairs in Brittany. “You speak
very pleasantly of our miseries. But we are no longer so much
broken on the wheel as we were. Only one a week now, just to
keep justice in practice. It is true, too, that mere hanging now
seems a refreshing process, I have quite a new idea of justice
since I have come here. Your galley-slaves seem to me to be
a company of honest folk who have retired from the world to
lead a peaceful life.”

But the life at the chateau went on as usual, though few
visits were paid or received, a melancholy contrast to her previous
stay at Les Rochers in 1671, when day after day she was able to
send to her daughter the chronicle of the feasting and gaieties
of the States. In December, however, she had the pleasure of
welcoming her son Charles, who had been campaigning in
266 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Turenne’s army, and who was now trying to get rid of his
cornetcy. He had had no promotion for five years, and in
disgust he wrote to his sister: “I am still a cornet, always a
cornet, and shall be a cornet when my hair is grey.”

His mother expected him at Les Rochers for some weeks
before he appeared, but he was paying attention to a pretty
abbess, and their first meeting, as described to her daughter,
is so characteristic of both mother and son, that it deserves
quotation. On December 4, 1675, she writes—

“ As I was returning from my walk yesterday, I found frater
at the end of the mall, who fell on his knees as soon as he saw
me, feeling so culpable for having been singing matins for three
weeks underground, that he thought he dared not approach
me in any other fashion. I had resolved to scold him well, but
I never know how to be angry with him; and I was heartily
glad to see him, for you know how entertaining he is. He
embraced me a thousand times, and gave me the worst reasons
in the world, which, however, I accepted as perfectly good.
We talk, we walk, we read, and so wear away the year, or
at least what is left of it. We are determined to dispose of our
wretched cornetcy as well as we can, if the King permit. . . .”

The only neighbour at this time, except the irritating Made-
moiselle du Plessis, was the Princesse de Tarente, who lived at
Vitré; who, said Madame de Sévigné, was very well in the
country, though she should not enjoy her company greatly at
Paris. It was from the Princesse that the Marquise had a
charming little dog, of which she writes most whimsically to
her daughter—

** Aux RocHERS, Movember 13, 1675

“... You are surprised to hear that I have a little dog;
this is how it happened. One day I was calling a little dog
which belongs to a lady who lives at the end of the park.
Madame de Tarente said to me: ‘What! do you like dogs?
I will send you one of the prettiest you have ever seen.” I
thanked her, and said that I had made a resolution never again
to indulge myself in an affection of that kind; so the subject
was dropped, and I thought no more of it. A few days after,
I saw a footman bring a little dog-kennel, all decorated with
A PET DOG 267

ribbons, and out of this pretty kennel jumped a little perfumed
dog, quite extraordinarily beautiful, with ears, coat, and sweet
breath, like a little sylph, the fairest of the fair. I was never
more surprised nor more embarrassed. I would have returned
it, but the servant would not take it back; though the chamber-
maid who had reared it was fit to die with grief for the loss of
it. It is Marie who is so fond of it; he sleeps in his kennel
in Beaulieu’s room, and eats nothing but bread. I try not to
become too attached to it, but it begins to like me, and I am
afraid I shall succumb to its affection. This is the story, which
I beg you not to tell to Marphise [her pet dog] at Paris, for I
dread her reproaches. But it is the cleanliest little animal you
ever saw; its name is Fidéle, a name, I believe, that the lovers
of the Princess have never deserved, though they have been of
some importance. Some day I will amuse you with her
adventures. Her style, it is true, is full of faintings, and I do
not think she has had sufficient leisure to love her daughter, not
at leastas Ilove mine. More than one heart would be necessary
to love so many things at once, and I perceive every day that
the great fish eat up all the little ones. If you are, as you say,
my preservative, I am very much obliged to you, and I cannot
too highly prize the love I have for you. I do not know from
what dangers it has guarded me, but if it were from fire or from
water, it could not be dearer to me than it is.”
CHAPTER XXVIII

The Marquise has an attack of rheumatic fever—She is tenderly nursed by her
son and the Bien-Bon—Rival beauties at the Carmelites—The Marquise goes to
Vichy for the waters—A coquette at the Baths two hundred years ago—Appalling
remedies prescribed by physicians—The hanging of a countess

OME of the most delightful pictures the Marquise gives of
herself at Les Rochers, are those in which she describes
her wanderings along her sunny walks or her musings in the
shady allées. “I am always out of doors, like a wild man of
the woods,” she tells her daughter. “My health and vivacity
depend so much on the weather, that in order to know how I
am you have only to consult the stars.” In November, again,
she says—

“Our Saint Martin’s summer still continues, and I take
long walks; and as I do not use an easy-chair I repose my
corporea salma at length in these avenues, where I spend whole
days alone, attended by a single servant, and I do not return
till almost night, when fire and candles make my room cheerful.
I hate the twilight when I have no one to talk with; I would
far rather be alone in the woods than alone in a room; this is
what is called jumping into the water to get out of the rain,
but I enjoy my solitude better than the weariness of an arm-
chair. Do not be afraid of the night dews for me, my child,
there are none in these old avenues; they are like galleries;
fear nothing but heavy rains, for from them I am forced to flee
indoors, and I can do nothing which does not injure my eyes.
It is to preserve my sight that I brave what you call the night
dews; but you need not fear for my health, it is perfectly
good.”

The Marquise had always delighted in going out in all
weathers. In rain, in sunshine, in bitter frosts, she would be in

the park and gardens when she was in Brittany, full of con-
268
ILLNESS OF THE MARQUISE 269

fidence in her magnificent health and constitution, which for
nearly fifty years had scarcely caused her a day’s uneasiness,
But perhaps the Marquise did not pay the deference of precau-
tion that time inexorably exacts, even from the most robust,
for, some two months after that enjoyable Saint Martin’s little
summer, she one day found herself with a stiff neck and unable
to move all her right side. Her son Charles, in much concern,
brought a doctor from Vitré, who pronounced it to be an attack
of rheumatic fever.

The affection that her children, the Abbé, the household,
everyone, in fact, who came in close contact with this lovable
woman, felt for her, was displayed at this crisis in every possible
way; but the dominant thought was how to prevent Madame
de Grignan from being alarmed, so that she in turn might not
alarm her mother by her grief. It was at this time that Charles
de Sévigné showed the most amiable and charming side of his
character, his true affection for his sister, his loving thoughtful-
ness for his mother ; indeed, as a son his tender devotion and
graceful social gifts made him almost perfect; it was only as
a man that he showed himself light-minded, weak, and frivolous,
and lacking in the energy and ambition that would have
delighted his mother, and which were necessary for him to
make, or even fitly to hold, his place in the world.

On January 21, 1676, he writes to assure his sister—

«“ Begin, if you please, my dear little sister, by firmly believing
everything that the good Abbé and I shall tell you to-day, and
pray do not be alarmed if by chance you do not see my mother’s
handwriting. The swelling in her hands is still so much that
we do not think it advisable to let them be exposed to the air,
and another reason is that, since yesterday, which was the ninth
day of the disease, the inflamed parts have begun to perspire.
Do not imagine that we have not taken the utmost care of her,
or that any precaution has been neglected. There is a very
good physician at Vitré, who has bled her in the foot with perfect
success; she is taken care of here as well as she could have been
in Paris, and, what is even better, she herself thinks so. For the
first illness she has ever had in her life it has been most
severe and painful, but as it is almost a necessity to have some
ailment this year, it is infinitely better for her to have had
270 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

this rheumatism than inflammation of the lungs, which has been
so prevalent. In short, every day we have some consolation in
our sorrow, and we feel almost greater pleasure in seeing our
mother’s two hands packed up in cloths, and herself unable to
stand, than we felt when we saw her walking and singing in
our avenues from morning till night.”

Not a word of his mother’s delirium; scarcely a hint of the
terrible pains by which the poor Marquise was racked; the
report was designedly as favourable as possible, so that
the Comtesse de Grignan, who loved her mother so dearly,
should not be disturbed more than was absolutely necessary,
The Comtesse had, at the time of Madame de Sévigné’s illness, |
prematurely given birth to her youngest child, a little boy who
died in 1677.

The Bien-Bon and his nephew Charles were so anxious on
account of the two invalids, that they could not always agree as
to the best method of lessening Madame de Grignan’s fears for
her mother. The Abbé declared that a few lines in the
Marquise’s handwriting, no matter how bad it might be, was
necessary to reassure her daughter; “while I maintain,” wrote
the young Baron to his sister, “that it would be much more
likely to frighten you, and that you will have done us the
honour to believe what we have reported to you about her
health, . . . you never could suspect me of being so callous as
to write in a jesting strain at a time when I was threatened with
the most dreadful calamity.”

Mademoiselle du Plessis, too, the young lady who so annoys
the Marquise by her persistent flattery of imitation, shows
herself jealously anxious to do something to help the invalid,
though in everything she attempts, according to Charles
Sévigné, she makes ludicrous mistakes even in her best-
intentioned efforts. There is a “little person,” too, the daughter
of a neighbouring lady, who is about fourteen, and so devoted
to the Marquise that she weeps forlornly during her illness, and
who, as soon as her help is required, makes herself useful in the
sick-room, and as an amanuensis when the Baron is not there to
write at his mother’s dictation.

The object of all this care and affection found her illness
a severe trial. After two months of pain she partially recovered,
MADAME DE MONTESPAN 271

though her hands were still very swollen, and she was not able
to write to her daughter for some time. Even when she was
allowed to go into the gardens again, she was “ready to cry” at
being obliged to leave her dear woods at five o’clock instead of
wandering in them till nearly midnight, and she felt the
humiliation keenly.

“Of all the maladies that could have befallen me,” she tells
her daughter, “I have had the least dangerous but the most
painful, and the one most calculated to correct my pride, and to
make me humble and apprehensive; for I would now run a
hundred leagues to avoid such agony. But you, my dear child,
who have suffered so much, and with so much courage, your
resolution and endurance are greater far than mine; may your
noble soul long remain united to your lovely body!”

The Marquise was able to return to Paris by the 8th of
April, and the air did her good almost immediately ; there was
no air, she always declared, that suited her so well as that of the
fle de France! But she was already thinking of taking the
waters at Vichy or Bourbon, and she finally decided on Vichy.
Her son had rejoined his regiment; and it was something of
a wrench to leave the Bien-Bon alone, but the health of the
Marquise was just then the first consideration, and in May she
set out for Vichy in her big carriage, so as to be quite
comfortable. As it happened, Madame de Montespan was just
in front of her, on the way to Bourbon, and she gives a vivid
little pen-picture of the lady’s progress to her daughter, who,
remembering the days when she had danced with Mademoiselle
de Mortemart, would have a special interest in the doings of the
haughty beauty.

“We closely follow the footsteps of Madame de Montespan,”
wrote the Marquise; “and at every place we are told what she
said, what she did, what she ate and how she slept. She is in
a carriage with six horses, and the little Thianges is with her ;
another carriage follows, drawn by the same number of horses,
with six of her women in it; she has two sumpter waggons, six
mules, and ten or twelve cavaliers on horseback, without
reckoning her officers; her train consists of about forty-five
people. She always finds her room and bed ready, and on her
arrival she retires, and eats heartily. She gives away a good
272 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

deal in charity, and throws a good many louis d’or about with
a very good grace. She receives a courier from the army
every day.”

Only a week or two before this the Marquise had mentioned
another little incident of which Madame de Montespan was the
heroine; a meeting between two rivals, that, to those who know
their history, covers a whole world of bitter humiliation and
chagrin on one side, and on the other the ungenerous triumph
of victorious beauty. It reminds one of the pregnant little
speech of Louise de la Vallitre, when she was thinking of
entering the convent where she was now Sister Louise de la
Miséricorde. “If at any time I think the hardships of the
religious life too great to bear, I shall only have to remember
what those two [the King and Madame de Montespan] have
made me suffer!”

That the Queen should form one of the trio who met at the
convent, gives an almost Oriental touch to the grotesque and
infamous absurdity.

“The Queen has been twice to the Carmelites with Madame
de Montespan. The latter took it into her head to have a
lottery, and collected everything that could be useful to the
nuns; which caused great amusement and interest in the
convent. She talked a long time with Sister Louise de la
Miséricorde, and asked her whether it was true that she was as
happy there as people had said. ‘No, she replied, ‘I am not
happy, but I am contented. Quanto spoke a great deal of the
brother of Monsieur, and asked her if she had no message to
send to him, and what she should say to him on her account.
The other replied in the sweetest tone and manner possible,
though perhaps she was a little piqued at the question, ‘ What-
ever you please, Madame, whatever you please.’ Imagine this
being said with all the grace, wit, and modesty that you will
remember.

“After this Quanto [Madame de Montespan] wished for
something to eat, and she gave the Sisters four pistoles to
purchase what was necessary for a sauce which she prepared
herself, and ate with an excellent appetite. I tell you this
exactly as it happened, without the least paraphrase.”

But the Marquise has arrived at Vichy, where there are other
 

THE MARQUISE DE MAINTENON

 

THE MARQUISE DE MONTESPAN
MADAME DE SEVIGNE AT VICHY 273

scenes for her to describe; a romantic countryside, where she
thinks the shepherds and shepherdesses of the novels of d’Urfé
might be found if they were searched for; lads and lasses who
dance in the evening; languishing beauties at the baths; old
age hoping to find the sulphur springs the fountain of youth.
In her own inimitable way she gives the vivid pen-pictures one
after another, all taken down with a marvellous impressionism
that preserves the society and surroundings of Vichy with the
faithfulness of a photograph and the added grace of the
selective artist-mind.

“* Wednesday, May 20, 1676

“Well, I have taken the waters this morning, my dear, and
how disagreeable they are! We goat six o’clock to the spring;
everybody is there, and one drinks and makes wry faces, for,
just imagine! the water is boiling hot and tastes strongly of salt-
petre! We walk backwards and forwards, we come, we go, we
promenade, we go to mass, we speak without hesitation of the
effect of the waters. All this we do till noon. Then we dine,
and after dinner we pay visits. To-day they came to see me.
Madame de Brissac played at omére with Saint-Hérem and
Plancy; the Canoness and I read Ariosto; she is fond of
Italian, and seems to like me very much; some girls of the
neighbourhood came with a flute, and danced a Jdourrée
delightfully. At five o’clock we take a walk in a delightful
country, at seven we eat a light supper, and at ten we go

to bed.”

A few days later she continues the description—

“To-day I began the pump operation, and it is not a bad
foretaste of purgatory. The patient is quite naked, in a little
underground room where there is a tube of hot water whicha
woman directs wherever you wish. Behind a curtain is a person
who sustains your courage for half an hour. A physician of
Ganat fell to my lot; a very worthy man, who is neither a quack
nor a bigot ; I shall keep him though it cost me my cap, for the
doctors here are unbearable, and this man amuses me; he has
wit and honesty, and knows the world. He talked to me the
whole time I was under torture. Just think of a spout of water

18
274 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

pouring over one or other of your poor limbs! It is first applied to
every part of the body to rouse the spirits, and then to the affected
joints; but when it comes to the nape of the neck, the heat
produces such a surprise that it is impossible to describe it,
However, it is necessary to suffer, and we do suffer, but we are
not quite scalded to death; and we are then put into a warm bed,
where we perspire profusely, and in this way we are cured. It is
like taking a new lease of life and health, and if I could only see
and embrace you once more, with a heart overflowing with
tenderness and joy, you would perhaps again call me your
bellissima madre, and I should not give up the title of mére-beauté
with which M. de Coulanges has honoured me.”

At Vichy Madame de Sévigné sees daily yet another of those
charming beauties who some ten years before had danced in
the famous dadllet royal with her daughter. The Duchesse de
Brissac was then Mademoiselle de Saint-Simon, and in the
intervening years she had evidently learned how to use her
beautiful eyes, and to display to the greatest advantage all her
indisputable charms. Seeing this young beauty of the Baths,
with her train of followers, the Marquise expressed a light
regret that her daughter took no pains “to retain her power of
making conquests,” but at the same time she is amused and
scornful at Madame de Brissac’s transparent artifices to attract
admiration.

“ Madame de Brissac was ill to-day, and remained in bed, with
her hair dressed so beautifully, and looking so handsome, that
she was fit to turn everybody’s head. I wish you could have
seen how prettily she managed her sufferings, her eyes, her arms,
and her cries, with her hands lying helplessly on the quilt, and
looking for the sympathy she expected from all the bystanders. I
was quite overcome with tenderness and admiration as I watched
this little performance, and thought it so excellent that my evident
attention must have given much satisfaction. Just think, this
scene was played entirely on account of the Abbé Bayard, Saint-
Hérem, Montjeu, and Plancy! My child, when I remember with
what simplicity you are ill, and the calmness in your pretty face,
you seem to me a mere bungler! What a difference! I found
it very amusing.”

Almost every day the Marquise writes to her daughter of
DANCING SHEPHERDS AND SHEPHERDESSES 275

the society she is in. She describes Madame de Péquigny, the
mother of the Duc de Chaulnes, an old lady of seventy-three, |
who is persuaded by her physicians that if she takes exactly the
same remedies as Madame de Sévigné she will recover in the
same way. At which the other doctors laugh, and the Marquise,
conscious of being twenty years younger than Madame de
Péquigny, laughs also.

The invalids dine informally at each other’s houses, they
gamble a little, and Madame de Sévigné often reads Italian; but
what is most charming to the Marquise is the dancing, over
which she is quite enthusiastic.

“My knees are quite cured,” she tells her daughter, “and if I
could only close my hands I should be perfectly well... . What
most vexes me is that you cannot see the dourrées of this
country; it is the most astonishing sight. The peasants, both
men and women, keep time as truly as you do, with such light-
ness and agility that I am enchanted with them. I have a little
band of music every evening which costs a mere trifle, and it is
an absolute joy to see the last of the shepherds and shepherdesses
of Lignon dancing in these lovely groves and meadows. It is
impossible not to wish you were here, wise as you are, to witness
these charming follies.”

Then she gives one other brilliant little glimpse of Madame
de Montespan, who is just going away from the neighbourhood
to join the King.

“ Madame de Montespan set out last Thursday from Moulins,
in a boat which was beautifully painted and gilded, and decorated
with crimson damask. It had been prepared for her by the
Intendant, who had caused it to be ornamented with a great
number of devices, and the colours of France and Navarre.
Nothing could have been more splendid, and it could not have
cost him less than a thousand crowns; but he was amply repaid
by a letter which the fair one wrote to the King on the occasion,
filled with a description of its magnificence. She would not be
seen by the women, but the men got a glimpse of her under the
shadow of the Intendant. She is gone down the Allier to meet
the Loire at Nevers, which is to have the honour of conveying
her to Tours.”

Some days after this, the Marquise, who was very satisfied
276 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

with the effect of the waters of Vichy, returned to Paris by way
of Vaux, where she expected to have a “couple of fresh eggs,” as
she says, and to see the beautiful fountains play. Foucquet's
son, however, had heard of her intended visit, and had prepared
a fine repast, but the fountains were broken and silent ; “exactly
the contrary to what I expected,” she remarks. In trying to
cure the remains of her rheumatism, the Marquise has revealed
a good many of the absurd practices of the doctors of the day,
who were all more or less charlatans, sometimes more ignorant
of the science of medicine than the people they doctored. They
bled their patients unmercifully, eight, ten, or twelve times, during
an illness; often in spite of the poor victims’ protests. When, in
the September of this same year, Madame de Coulanges was
very ill with fever, the Marquise, who frequently stayed with the
invalid, looked on with disgust at their barbarous methods of
healing, or rather killing. “The very sight of these gentlemen
is enough to deter us from putting our poor bodies in their
power,” she says. “I have thought of Moliére a hundred times
since I have witnessed these scenes. . . . However, notwith-
standing their vile treatment of her, I am not without hope that
our poor friend may escape.”

Madame de Coulanges did escape, almost miraculously, after
her sufferings at the hands of her physicians, and she and the
Marquise had a good deal of faith for some time in a handsome
quack doctor named Amonio. He always spoke in Htalian to
the Marquise, and told her amusing stories; which were two
great recommendations. “It was he who advised me to dip
my hands in the wine-tubs during the vintage,” she says; “and
after that to use the stomach of an ox; and lastly, if there be
occasion for it, the marrow of a deer with Hungary water.”

Corbinelli, her friend the philosopher, was undergoing a course
of “potable gold,” of which it was said the foundation was muriatic
acid, to which some grains of gold had been added, merely for
the sake of giving it an impressive name which might justify its
expense. But it was some years later, when the Marquise was
suffering from a bruise on her leg which persistently refused to
heal, that she tells her daughter of an extraordinary number of
remedies which sound ludicrous to-day. She happened to be at
Les Rochers, and near by, at Rennes, was a company of monks,
STRANGE MEDICINES 277

called the Capuchins of the Louvre, who were said to perform
miraculous cures. She sent for these Capuchins to attend her at
Les Rochers, but they sent word back that, owing to their enemies,
they dared not leave the monastery ; they would, however, be
happy to apply their remedies if she went to see them at Rennes,
The Marquise consequently set out for Rennes in a coach-and-
six, with her maid Marie and two footmen; and a few days after
she sends to her daughter an account of their methods of healing,

They first bathed the wound with “arquebusade water”;
then, she says, “I do not know whether the cure is per-
formed by sympathy, but the wound is gradually growing
better as the herbs with which it is dressed, and which are after-
wards buried, rot in the ground. I was inclined to laugh at this,
but the Capuchins tell me that every day they experience good
effects from this practice.”

When the wound apparently gets a little better, the monks
give her some “essence of emeralds” to apply to it, which had
probably nothing of emeralds about it except its name or its
colour, But these Capuchins knew that there was a good deal
inaname. For the Abbé’s indigestion they ordered “ powdered
crabs’ eyes” to be taken in a spoonful of milk. They also
dispense “sympathetic powder,” and a precious “ serene balsam,”
of which the Marquise can only send her daughter half a bottle,
as the Capuchins have no more of it.

Even the young Baron de Sévigné was affected with this
rage for taking the Capuchins’ medicines, and suggested to his
sister a remedy for M. de Grignan, her brother-in-law, who was
nearly a cripple with gout. “These viper medicines are ex-
cellent,” he writes, “they temper and purify the blood, they
refresh and invigorate, but they must be taken whole and not in
powder. Ask M. de Boissi to send for ten dozen for you. Take
two every morning, let their heads be cut off, then skin them
and cut them in pieces, and with these stuff a chicken. Con-
tinue this for a month at least, and if M. de Grignan is not
better, blame your brother.”

The prescriptions at this period for moral ills were, like
the remedies for physical ills, severe and brutal. When Madame
de Sévigné was back again in Paris, after her course of the
waters of Vichy, she found the whole town occupied with the
278 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

trial of the Comtesse de Brinvilliers, who had poisoned her
father, her brothers, and several other people. On the day of
her execution Paris apparently turned out em” masse to view the
terrible sight, and the Marquise, with her friend M. d’Escars,
went to the bridge of Notre Dame, where she waited to see the
cart pass. Never was Paris in such a commotion, never was
its attention so completely occupied by one thing, she says.
“At length all is over, la Brinvilliers is in the air; after her
execution, her poor little body was thrown into a large fire, and
her ashes were dispersed by the wind; so that now, whenever
we breathe, we shall inhale some particle of her, and by reason
of these atoms we may all be infected with the desire of poison-
ing, to our own astonishment. .. . At six o’clock she was carried
in a cart, with no other covering than one garment, with a cord
round her neck, to the Church of Notre Dame, to perform the
amende honorable; after which she was put again into the cart,
where I saw her, with a confessor on one side and the hangman
on the other. The sight made me shudder. She mounted the
ladder and the scaffold alone, barefooted, and the executioner
was a quarter of an hour dressing, shaving, and preparing her
for execution. This caused a great murmur among the crowd,
and was certainly cruel. The next day her bones were gathered
up as relics by the people, who said she was a saint.”
CHAPTER XXIX

The Marquise at Versailles—Madame de Montespan at cards with the King—
The Hétel de Carnavalet—The reckless extravagance of the Grignans—A clever
stepmother—A sarcastic letter

HE Marquise did not often go to the “wicked court,” as
she frequently called it to her daughter, but when she did
occasionally go she sent to the Comtesse in Provence the most
lively descriptions of what she heard and saw. For some years
the King had been enlarging and beautifying Versailles, and
though it was not yet finished, nor in its full splendour, it was
so different from the time when she and her daughter had gone
there together, that she gives the latter a minute and brilliant
description of what passes in this changed Versailles. Things
are no longer as they were when Mademoiselle de Sévigné
danced in the dallet royal, The young Queen, under the pro-
tection of Anne of Austria, had then a semblance at least of
power; Madame de la Valliére was her rival, it is true, but un-
recognised and ashamed of her position; and Mademoiselle de
Mortemart was a haughty young beauty, with no special position
at Court. Now, however, Louise de la Valliére is among the
Carmelites, hoping to atone for her sins by a life of rigid devo-
tion, while the brilliant brunette, Madame de Montespan, is the
veritable Queen of France, with the nominal Queen for her
admiring friend.
“ Paris, July 29, 1676

“We have here, my dear, a change of scene which will
appear as agreeable to you as it does to everyone else. On
Saturday I was at Versailles with the Villars, and this is what
happened. You know the ceremony of attending the Queen at
her toilet, at mass, and at dinner; but there is no longer any
necessity for being stifled wale their Majesties are at table,
280 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

for at three o’clock the King and Queen, Monsieur and Made-
moiselle, the Princes and Princesses, Madame de Montespan
and her train, all the courtiers, all the ladies, in fact, the whole
Court of France, go to that fine apartment of the King’s which
you know. It is furnished most beautifully, most magni-
ficently ; they do not know what it is to be inconvenienced by
the heat, and are able to pass from one room to another without
being crowded. A game of veverszs gives form to the assembly,
and settles everything. The King and Madame de Montespan
keep a bank together. Monsieur, the Queen, and Madame de
Soubise are at one table, Dangeau and Langlée, with their
companies, are at other tables. The baize is covered with a
thousand louis d’or; they use no other counters. I saw Dangeau
play, and I could not help observing how foolish we other people
appeared by comparison. He thinks of nothing but his game,
and gains where others lose. He seizes every advantage; he
profits by everything ; nothing distracts him, his close attention
defies fortune. Thus two hundred thousand francs in ten days,
a hundred thousand crowns in a month, are added to his book
of receipts. He said that I was his partner in the game, and as
a result I was seated agreeably and comfortably. I bowed to
the King in the way you taught me, and he returned my saluta-
tion as politely as if I had been young and pretty. The Queen
talked to me a long time about my illness, and she also spoke
to me of you. Monsieur de Lorges attacked me in the name
of the Chevalier de Grignan; and, in short, ¢u¢ti quanti, you
know what it is to receive a word from everyone who passes.
Madame de Montespan talked to me of Bourbon, and asked me
to tell her how I liked Vichy, and whether it did me any good.
She said that Bourbon, instead of curing her knee, had given
her a pain in both. I saw that her back was very flat, as
Madame de la Meilleraye had told me; but seriously, her figure
is as surprising as her beauty, she is not half so stout as she was,
and yet neither her complexion, eyes, nor lips have suffered in the
least. Her dress was entirely of French point-lace, her hair was
in a thousand curls, and the two from her temples hung very low
on the cheeks ; her head-dress was composed of black ribbons,
intermingled with the valuable pearls that once belonged to the
Maréchale de l’Hépital, some exquisite diamond pendants, and
A BRILLIANT COURT 281

three or four bodkins; in fact, she was a triumphant beauty, and
the admiration of all the foreign ambassadors.

“She has heard that people complained of her having pre-
vented all France from seeing the King; she has restored
him, as you see, and you cannot imagine the delight this
has occasioned, nor the splendour it has given to the Court.
This agreeable confusion without confusion of all the principal
people in the kingdom lasted from three o’clock till six. If any
couriers arrive, the King retires to read his letters and then
returns. Music is played continually, to which he listens, and
which has a very good effect. He speaks to those ladies who
are accustomed to have that honour. They leave off their game
at the hour I mentioned without the trouble of reckoning, because
they use no counters or marks, and the pools are of five, six, or
seven hundred louis d’or,

“ At six o'clock they took the air in caléches; the King and
Madame de Montespan, Monsieur and Madame de Thianges,
who had the good d’Heudicourt upon the box-seat, which to
her is a place of paradise. The Queen was in another with the
Princesses, and the whole Court followed in different equipages
according to their different fancies. They went on the canal in
gondolas, where they heard music; they returned at ten for the
comedy ; at midnight they finished with the medza noche ; and this
is how Saturday passed,

“If I were to tell you how many times people spoke to me
of you; how many inquired after you, how many asked questions
without waiting for an answer, how many I neglected to answer ;
how little they cared and how much less I did; you would
recognise that I have given a very natural description of the
iniqua corte. However, it never was so agreeable, and everyone
wishes it may continue.”

Madame de Sévigné for many years cherished the hope that
M. de Grignan might some day obtain a place at Court; but the
Comtesse was not desirous of returning to Paris to live. She
had known the Court well, from the time that, as a girl of sixteen,
she had been taken there by her mother, till she married, at the
age of twenty-three ; and she well knew its intrigues, its jealousies,
its falsities, and the worth of its most brilliant successes. Some-
282 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

times she vexed her mother by declaring that she preferred her
position as wife of the Vice-Governor of Provence,and undoubtedly:
she was of infinitely more importance there, where she was
received like a queen whenever she went to the States with her
husband to the cities of Aix, Marseilles, or Lambesc. When
the Marquise visited her daughter, she was obliged to confess
that life could not be pleasanter anywhere than in the beautiful
Chateau de Grignan, where, besides the family of the Comte and
Comtesse, there were relatives of M. de Grignan in the neighbour-
hood, and a constant succession of pleasant guests.

Madame de Sévigné’s chief complaint against Providence
was that she and her daughter were obliged to live so far apart
from each other. “Search the Court,” she says, “and you will
not find a mother who loves her daughter as I love you, and is
compelled to live away from her.” The obvious solution of the
difficulty would have been for the Marquise to have shut up her
house in Paris, and to have gone to live at the Chateau de
Grignan, But here came the question of her duty to the Bien-
Bon ; and, just as she had stayed in Paris to nurse her aunt, the
Marquise de la Trousse, she now felt it her duty to make her
home with the Abbé as long as he lived, though her heart was
always yearning to be with her daughter. In 1676, Madamede
Grignan stayed for a year with her mother, and the following
year, when Madame de Sévigné thought of moving to a larger
house, so that Madame de Grignan might have more room and
conveniences for her household on her next visit, she heard of
the Hétel de Carnavalet, a large and handsome mansion in
the Marais quarter, which they agreed to take jointly; and
d’Hacqueville, the always good and obliging d’Hacqueville, was
commissioned to secure it. “I think it will be equally convenient
for both of us,” the Marquise tells her daughter, “as well as
saving a great deal of trouble in looking farther. People who
live in the same house have certain hours morning and evening,
that are lost in the hurry and bustle of visits. We shall be very
well accommodated there; and nothing looks better, or is more
economical for us, than to live in the same house.”

The Hotel de Carnavalet is still standing, in good repair, and
is one of the few large mansions of that district that have been
spared in a practically unchanged condition.. It is now the
AGULING,A unos
IWVIVAVNUVOD Ad TALOH aHI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
THE HOTEL DE CARNAVALET 283

Municipal Museum of Paris, but it is not difficult to imagine all
the memorials of bygone Paris swept away, and the households
of Madame de Sévigné and of Madame de Grignan installed in
its rooms. One “cabinet” on the first floor is still pointed out
as that belonging especially to the Marquise. It was here that
she wrote her letters ; on the wall is Mignard’s beautiful portrait
of her daughter, and another of herself; and the adjoining room
is said to have been occupied by her daughter, so that these two
had the delight of frequent and uninterrupted intercourse. The
ground-floor was reserved for Monsieur de Grignan and his two
daughters by his first wife, the young girls who till then had
been educated in a convent in Paris; there was also an appar-
tement for the Bien-Bon ; and as one wanders from room to room
of the mansion, one understands how even the large, combined
households could be accommodated without the least crowding.

The Hotel de Carnavalet is eloquent of the sixteenth century,
when it was built. There are fine spacious rooms, some of which
have big oaken rafters; the fireplaces are cavernous, some of the
floors are of stone, and there is one, at least, of the charming old
wooden staircases, with wide shallow steps, in short easy flights,
that were there in the time of the Marquise. The exterior, too,
is very handsome, and of a style unusual in French architecture.
There are fine sculptures, said to be by the famous Jean Goujon ;
and the building has such a magnificent effect from the court-
yard, that one can quite readily enter into the satisfaction of the
Marquise at having secured such a handsome and convenient
dwelling.

“It is an admirable place,” she tells her daughter; “there
is room for all of us, and it isin a healthy situation. As one
cannot have everything, we must be satisfied without parquet
floors, and the small mantelpieces that are now so fashionable.
But we shall at least have a fine courtyard, a large garden, and
be in the best quarter of the town.”

How that last little phrase of satisfaction reminds us of the
inevitable ebb and flow of fashion as Time silently and relent-
lessly pursues its work of eternal change! The Hétel de
Carnavalet is now in the midst of a congeries of old-world, evil-
smelling streets, in whose decayed and rickety tenements the
poorest citizens of Paris seek a shelter, a terra incognita to most
284 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

of those who live in the now fashionable parts of the town,
But we know that it was a “select neighbourhood ” in the seven-
teenth century. The great Hétel de Lamoignon, now a factory,
is only a few paces away; and the Place Royale, or rather the
Place des Vosges, may be seen from its windows; and in
Madame de Sévigné’s day the brown, narrow streets were brilliant
with the life and colour, the comings and goings of the fashion-
able world: sumpter-mules, litters, negro pages carrying the
trains of Mesdames the wives of men of the law; big glass
coaches conveying beauties and their cavaliers to or from Court
gaieties ; flambeaux, lantern-bearers, men of the watch; with the
under-current of clamorous street-hawkers, artisans, and the
loathsome beggars whose haunts were near-by in that dreadful
stronghold of thieves and mendicants and street-assassins, the
rue des Francs-Bourgeois.

In the early summer of 1677, Madame de Sévigné, whose
hands were not yet quite free from rheumatism, again visited
the baths of Vichy, and on her return to Paris she went to the
house of the Coulanges, where she stayed while her people
were moving into the Hétel de Carnavalet. Emmanuel de
Coulanges gives a brilliant little description of his cousin, who
had evidently benefited by the waters. The Marquise was
then just over fifty,and was said by others, as well as her
cousin, to be still very handsome.

“We have her back at last, that incomparable mére-beauté,’
he writes, “she is more incomparable, and more beautiful than
ever. Do you think that she was tired when she arrived? Do
you think that she stayed in bed to rest? Nothing of the kind,
She did me the honour to alight at my house, looking hand-
somer, younger, more radiant than I can describe; and though
since then she has been continually occupied, this does not
injure her health in the least. As for her mind, it is with us,
only to talk of that rare Comtesse in Provence.”

All October, Madame de Sévigné was eagerly preparing the
rooms of the Carnavalet mansion for her daughter, whom she
was expecting on a visit in November. She tells her she need
not bring any tapestries with which to decorate the rooms, as
she has sufficient. She mentions, too, that the house is in such a
state of chaos that she was obliged to receive the Princesse de
AN OVER-ANXIOUS MOTHER 285

Tarente and the Rochefoucaulds in the courtyard, on the pole
of her carriage,

When the Comtesse did arrive, early in November, the joy
of welcoming her was mingled with much grief to see her
daughter so thin and delicate. The Comtesse intended to stay
a year with her mother, but when, after having been away from
her husband a year and a half, she declared she must go, the
Marquise complained almost querulously to Bussy, “I wish my
daughter could stay with me all the summer; I think it would
be good for her health, but she reasons somewhat severely, and
prefers her duty to her life.” As usual, however, the Marquise
gained her point, and, notwithstanding the natural objections
of the Comte de Grignan, and her daughter’s ideas of wifely
duty, the Comtesse was induced to stay till September 1679, an
almost two years’ separation from her husband.

Strangely enough, the mother who always wanted to have
her daughter with her, and the daughter who loved her mother
with more than ordinary filial affection, did not always agree
very well when they were together. The very excess of
Madame de Sévigné’s love made her over-anxious concerning
her daughter, it caused her also to shrink from a hasty word, or
to be wounded to the heart by some unconscious or thoughtless
remark ; and then there were tears, reproaches, repentance, and
reconciliation. The Comtesse, whose nature it was to be much
more reserved, much less expansive in the expression of her
affection, frequently thus grieved her mother, though one
cannot believe that she was entirely to blame. Charles de
Sévigné on one such occasion, when the mother and daughter
had so jarred on each other that it had seriously affected the
latter’s health, wrote these kindly, sensible words, which really
contained a lesson to both. While he was an invalid, home
from the army with a wound in his heel, he described to his
sister the care he and his mother took of each other, without
either inflicting the least suffering, or wounding unconsciously
by an exaggerated affection.

“ We take care of each other,” he says. “ We allow ourselves,
however, an honest liberty ; no little, womanish remedies. ‘You
seem to be in good health, my dear mother. I am delighted to
see you so well. You slept well last night? How is your
286 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

head? No giddiness? God be praised. You must go out
to-day; go to Saint-Maur; sup with Madame de Schomberg;
take a walk in the Tuilleries, you have nothing to prevent you.
I give you full liberty to do as you please. Will you have
strawberries or tea? Strawberries are best... . Adieu, my
dear mother; my heel is painful. I shall stay with you from
twelve till three, and then we can each do as we wish.’ This,
my dear sister, is the way in which reasonable people behave.”

There were, however, more than imaginary troubles hanging
over the Grignans, and, by reflection, over the Marquise, for
ever since their marriage in 1669 the Comte and Comtesse had
been living at a ruinously extravagant rate. They had gambled
from the beginning, and Madame de Sévigné was constantly
warning them of what the result would be. “My hair stood on
end,” she exclaimed, “ when the Coadjutor told me that the other
day at six he saw M. de Grignan playing at oca! What
madness! In the name of God, do not allow it.”

Play, however, was only one item, though not a small one,
in their expenses. M.de Grignan, aided by his brothers, had
been making additions and improvements to the Castle, and in
answer to one of her daughter’s letters, Madame de Sévigné
gives a glimpse of the luxury and ostentation which kept the
Grignans for ever on the verge of bankruptcy.

“You describe Grignan to meas being surprisingly beautiful ;
well, am I to blame when I say that M. de Grignan, with all his
mildness, does exactly as he pleases? In vain we cried out
‘Poverty.’ The furniture, pictures, and chimney-pieces, all went
on at the same rate, and I do not doubt that everything is as
complete as possible. That is not what we object to, but where
did he find the money for this? He certainly must study the
black art!”

It seemed impossible for these extravagant people to
economise in anything. They kept fifty servants, and, says the
Marquise, “ we had some trouble in counting them all”; and even
on those days when they were dining quietly, a hundred people
sat down to dinner! The only economy they practised was
apparently that of placing their poor baby Blanche in a convent
to save her dower ; and had it not been for Madame de Sévigné’s
repeated persuasions, the charming little Pauline would have
A CLEVER STEPMOTHER 287

been sacrificed also. But the Marquise, who pleaded so success-
fully for one of her little granddaughters, had nothing to say
except in approval when Mademoiselle de Grignan, the eldest
daughter of the Comte, was declared to have a “vocation” for
the religious life,

The two demoiselles de Grignan had each inherited large
fortunes from their mother, who had been a daughter of
Madame de Rambouillet. But during their minority their
father, who was always plunged in debt, had borrowed large
sums from their inheritance, and as they grew up it probably
began to be a disturbing question as to how this money was to
be refunded. When the eldest, Colette, as they called her,
showed signs of a “vocation,” it seemed to those so nearly
concerned a particularly lucky stroke of fortune. When she
eventually decided to live the life of a nun at the Feuillantines,
she gave all her possessions to her father; and to her sister,
Mademoiselle d’Alerac, who, her mother’s family thought,
should naturally have profited by the elder’s renunciation, she
gave nothing.

This is the most unfortunate episode with which Madame
de Sédvigné was ever connected. She is hardly her own
upright, honest self on the occasion. Her love for her
daughter so blinded her that she actually boasted of Madame
de Grignan’s influence in bringing this affair to such a successful
issue. ‘“ My daughter,” she says, “has so effectually contributed
to this little manceuvre, that it affords her a double satisfaction.
The Chevalier de Grignan has also done marvels.” When,
some years later, she blamed herself for calmly looking on at
wrong-doing by those she loved, when she should have protested,
was she thinking, one wonders, of how Mademoiselle d’Alerac
was despoiled of her natural inheritance? The cynical Bussy,
who could analyse so clearly the interested motives of others
by reason of his own baseness, was lightly ironical on the
occasion, and even gives Madame de Grignan the credit,
which she. may not have deserved, of fostering the religious
aspirations of her stepdaughter.

“You have given me much pleasure, my dear cousin,
by telling me of the care the Belle Madelonne has taken to
inspire noble sentiments in her stepdaughter, and the happy
288 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

results of her efforts. I am not surprised, for is it possible to
refuse anything to Madame de Grignan? I am delighted, and
so also is my daughter, who adds that God has granted her a
great favour in not having given her such a stepmother, for,
had this been the case, she would, without doubt, now be in a
convent, and for that she feels very little inclination.”

And for once it is possible to approve cordially of the
Comte’s ironical comments.
CHAPTER XXX

The Marquise visits Les Rochers with the Bien-Bon—The rough roads of
Brittany—Madame de Grignan comes to Paris for a long stay—Company at the
Hétel de Carnavalet-—The marriage of Charles de Sévigné—The death of the Bien-
Bon in 1687

HE rising in Brittany in 1675 had been a disastrous affair
for the province, and in the years that followed, the
Marquise, like other landowners, found incredible difficulty in
collecting her rents and other dues ; consequently, in 1680, the
good Abbé de Coulanges, who had watched over her interests
so long, decided that her presence at Les Rochers was
absolutely necessary if she meant to recover what was due
to her. The Marquise was now beginning to find that she
was considerably less wealthy than formerly. Owing to bad
times her property had yielded much less, while both her son
and her daughter, in their thoughtless extravagance, had made
frequent calls on their mother’s purse. The Abbé, who was
then seventy-three, set out from Paris with Madame de Sévigné
in May, and as they travelled from one estate to another they
found her affairs in terrible confusion. The Marquise, in a
letter to her daughter from Nantes, gives a little idea of the
miserable state into which things had fallen.

“I am here,” she says, “in the midst of the worry of the
accounts for nineteen years, which my son had merely glanced
over. They try to make some of my letters pass for receipts ;
it is pitiful to see the mean subterfuges of a bad debtor. We
are going to settle everything. We hope to recover certain
fines from some lands belonging to us, but we want two
thousand francs immediately. We have plenty of advisers;
the only thing that vexes me is being obliged to distress any-
one. But:I am playing a desperate game, and when I play
at drowning and ask who shall be drowned, M. de la Jarie or

19
290 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

myself, I say, without hesitation, M. de la Jarie, and that gives
me courage.”

It was a rather melancholy journey for the Marquise, and
it must have been exceedingly painful to the Abbé de
Coulanges, with his positive passion for finding and keeping
accounts in good order. The Marquise puts some of her
melancholy into another letter, written at Nantes on her
way to Les Rochers. “I was yesterday at Buron, and came
here this evening. I thought I should have wept when I
saw the desolation of the place. Those woods used to be the
oldest in the world, and my son, in his last journey here,
caused the trees to be felled; he even wished to sell a little
copse which was the greatest ornament that remained. He
received four hundred pistoles for this, of which not one penny
remained a month after. It is impossible not to be annoyed
with him ; he has found out the art of spending a great deal of
money without making any display; of losing without playing;
of paying his debts without discharging them. In peace or war
he is for ever demanding money; he is a perpetual drain, and
what he does with his money I cannot think, for he seems to
have no particular fancy for anything. But his hand is a
crucible in which money melts.”

The Marquise had, however, recovered from this sad mood
by the time they reached Les Rochers, for on the 31st of May,
the morning after her arrival, she gives her daughter a very
gay description of the difficulties they found in traversing the
four short miles between Vitré and Les Rochers. The Duc de
Chaulnes had been making good roads between Rennes and
Nantes, but in the less frequented ways, heavy rains made
travelling in the country a serious business, as the Marquise and
her uncle proved.

‘Les RocHers, May 31, 1680

“We arrived at Rennes on the Eve of Ascension Day, and
that good Marbceuf was fit to devour me, and greatly wished me
to stay at her house, but I would neither sup nor sleep there.
The next day she gave me a grand breakfast-dinner, at which
the Governor, and every person of quality in the town, came to
see me. We set out again at ten o’clock, though everyone said
there was plenty of time, for the roads were ‘just like this
ROUGH ROADS IN BRITTANY 291

room,’ which is always the comparison; but the roads were so
much ‘like this room’ that we did not get here till midnight;
and all the time were nearly up to our axle-trees in water.
From Vitré here, a road which I have travelled a thousand
times, the place was entirely unrecognisable. The causeways
were impassable; the ruts were sunk to a frightful depth; the
little inequalities in the road were higher and deeper than they
were; and therefore, seeing that we could no longer find our
way, we sent to Pilois for help. He soon came, bringing with
him about a dozen country-men, some of whom held up the
carriage, while others went in front with wisps of lighted straw,
and all talking in their Breton jargon, which made us fit to die
with laughing. By the help of that illumination we arrived here,
our horses jaded, our people dripping with water, our carriage
broken, and ourselves tired out.”

While the Marquise was at Les Rochers, engaged with the
Abbé in the sorry business of trying to get her arrears paid,
she took her usual walks among her avenues and woods, and,
as always, was thinking of her daughter. This time she was
indulging in a pleasant little day-dream. The young Duc de
Vendéme, now grown to manhood, talked of taking up his
position as Governor of Provence, and M. de Grignan was
making arrangements for resigning the office of Vice-Governor,
which he had held with so much magnificence and expense for
ten years. Madame de Sévigné was delighted at the prospect.
After this long period of waiting it now seemed probable that
she would at last have her dear daughter back again with her in
Paris. There was the serious question of an appointment for M.
de Grignan, it is true; but when, while at Les Rochers, she heard
of the death of Sanguin, the chief maztre-ad’hdtel to the King, his
seemed to her exactly the post that would suit M. de Grignan,
with his good manner and imposing figure ; and, as she told her
daughter, “it was the only position in which they would be
able to re-establish their fortunes, and at the same time live
as well as the King.”

It was a charming prospect, for Madame de Sévigné had
not yet lost the hope of seeing her daughter again at Court,
and some day, perhaps, who could tell? Madame la Duchesse
292 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

de Grignan. It was nothing but a day-dream, however, for the
Comte de Grignan still kept his place as Vice-Governor of
Provence, though the Duc de Vendéme came that year of 1680
to open the States in person. One part of the dream came true,
nevertheless, for in November of that same year Madame de
Grignan came to stay at the Hétel de Carnavalet, and there
made her home for the next eight years, during which time
M. de Grignan came from Provence when he could be spared
from his duties as Vice-Governor. There were probably
various reasons for this arrangement. Madame de Grignan,
during her stay in Paris, went several times to Versailles, and
asked from the King—-and received—large sums of money for
the expenses which her husband had incurred in the King’s
service. It was probably, also, much less expensive for the
Comtesse to be living quietly at Paris with her mother, than to
be keeping up the ruinous state of Madame la Gouvernante de
Provence at Aix, Lambesc, Marseilles, or even in her own
chateau at Grignan. But whatever the reasons may have been,
Madame de Sévigné had an intense satisfaction in the arrange-
ment; and she herself writes how happy she felt in having the
daily delight of her daughter’s society. With this prospect so
near, she did not stay longer at Les Rochers than was necessary.
Her son Charles was in Brittany, but he was not often at Les
Rochers ; he was still living a life that was far from satisfactory
to his mother or profitable to himself. He was trying to sell
his commission, but his mother warned him that their circum-
stances would not allow him to sell it at a loss, There had
been several projects for his marriage, but they had all fallen
through, and the Marquise was no longer in a position to settle
him so advantageously, nor able to satisfy the demands of the
possible father-in-law, as she had been ten years before, at the
time of her. daughter's marriage.

She and the Abbé stayed for five months at Les Rochers,
and during this visit she had the words sol Deo honor et gloria
graven in letters of gold over the high altar of her chapel, words
which, as she remarked, would make no one jealous. It was a
kind of confession of faith, the result of her ripe understanding
and experience, for the absurd differences of Jansenists and
Jesuits revolted her wise heart and mind, and appealed to her
COMPANY AT THE HOTEL DE CARNAVALET 293

quick sense of humour, which so readily saw the weak side of
each. It was at this time she praised the Sisters of the Visita-
tion at Rennes for their single-minded piety, their good lives,
and their freedom from the grosser superstitions. “M. de
Grignan,” she wrote to her daughter, “ would call them Jansen-
ists, but, for my part, I call them good Christians.”

In October she returned to Paris and busied herself in
preparing her daughter's rooms. Madame de Grignan, so used
to every luxury in Provence, could not endure the thought
of the big, old-fashioned fire-places, nor the unfashionable
stone floors; and the Marquise before her departure from Paris
had arranged that these should be altered. “They are working
at your suite of rooms,” she writes; “everything is arranged ;
the partitions, the mantelpiece, the parquet of the bedroom,
and the windows”; and by the time Madame de Grignan
arrived in Paris at the latter end of November, everything in
her rooms was probably as nearly perfect as the loving care of
her mother could make it.

It is pleasant to know that for nearly four years, from 1680
to 1684, Madame de Sévigné enjoyed a period of almost un-
interrupted happiness with her daughter, and that the Hétel de
Carnavalet was a centre of much interesting society. The great
mansion was so well occupied by members of her family and
intimate friends, that, when she is writing to the President
Moulceau, she says she must go from apartment to apartment
to collect “kind remembrances” to send to him. In addition
to their own large family, there was the philosopher Corbinelli,
who often paid long visits, sometimes staying for a year at
atime. Mademoiselle de Méri, too, the daughter of her aunt
the Marquise de la Trousse, frequently had rooms at the
Carnavalet mansion; and there were, besides, almost daily
visitors driving into the great courtyard with a resounding
clatter and pleasant bustle. The Duc and Duchesse de
Chaulnes, who had had such a warm friendship for Madame
de Sévigné ever since they became so intimate at the Brittany
States in those bright days of 1671, were frequent visitors ;
and the ailing Madame de la Fayette, who loved the Marquise
better than anyone in the world, came often to see her dear
friend, who consoled and comforted her as well as she was
204 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

able after the death of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld ; the witty
and vivacious little Madame de Coulanges would bring the
latest story from Court, or the news that Madame de Maintenon
now stood better than ever with the King, who conversed with
her seriously every day for quite two hours! And this in-
telligence was of tremendous import to the Marquise and her
daughter, both of whom vaguely and vainly hoped so much from
favour at Court.

There were bright little suppers too, when the President
Lamoignon and his wife would step across from their own great
mansion, which was only a few paces away; when the witty
little Emmanuel de Coulanges would make the evening
brilliant with his jests and stories and sparkling repartee;
when the beautiful Comtesse would entertain the fashionable
young men from Court—and even now the hospitable mansion
is not so altered that one cannot picture its rooms aglow with
great fires on the cavernous hearths, and brilliant with candles
on festive evenings; the coming and going of guests, the stir of
lackeys and waiting-women; and, above all, the Marquise, still
the mére-beauté, with her gracious, cordial manner, her social gift
of making each of her guests feel happy and especially welcome,
and intensely happy herself because of the daily presence of
her idolised daughter.

In 1683, Madame de Sévigné experienced a fresh satisfaction
in hearing that her son Charles, who had left the army, and had
been for some time living in Brittany, was on the point of
marriage with a young lady of his own province, Mademoiselle
de Brehant de Mauron, the daughter of the Baron de Mauron,
conseiller au Parlement de Bretagne. The Marquise reveals a
good deal of her satisfaction in writing the news to her cousin
Bussy.

“My son is in Brittany,” she says, “and on the point of
marrying a young woman of noble family whose father is a
counsellor in Parlement, with an income of more than sixty
thousand a year. He gives his daughter two hundred thousand
francs; and, as times go, this is an excellent match. ... We
should never despair of good fortune. I thought my son’s
situation quite hopeless, after so many storms and shipwrecks,
without employment, and out of Fortune’s way ; and while I was
 

THE MARQUISE DE SEVIGNE
FROM A PORTRAIT AT VERSAILLES
CHARLES DE SEVIGNE’S MARRIAGE 208

indulging in these melancholy reflections, Providence had des-
tined for us such an advantageous marriage that I could not
have wished for a better. It is thus that we grope in the dark,
taking good for evil and evil for good in utter ignorance.”

There were some difficulties with the prospective father-in-
law. He knew that Madame de Sévigné had given more than
forty thousand crowns to her daughter since her marriage, in
addition to her wedding portion, and he now desired some
security that Charles de Sévigné should have fair treatment in
the matter of sharing his mother’s fortune. It was then that
the generous Marquise showed herself to be a good mére de
famille, by stripping herself of almost everything to ensure her
children’s happiness. She made over to her son the chief part
of her property to satisfy M. de Mauron’s demands, leaving her-
self only a very small life-annuity, in case the Baron should die
before she did. To her daughter she gave her castle of Bourbilly,
on account of what still remained unpaid of her dot; and this
good mother, who a few years ago had been so wealthy, had
now scarcely anything left of all her possessions.

All this had not been done without some irritation and ill-
feeling on both sides. M. de Mauron resented Madame de
Sévigné’s too evident preference for her daughter when it was
expressed by giving her material advantages over his future son-
in-law, and in downright Breton fashion he did not hesitate to
say so; at which Madame la Comtesse de Grignan declared
herself insulted; and the Marquise, whether in right or wrong,
was always on her daughter’s side, and had evidently shown
annoyance to the Baron, who, in spite of his failures in every
other direction, had always been such a loving and devoted son.
A letter to his mother on the occasion reveals something of the
friction that the marriage had caused.

“My heart is heavy when you speak of your room at Les
Rochers as your former room. Have you then given it up
entirely, my very dear Madame? Will you then have no more
intercourse with your son after having done so much for him?
Will you deprive him of your company, and punish him as if he
had failed in everything he owes you? My marriage could not
compensate for this misfortune, and I love you a thousand times
better than anything in the world, Write and tell me, I beg of
206 THE QUEEN vr LETTER WRITERS

you, something concerning this, for in truth my heart is so full,
that if there were not just now some people in my room I could
not refrain from weeping. Good-bye, my dear Madame; do:not
renounce your son ; he adores you, and wishes you all happiness
with as much sincerity as he hopes for his own salvation.”

Madame de Sévigné loved her son too well to renounce him,
but neither she nor his sister was present at the wedding, which
was quite an event in the neighbourhood. It was solemnised at
Rennes on the 8th of February 1684, and two days later the
young Baron and his wife drove to Les Rochers, with a procession
of carriages in which were a number of the bride’s friends
following them from Rennes. Many of the nobility in the
neighbourhood of Les Rochers came out to meet them on horse-
back or in carriages, and at the chateau they were received by
a thousand armed vassals, the honour that the Baron had missed
some twelve years before because of the Abbé’s forgetfulness.

In the September of that same year the Marquise paid a
visit to her newly-married son, taking with her, as usual, the
Bien-Bon, who never liked to be long away from his niece.
Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter her first impressions
of her daughter-in-law soon after her arrival. “We lead a very
dull life here,” she tells her; “my daughter-in-law has few
moments of gaiety; she is overwhelmed with the vapours, and
her expression changes a hundred times a day, yet she never
looks well. She is extremely delicate, and scarcely ever goes
out of doors; she is always cold, and by nine o'clock at night
she is exhausted.”

It was not an attractive portrait, but the Marquise could
never be long with anyone without drawing forth or discovering
their good points, and she soon began to find that this delicate,
cold, sad little wife was a very good woman, wishing to be loved
by her mother-in-law, and by the beautiful Comtesse of whom
she must have heard a great deal. She proved an excellent wife
for the Baron, and was so devout that, under her influence, his
thoughts turned to religion, and many years later they ended
their lives in a religious retreat in Paris.

After a year’s absence from her daughter, the Marquise
returned to the Hétel de Carnavalet again in 1685, and two
years later the good Abbé de Coulanges died at the age of
DEATH OF THE ABBE DE COULANGES 297

eighty ; and she writes to her cousin Bussy with grateful recol-
lection of the kindness, the good training, the tender care she
had received from him, ever since, on that fortunate day for her,
she became his ward.

“You know,” she says, “that I was under infinite obligations
to my dear uncle the Abbé. It was to him that I owed the
comfort and happiness of my life; it is to him you owe the
pleasure you have had in my society; but for him, we should
never have laughed together. You are indebted to him for all
my gaiety, my good-humour, my vivacity, the gift of sympathis-
ing with you, the intelligence which made me understand what
you had said, and what you were going to say; in short, the good
Abbé, in drawing me from the abyss in which I was left at the
death of M. de Sévigné, made me what I was, and what you have
seen me—worthy of your friendship and esteem. I draw a veil
over your wrongs ; they are indeed great, but I must forget them,
and tell you how keenly I have felt the loss of this beneficent
source of all the happiness of my life. He died after a fever of
seven days, like a young man with the most Christian sentiments,
which touched me deeply, for God has given me principles of
religion which made me able to view properly this last scene of
his life. His life had lasted for eighty years; he lived in honour,
and died as a Christian; God grant that we may do the same.
It was towards the end of August that I mourned his loss.
I should never have left him, had he lived as long as I myself,
but about the middle of September, finding myself only too
free, I determined to go to Vichy to cure my imagination, at
least, of a kind of vapours.”
CHAPTER XXXI

The young Marquis de Grignan at Philipsburg—Madame de Sévigné at the per-
formance of Esther by the young ladies of Saint-Cyr—Her last visit to Les Rochers—
The marriage of the Marquis de Grignan—The marriage of Pauline—The death of
Madame de Sévigné

OW that the good Abbé de Coulanges was dead, and the
Baron de Sévigné married, the Marquise was, if possible,
more than ever devoted to Madame de Grignan and her family.
Madame de Sévigné declared that she was “steeped” in Grignans,
and it is evident from her correspondence that the smallest event
that happened to any of the Grignans was full of interest for her,
even when it merely concerned the brothers or the sister of
her son-in law.

The year following the death of the Abbé de Coulanges,
Madame de Grignan left Paris after a stay of eight years, and
returned to her home in Provence, just at the time that her only
son, the young Marquis de Grignan, went to his first campaign.
Louis XIv, who for years had been making war on Holland and
other countries of Europe, often for mere vanity and the display
of his prowess, now found himself at war with all the neighbour-
ing countries. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes had
aroused much indignation, and the valiant Prince of Orange was
taking up the cause of the Protestants,

Louis Provence, the young Marquis de Grignan, was only
sixteen, but boys as well as girls began life early in those robust
days, and his mother had carefully chosen and equipped a
company for him, in her own clever and determined fashion.
The little captain was sent to the siege of Philipsburg, and was
under fire just as the Comtesse was on her way to Provence, in
the October of 1688.

Madame de Sévigné, judging of her daughter’s anxiety by her

own, remained in Paris, and sent word to her daughter all the
298
A BRAVE LITTLE MARQUIS 299

news she could gather of the young Marquis, and every detail
that she heard from others of what was passing in the camp;
and in answer to her daughter’s overwhelming maternal fears,
she tells her that “all the good women of Paris who have
husbands, brothers, sons, cousins, or what you please, engaged in
the same war, eat, drink, laugh, sing, visit, chat, reason, and hope
soon to behold again the objects of their affection.”

This is the example that she wishes her daughter to follow,
instead of brooding in melancholy loneliness over the thought of
the dangers to which her son may be exposed; but even while she
sends this bracing advice, she tries her utmost to relieve her
daughter’s anxiety. Indeed, Madame de Coulanges declared
afterwards that the Marquise slept at the post, so as to get the
earliest news possible to send to her daughter.

Her letters during this period of anxiety are not brilliant,
but she has never written anything more tender, or shown herself
more lovingly eager to give strength and courage and consolation
to that other mother away in Provence, whose heart is torn with
anxious fears, whose only desire just now is for tidings of her
son; whose one absorbing thought is whether he is safe. The
Marquise gives very little of the news she usually sends; there
is no brilliant gossip from Versailles; and once, when she has
written a few words about English affairs, she says with the
intuition of her own loving heart, “You do not listen to me;
you are thinking only of your child.”

Fortunately the suspense was not long, as on the 30th of
October Philipsburg was taken. Madame de Sévigné, immedi-
ately on hearing the news, wrote joyfully to her daughter,
beginning her letter, “ Philipsburg is taken and your son ts safe.
I have only to turn this phrase in twenty different ways for I do
not intend to change my theme. Your son is safe and Philipsburg
is taken. Sleep then, my dear one, sleep soundly on this
assurance. If you are covetous of grief, as we used to say, seek
another cause for it, for God has given you back your dear son.”

The little captain came back to Paris, and the news had to
be sent to his mother that he had a slight wound, and, knowing
the black “dragons” of fear and apprehension that will assail her
daughter, she makes as light as possible of the affair. It is a
mere bruise, she says, but she explains that it has brought this
300 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

young hero into such notice at Versailles, that Madame de la
Fayette declared that “it was a thing to be bought if money could
procure it” ; while Madame de Maintenon, when talking to the
Chevalier, who said it was nothing, replied, “Monsieur, it is better
than nothing.”

Then she describes his reception at Versailles; but her
letters, however delightful they may have been to the fond
mother who received them, are scarcely so interesting to us.
There is a deeper interest and significance attached to her
frequent mention of the little sister Pauline, who for eight years
had been in a convent while her mother was away in Paris at
the Hétel de Carnavalet, the big house where she would have been
warmly welcomed by her affectionate grandmother if her mother
had allowed her tocome, When Madame de Grignan returned
to Provence, the Marquise continually asked about Pauline, and
to the mother’s cold complaints about her temper and little
girlish faults, the grandmother sends the sagest advice, the most
loving wisdom, under which one divines the fear that the pretty
and clever little Pauline will perhaps be found to have a
“vocation” like her stepsister, or be immured without one, like
her sister Marie-Blanche ; quite evidently her fate hangs in the
balance, for the child has already expressed herself as willing to
obey her mother if she desires her to gointoaconvent. Almost
every letter mentions Pauline: “I love Pauline; you describe
her as pretty and good-humoured ; I can see her running every-
where and telling everyone of the taking of Philipsburg. Love,
love your daughter, my dear child; it is the most natural and
delightful occupation in the world.” Indeed, one can scarcely
doubt that Madame de Grignan, who was ready to sacrifice
everything that her son, the Marquis, might fitly carry on the
honour of the Grignans, would have placed Pauline in a
convent but for the constant and wise intervention of Madame
de Sévigné.

The year 1689 began pleasantly for the Grignans, for the
Comte de Grignan received the distinction of the Order of the
Holy Spirit, which, however,he was permitted to receive by proxy,
to spare the expense of a journey to Paris. The Marquise, in
sending him a little badge, a “Saint Esprit,” on the occasion,
writes cheerfully; but there is an undercurrent of pathos too,
RACINE’S ESTHER 301

when one remembers the beautiful gift of pearls that she had
been able to send to her daughter only a few years before.

“These are strange presents, a ribbon, a little dove, a trifle,
this is what we give when we have nothing left to give. I have
resigned all; I contemplated the effects and consequences, but
it did not shake my resolution, and I said to myself, ‘ Well, if I
am slighted or ruined, God may turn this ingratitude to my
advantage, and make it the foundation of my salvation’; and with
this thought I have never repented of what I have done, and
your friendship and tenderness make my life too happy.”

The following month Madame de Sévigné had her own
little distinction, an invitation to see the performance of
Esther, that play by Racine in which Ahasuerus and the
heroine are the King and Madame de Maintenon under a very
thin disguise. There were hundreds of people desiring invita-
tions to this celebrated performance; for was it not given by
the pupils of Saint-Cyr, the school that had been founded and
supervised by the most important lady in the land, Madame de
Maintenon? It was only a few years before, that Madame
Scarron used to sup with Madame de Sévigné every evening,
and to keep in her good graces talked continually to the
Marquise of her daughter, but she apparently had a very slight
remembrance of her former friendship, for it was Madame de
Coulanges who received her chief marks of favour. Madame
de Sévigné describes the evening to her daughter—

“We went on Saturday. We found places were reserved
for us, and an officer told Madame de Coulanges that Madame
de Maintenon had ordered a place to be kept for her next
herself ; you see what honour is paid to her. ‘You, Madame,’
said he, ‘may choose. I placed myself with Madame de
Bagnols in the second row, behind the duchesses, Maréchal de
Bellefond came, and sat on my right, and he and I listened to
the tragedy with an attention that was noticed, and said some
praises in a low voice that were very well chosen... . I was
delighted with the play, and so was the Maréchal, who left his
place to tell the King how much he was gratified, and that he
was seated next to a Jady who was worthy of the honour of
seeing Esther. The King came up to where we sat, and having
turned round, addressed himself to me: ‘I am told, Madame,
302 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

said he, ‘that the piece has given you satisfaction.’ I replied,
with perfect self-possession, ‘Sire, I am delighted beyond the
power of words to describe’ The King continued, ‘Racine
has great talents.’ I answered, ‘He has indeed, Sire, and so
have these young ladies; they enter into the subject as if it
had been their only occupation” ‘Ah, that is very true, he
replied, and then retired, leaving me the object of universal
envy. The Prince and Princess came and spoke a word to me;
Madame de Maintenon flashed upon me like lightning, and
then retired with the King. We returned at night with torch-
bearers, and I supped with Madame de Coulanges.”

Two months after this distinction, in April 1689, Madame
de Sévigné set out for Brittany on a last visit to Les Rochers.
She had no fine cavalcade of her own now; on her return from
her last visit she had been obliged to hire post-horses from
Mans, and even in Paris she was dependent on the kindness
of her friends. “I have no carriage now,” she wrote, “but I
am at the same time embarrassed with too many carriages”; the
carriages of her devoted friends, who were all so eager to offer
her the use of theirs.

The Duchesse de Chaulnes, who had a deep affection for
the Marquise, happened to be going to Brittany in April, and
suggested that she should travel with her. Madame de Sévigné
accepted the kind offer, and she and Madame de Carman, who
at the States in 1671 had been the “ Murinette beauty,” set out
with the Duchesse “in the best carriage, drawn by the best
horses, with a great retinue, caravans, outriders, and every
possible convenience, with every possible precaution.” They
stayed at Chaulnes for ten days, and then went on to Rennes ;
and the Duchesse was so charmed to have Madame de Sévigné’s
company, that the Marquise only reached Les Rochers after
a month of travelling from place to place in Brittany.

The Baron de Sévigné and his wife came for Madame de
Sévigné to Rennes, and carried her off to Les Rochers with much
delight at having her with them again. And the Marquise was
scarcely less happy at finding herself once more among those
gardens and avenues which had held so large a part in
her life; the Solitaire, the sunny Place de Coulanges, the
Place Madame, the Labyrinth, were all visited and inspected,
CARNIVAL AT LES ROCHERS 303

with the same fresh delight and tranquil happiness that she
always experienced amid the silence of this green retreat.

It was a very peaceful and serene existence that they all
spent at Les Rochers; her son and his wife were so devout,
that the Marquise declared she was the most wicked of the
three. They were not without their little innocent pleasures,
however ; they had visitors; they read books—neither Rabelais
nor the novels of Calprenéde now !—Nicole’s Essais, the Life of
Theodosius, and other devotional works; or they played cards ;
and one is sure that on Twelfth-night they had the usual
rejoicings. The Marquise gives a vivid little picture of how
they kept the Carnival ; it isa delightful peep across two centuries
into the simple pleasures of that day; it is the more idyllic and
charming when one thinks of the maskings in Paris, and the
extreme licence that was carried on under the disguise of the
loup and domino.

“Task Pauline,” writes the Marquise, “how she enjoyed her
Carnival.”

“ Last night, without any preparation, my daughter left us a few
minutes before supper, and immediately after, the servant who sets
the table entered, disguised very prettily, and told us supper was
ready. We went into the dining-room, which was brilliantly
illuminated, and found my daughter-in-law, in the midst of her
servants and ours, all in complete masquerade. Those who held
the basins, those who handed the napkins, all the officers, and all
the lackeys were masked, making a troop of more than thirty
people, all most amusingly dressed. We were so surprised at all
this, that it caused quite an outcry of laughter and confusion,
which lasted the whole of supper-time, for we did not know who
waited upon us. After supper, some music was provided, and
they all danced fasse-pied, minuets, couvantes, and country
dances. At length twelve o’clock struck, and Lent began.” A
Lent which they kept at Les Rochers by “eating bread-and-
butter strewed with fine herbs and violets.”

But Madame de Sévigné’s friends in Paris were anxious that
she should not spend another winter amid the cold and damps
of Brittany, and urged her to come back among them again.
Madame de la Fayette, who was weaker and more ailing than
ever, urged it especially ; and, yielding to the entreaties of her
304 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

friends, she left Les Rochers and joined her daughter in
Provence. To her cousin Bussy she writes: “When you see the
date of this letter, my dear cousin, you will take me for a bird.
I have passed courageously from Brittany to Provence. If my
daughter had been in Paris, I should have gone there; but as
she was spending the winter in this beautiful country, I deter-
mined to pass it with her, and to come and enjoy her beautiful
sunshine.” This was almost her last letter to Bussy, and she
says with a touch of sadness, “ Love me always; it is not worth
while to change after all these years.”

All that summer she stayed in Provence, happy in the
presence of her daughter, enjoying the company of the charm-
ing little Pauline, and appreciating the luxurious life at the
Chateau de Grignan ; which always seemed to her, in its magnifi-
cence, something like life in a fairy-tale, the more especially as
its grandeur rested on a foundation of debt which might at any
time give way and involve them all in ruin. At the end of 1691
they all returned to the Hétel de Carnavalet, where they spent
the next two years. Madame de la Fayette shed tears of joy at
seeing her friend again, the friend to whom she wrote with deep
emotion: ‘Believe me, you are the person in the world I have
most truly loved.”

Change and death had been busy among her friends for
many years; her later letters so frequently record the passing of
some old acquaintance. The good d’Hacqueville had gone long
before; the Duc de la Rochefoucauld; the Duc de Lude, who
had been her admirer in her brilliant youth; her uncle the
Cardinal de Retz; and now two others of the few that remained
were called away, the Comte de Bussy and Madame de la
Fayette. Both of these died in the same year, 1693, and
Madame de Sévigné’s letters are very sad as she writes her
tender reminiscences.

A few months after the death of Madame de la Fayette,
early in 1694, Madame de Grignan went to Provence to arrange
her son’s marriage, and the Marquise soon followed her daughter ;
her last journey to Provence, as it proved to be. The next year
was occupied with negotiations for the marriage of the young
Marquis de Grignan, whose mother was torn between the desire
of marrying her son into a family of high rank, and that of
PAULINE’S MARRIAGE 305

providing him a rich bride whose money should place the tot-
tering grandeurs of the Grignans on a more solid foundation:
“stones or gold,” as Madame de Sévigné expressed it.
Wisdom prevailed, and the young Marquis was married to
Mademoiselle Saint-Amand, the daughter of a financier, who
brought her husband a rich dowry: four hundred thousand
francs, and linen, dresses, laces, and jewels to the value of fifty
thousand francs.

The charming little Pauline had no such dower. Madame
de Sévigné prophesied truly when she said that Pauline’s wit
and beauty would serve for her dowry, and it was fortunate it
was so, for she had no other. The Comte de Simiane and his
family were more generous than was usual in French families,
“Nothing could be better,” wrote the Marquise, “ everything is
noble, convenient, and advantageous for a daughter of the house
of Grignan, who, in her husband and his family, have found
those who value her worth, her person, and her name, and care
nothing for her fortune.”

Pauline’s marriage was celebrated on the 29th of November
1695, a gloomy time of year, and under circumstances which
were still more gloomy, for her mother was too ill even to be
carried to the chapel of the Chateau de Grignan. The bride,
however, was not taken far away from home, for the estates of
the Simianes adjoined those of the Grignans.

Madame de Sévigné had been a tender nurse to her daughter
in her long illness, but, as she complained to Emmanuel de
Coulanges, it was wearing out her strength and endurance, “I
own to you, my dear cousin, that I am dying of this, and I am
hardly able to support all the bad nights that she causes me to

ass.”
: This was written in October, and though in the following
spring Madame de Sévigné seemed quite well, there is no doubt
that when she was stricken by the small-pox in April, her
strength had been so exhausted by her continual anxiety for
her daughter that the disease found her an easy prey. It is
sad to think of her lonely deathbed; she, who had loved her
daughter with such rare devotion, was denied that dear daughter’s
presence in those last mournful hours, Madame de Grignan
was in a room close by, but still dangerously ill, and unable to
20
306 THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

go to her mother; Charles de Sévigné was hundreds of leagues
away in Brittany ; and that bright spirit, which had so dreaded
the thought of death, was obliged to face it alone, without either
of her children to minister to her wants, or to sustain her
courage as she set out on the last drear journey. It is a satis-
faction to know, however, that, in spite of the terror which this
dreadful disease always caused, especially in those days when it
so frequently proved fatal, she was nursed with devoted care and
affection by Mademoiselle de Martillac, and Montgobert, one
of her daughter’s dependants, who is often mentioned familiarly
in the letters.

The Marquise died on the 17th of April 1696, at the age of
seventy, and her tombstone records that she received “all the
sacraments ” in her last hours; a fact that must have given much
solemn happiness to her devout mind. Her friends in Paris,
when they heard the sad news, “met together to weep.”
Madame de Chaulnes, Madame de la Troche, Madame de Coul-
anges, and others; and her frivolous cousin Emmanuel for once
wrote with a sad sincerity of his loss that is peculiarly touching
from such a gay society trifle. M. de Grignan in reply wrote
to him a letter that, as it not only expresses his grief but
gives a few details of her illness as well, is one of the many
written on the occasion that is most worth quoting.

**GRIGNAN, May 23, 1696

“You, sir, can understand better than anyone the magnitude
of the loss we have sustained, and my just grief. Madame de
Sévigné’s merit was perfectly known to you. It is not merely a
mother-in-law that I regret, this name does not always com-
mand esteem, it is an amiable and excellent friend, and a
delightful companion. But it is a circumstance more worthy of
our admiration than regret, that this noble-minded woman con-
templated the approach of death (which she expected from the
beginning of the attack) with astonishing firmness and sub-
mission. She, who was so tender and timid respecting those
she loved, displayed the utmost fortitude and piety when she
believed that she ought to think only of herself ; and we cannot
but remark how useful and important it is to fill the mind with
sacred subjects, for which Madame de Sévigné appears to have
THE DEATH OF MADAME DE SEVIGNE _ 307

had a peculiar taste, by the use she made of these excellent
provisions in the last moments of her life. I relate these par-
ticulars to you, sir, because they accord with your sentiments,
and will be gratifying to the friendship you have borne for her
whom we lament, and at the same time my mind is so full of
them that it is a relief to me to find a man so willing to listen to
the recital, and to take pleasure in hearing it.”

Her daughter was overwhelmed with grief, and in a few
heart-broken sentences reveals how terribly she realised the
extent of her loss. To the President Moulceau she writes:
“What perfections did she not unite, to be to me in different
ways more dear and precious? A loss so complete and
irreparable does not dispose one to seek consolation except in
tears and lamentations. I have not the strength to lift my eyes
to the place whence comfort comes, I can as yet only cast them
around me, where I no longer see her who loaded me with
affection, and had no other care but to give me every day fresh
proofs of her love. You lose a friend of incomparable merit
and fidelity; and I, Monsieur, what do I not lose?”
INDEX

Adhémar, Frangois. See Grignan, Comte
de
—— Marie Blanche d’,
250-252
—— Pauline d’, 252, 258, 286, 300,

190, 217,

305

Albret, Chevalier d’, 81, 82, 84

Amonio, quack doctor, 276

Andilly, Arnauld d’, 138, 175,
210

Angennes, Angélique d’ (Comtesse de
Grignan), 40, 41, 150, 179

—— Julie d’. See Montausier, Mar-
quise de

Anjou, Duc d’. See Orléans, Philippe,
Duc d’

Anne de Bourbon.
Duchesse de

Anne of Austria, Queen Regent, 9, 15,
29, 33, 63, 64; and the Fronde, 66,
72 ; 86, 109, 133

Armauld, Abbé, 92, 151

Arpajon, Madame d’, 213-214

Artagnan, M. d’, 142, 145, 148, 149

189,

See Longueville,

Ballets at the Court, 155-159
Balzac, Jean L.G., 44, 45

Beaufort, Duc de, 51, 66, 67, 73, 170
Bellefond, Maréchal de, 301

Benserade, Isaac, 156-159
Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, 174, 215,

254

Bondi, Forest of, 15-17

Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 44, 212, 213

Bouillon, Cardinal de, 261, 263

Duc de, 68

Duchesse de, 67, 68

Bourbilly,' 10, 258, 295

Bouteville de Montmorency, Marquis,
I-7, 87

Brinvilliers, Comtesse de, 278

Brissac, Duc de, 106

Duchesse de, 157, 273, 274

Brittany, revolt in, 264-265; the States
of, at Vitré, 224, 227-246

Bussy d’Amboise, 5, 6

 

 

 

 

 

 

3°09

Bussy-Rabutin, Roger, Comte de, 3, 13,
24, 27; marriage of, 28; 33; and
Madame de Sévigné, 54~56, 74-78,
93-95, 98-103, 109-113, 124-129,
138-139, 160-168 ; and Madame de
Miramion, 56-60, 61, 62, 69, 71;
gives a féte in the Temple Gardens,
94-95; his Avstotre amoureuse,
128-129, 160-161, 166-167; and
Madame de Grignan, 154, 172, 180-
182; 288 ; death of, 304

Cadaval, Duc de, 203

Caderousse, Duc de, 175

Calprenéde, Seigneur de la, 182, 224

Candia, Expedition to, 184

Capuchins of the Louvre, 277

Carman, Madame de. See Murinais,
Mademoiselle de

Chabot, Henri de. See Rohan, Duc de

—— Mademoiselle de, 90

Chalais, Prince de, 5

Champmeslé, Mademoiselle, 215, 216

Chantal, Celse Bénigne, Baron de, 1-8,

10, If

Baronne de, I, 4-9

—— The Blessed (Jeanne Francoise
Frémyot), 7-12, 143

Chantilly, Féte at, 218-220

Chapelain, Jean, 14, 18, 22, 23, 46,

 

I

Gia ws King of England, 195

Chatillon, Duchesse de, 49, 52, 73, 86

Chaulnes, Duc de, 224; at the Brittany
States, 228-246; 264-265, 275,
290, 293

—— Duchesse de, at the Brittany States,
228-246 ; 293, 302

Chésiéres, M., 235, 242

Chevreuse, Duchesse de, 5, 49, 52, 73, 87

Mademoiselle de, 79, 80

Christina, Queen of Sweden, 76, 114-116

Clément, Pére, 57

Coétlogon, M. de, 234, 237

Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 131-132, 135,
140, 147

 
310

Condé, Henri, Prince de, 36, 43

—— Louis, Prince de (The Great Condé),
42, 58, 61, 62; and the Fronde, 65,
69, 72-73 3 75, 873 at the Battle of
Saint Antoine, 92; 95, 195; gives
a féte at Chantilly, 218-220

—— Dowager Princesse de, 41, 65, 72

Condom, M. de. See Bossuet

Conti, Prince de, 36, 43, 523 and the
Fronde, 67, 72; 96-97, 99

Corbinelli, Jean, 129, 164, 165, 276, 293

Corneille, Pierre, 174, 253, 254

Cornuel, Madame de, 45, 46, 47, 49

Coulanges, Christophe de, Abbé de Livry,
13-16, 24, 28, 85; and Ménage,
107-108 ; 126, 180, 221, 223, 238,
249, 256, 270, 282, 283, 289, 290,
292; death of, 296-297

— Emmanuel de, 18, 193, 221,
232, 249, 250, 254, 284, 294, 306

— Henriette de. See La Trousse,
Marquise de

—— Madame de, 257-259, 276, 294, 301,

02
— Marie de. See Chantal, Baronne
le

—— Philippe de, 4, 8, 9, 13

Cours-la-Reine, 51, 54

Créance, Comte de, 232, 233, 253

Dangeau, Marquis de, 280

Daughters of the Visitation of Saint Mary,
Order of, 12

Des Chappelles, M., 5, 6

Du Chastellet, Paul Hay, 29

Du Plessis Argentré, Mademoiselle, 153,
223, 270

Du Plessis-Guénégaud, Madame, 144,
146, 174, 175

Du Vigean, Mademoiselle, 42, 43

Elbceuf, Duc d’, 68

—— Madame @’, 261, 263

—— Mademoiselle d’, 158

Enghien, Duc d’. See Condé, Louis,
Prince de

Etauges, Comte d’, 176

Fiennes, Mademoiselle de, 212

Fiesque, Comte de, 74

Comtesse de, 47, 49, 87

Foire Saint-Germain, 50 :

Foucquet, Nicolas, 97-98 ; and Madame
de Sévigné, 111-112 ; 116-118 ; his
last féte at Vaux, 131-135; arrest
of, 135-136 ; Madame de Sévigné’s
letters to, 136-139; trial of, 140-
1503; 174

 

 

THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Fouesnel family, 225, 226

Fougéres, 53

Francis de Sales, Saint, 10-12, 143

Frémyot, Jeanne Frangoise, See Chantal,
The Blessed

—— President, 10, 11, 182

Fronde, The, 6, 62-74, 91, 92, 95, 105

Gévres, Duchesse de, 213, 214

Gondi, Paul de. See Retz, Cardinal de

Gondran, Madame de, 79, 80, 81, 83

Gourville, Sieur de, 218-220

Grignan, Comte de, 41; his first wife,
150; betrothed to Mademoiselle de
Sevigné, 176, 177; family of, 178;
marriage of, 179-181; appointed
Lieut.-General of Provence, 185;
letters of Madame de Sévigné to,
186-192; and Madame de Sévigné,
202-203 ; 283 ; extravagance of, 286;
receives the Order of the Holy
Spirit, 300; letter on Madame de
Sévigné’s death, 306

—— Comtesse de (Francoise Marguerite
de Sévigné), birth of, 33, 413
childhood of, 151-154; at Court,
1553; dances in the dallet royal, 157-
159; and her suitors, 169-170, 175-
176; and the King, 171-173;
betrothal of, 176-177; marriage of,
178-181; 183; remains in Paris
with her mother, 186; birth of a
daughter, 190; 193; goes to Pro-
vence, 202-205; character of, 206-
209; 214; at Marseilles, 226; birth
of a son, 248; letter of Emmanuel
de Coulanges to, 250; and her
daughter Blanche, 252; visits her
mother in Paris, 259, 282, 285;
birth of youngest son, 270; and her
step-daughter, 287; in Paris, 292;
returns to Provence, 298; and her
daughter Pauline, 300; in Paris,
304; returns to Provence, 304;
illness of, 305-306 ; on her mother’s
death, 307

Mademoiselle de, 287

—— Mademoiselle d’Alerac de, 287

—— Marquis de, 76, 298-300, 304-

 

395
Guirlande de Julie, La, 40

Hacqueville, M. d’, 92, 204, 258, 282, 304

Harcourt, Mademoiselle d’, 203

Harouys, M. d’, 232, 235, 237, 241, 242

ero Madame de Sévigné’s servant,
21

Henriette, Duchesse d’Orléans, 133, 1575
159, 171
INDEX

Hétel de Carnavalet, 282-284, 293, 296,
304
—— de Lamoignon, 284

James 11, King of England, 46

La Baume, Marquise de, 129, 160, 164

Lacger, M., 80, 81, 84

La Fayette, Marquise de (Marie de la
Vergne), 17, 19; her “ portrait” of
Madame de Sévigné, 25; 35, 46;
and the diamond earrings, 79-80;
86, 106; and Ménage, 108; 173-
175, 205, 213, 215; and the Duc de
la Rochefoucauld, 252-253; 257,
259, 293, 303; death of, 304

La Fontaine, Jean de, 98, 117-119, 169,
174, 214

La Grande Mademoiselle.
pensier

Lambesc, Madame de Sévigné at, 257

La Meilleraye, Maréchal de, 106-107

Lamoignon, Madame, 96

—— President, 294

La Mousse, Abbé de, 152, 171, 184, 217,
221; at Les Rochers, 224, 239,
248 ; 256

La Rochefoucauld, Duc de, 17, 46, 52,
67, 72, 174, 205, 217, 252-253, 304

La Sabliére, Madame de, 212

La Trousse, Marquise de (Henriette de
Coulanges), 85, 90, 103, 137, 138,
211, 255, 256

Lauzun, Duc de, 194, 196-201

Lavalée, Foucquet’s servant, 148, 149

La Valliére, Louise de, 133, 135, 158,
171, 172, 272, 279

Lavardin, Marquis de, 222, 224, 232,
235. 237

—— Marquise de, 22, 112

La Vergne, Marie de. See La Fayette,
Marquise de

L’Enclos, Ninon de, 74-77, 79; 115, 212,
213, 214, 215, 216

Lenet, M., 33, 70

Le Féron, President, 68

Lesdiguiéres, Duc de, 74, 122

Les Rochers, 29-32, 163, 237, 247-248,
302-303

Le Tellier, Michel, 147

Livry, the Abbaye de, 15-17 .

Abbé de. See Coulanges, Chris-

tophe de

Locmaria, Marquis de, 234, 237, 244

Longueville, Charles Paris, Duc de. See
Saint-Paul, Comte de

—— Duc de, 67, 68, 72

—— Duchesse de (Anne de Bourbon),
23, 40-42, 46, 65, 67, 68, 72

Loret, Jean, 73, 85

See Mont-

 

 

311

Louis x11, 4

—— XIV, 56, 121-122; at Vaux, 133-
136; 137, 140, 141, 147; and
Court Ballets, 155-159; and Made-
moiselle de Sévigné, 171, 172; and
la Grande Mademoiselle, 198-199 ;
at Chantilly, 218-220; 259, 280,
281, 301

Lude, Duc de, 52, 91, 304

Maintenon, Marquise de (Madame
Scarron), 74, 117, 137, 144, 172,
254, 258, 259, 204, 301, 302

Malicorne, 222, 249

Mancini, Mademoiselle de, 35, 109

Marie Thérése, Queen of France, 272,
279-281

Marigny, Jacques Carpentier de, 69, 90

Marseilles, 226, 256

—— Bishop of, 185, 190-192, 258

Marsillac, Prince de, See La Roche-
foucauld

Martillac, Mademoiselle de, 306

Maskers in Paris, 122-123

Mauron, Baron de, 294-295

Mademoiselle de Brehant de, 294

Mazarin, Cardinal, 63-65, 97, 116, 117,
131, 132, 141, 195

Ménage, Gilles, 14, 15, 18-22, 46, 78,
107-108, 137, 169

Méri, Mademoiselle de, 293

Mérinville, Comte de, 175

Miramion, Madame de, 57-60, 96

Moliére, Jean Baptiste Poquelin de, 20,
35> 118, 129-130, 134, 156, 172,
174, 254 i

Montausier, Marquis de, 40, 198, 259

Marquise de (Julie d’Angennes), 40,

 

 

97

Montbazon, Duchesse de, 73

Montespan, Marquise de, 157, 158, 172,
259, 271-272, 275, 279-281

Montglas, Madame de, 94, III, 112,
126, 128, 160

Montpensier, Duchesse de (‘* La Grande
Mademoiselle”), 39, 50, 52, 65, 86,
87, 92, 95, 112; projected marriage
of, 194-201 ; 213-214

Montreuil, Abbé de, 48, 53, 54

Mortemart, Mademoiselle de. See
Montespan, Madame de

Motteville, Madame de, 39, 64, 155, 175

Moulceau, President, 293, 307

Murinais, Mademoiselle de, 232, 233,
240, 244, 302

Nantes, Madame de Sévigné at, 289-290
Neuchéze, Jacques de, Bishop of Chalon-
sur-Sadne, 29, 61, 126, 164
312

Nicole, Pierre, 189, 222, 227, 303
Noirmoutier, Marquis de, 68

Orléans, Gaston, Duc d’ (** Monsieur”),
52, 65, 95, 195

—— Henriette, Duchesse d’, 133, 157,
159) 371 cat

—— Philippe, Duc d’ (‘‘ Monsieur”), 33,
122, 133, 158, 195, 280, 281

Ormesson, Olivier d’, 29, 62, 144, 145,
147, 148

Paulet, Mademoiselle, 43

Pecquet, Jean, 148, 149, 218

Pellison, M., 118, 137

Philipsburg, Siege of, 298-299

Pignerol, 149, 150, 201

Pilois, Madame de Sévigné’s gardener,

_ 223, 225, 241, 248, 249, 291

Pisani, Marquis de, 37

Place de Gréve, 2, 3

des Vosges. See Place Royale

—— Royale, 4-6, 8

Pomenars, Marquis de, 232, 233, 239,
241, 244, 253

Pommereul, President de, 74

Pomponne, Marquis de, 138, 140, 142,
148, 151, 152, 174, 175, 260

Pont-Gibaud, M., 1, 2

Précieuses, Les, 35, 129-130

 

Rabutin, Guy de, 10

Hughes de, 33, 56, 94 :

Roger de. See Bussy-Rabutin,

Roger, Comte de

Rabutin-Chantal, Christophe de, 10

Racine, Jean, 174, 215, 301

Rambouillet, Hétel de, 22, 23, 35-39,
49, 41-46, 130

— Marquis de, Charles d’Angennes,

 

 

37

—— Marquise de (Catherine de Vivonne),
22, 34, 36-44, 130, 287

Rennes, 265 ; Capuchins of, 277

Retz, Cardinal de (Paul de Gondi), 28,
33, 525 66, 67, 72-74; 95; 97; 105-
108, 179, 254, 304

Rhé, Isle of, 7

Richelieu, Duc de, 1, 3, 5-7, 43, 45

Rohan, Duc de, 46, 88-91, 224, 230, 237

—— Duchesse de, 88-91, 232, 235

Romilly, Abbé de, 80

Rossan, Marquis de, 158, 159

Ruelles, 38

Saint-Amand, Mademoiselle, 305
Saint-Antoine, Battle of, 92, 195
Saint-Germain, 65

Saint-Hérem, M., 256, 273, 274

 

THE QUEEN OF LETTER WRITERS

Saint-Paul, Comte de (Duc de Longue-
ville), 68, 170, 184, 196, 250

Saint-Pavin, Denis, 18, 53, 169

Saint-Simon, Mademoiselle de. See
Brissac, Duchesse de

Sainte-Geneviéve, procession of, 91-92

Sainte-Héléne, M., 147, 148

Sarrazin, Jean Francois, 44

Scarron, Madame. See Maintenon,
Marquise de

Schomberg, Henri, Comte de, 4

Scudéry, George de, 45

Mademoiselle de, 39, 45, 46, 117-

120, 130, 137, 144, 146

Segrais, Jean Regnault de, 39, 53

Séguier, Chancellor, 115, 136, 142, 143

Sévigné, Charles de, 30; birth of, 55;
76, 151-152; character of, 182-
183; goes to Candia, 184; his
dissipated life in Paris, 211-212,
214-217; at Les Rochers, 222-224;
226, 265; and his mother’s illness,
269-270; 277, 285, 290, 292;
marriage of, 294-296 ; 302-303

—— Francoise Marguerite de, See
Grignan, Comtesse de

— Henri, Marquis de, 28; marriage
of, 29; 33; neglects his wife, 49;
53; in Normandy, 68; 74; and
Ninon de l’Enclos, 75, 76, 77, 793
leaves his wife at Les Rochers, 78;
and Madame de Gondran, 79, 80,
81; killed in a duel, 81, 82

— Marquise de (Marie de Rabutin-
Chantal), parentage, 1; birth, 5-6;
death of her parents, 7-8; early
childhood, 8-9; her guardian, 13;
education, 14-15 ; at Livry, 15-18,
109-110; and Ménage, 19-22;
‘portrait? of, by Mme. de la
Fayette, 25; marriage, 29; at Les
Rochers, 30-32, 56, 78, 83-85, 105-
108, 115, 136, 163, 222-249, 264-
271, 276-277, 290-292, 296, 302~-
304; birth of a daughter, 33; and
the grécéeuses, 35 ; neglected by her
husband, 49; and the Comte de
Bussy, 54-56, 69~71, 74-78, 93-95;
98-103, 109-113, 160-168, 181I-
182; birth of her son, 55; and the
Fronde, 66, 69-70, 73; death of
her husband, 82-83 ; “ portrait” of,
by Mademoiselle de Scudéry, 119;
Bussy’s “‘ portrait ” of, 128-129, 162,
164-165; her letters to Foucquet,
136-139; and Foucquet’s trial, 140-
150; and her children, 151-152, 183
at Versailles, 171-172, 279-281 ; and
her daughter’s marriage, 176-180;

 
INDEX 313

her letters to the Comte de Grignan,
186-192, 202-203 ; and La Grande
Mademoiselle, 193-194, 198-201,
213-214; her daughter’s departure
for Provence, 204-206; character
of, 207-208 ; her journey to Brittany,
221-222; and her son, 212, 214-
217, 226; and the Brittany States,
224, 227-246; birth of a grandson,
248; sends her daughter a pearl
necklace, 254-255; at Bourbilly,
258; her pet dog, 266-267; at
Vichy, 271-275, 284; visits her
daughter in Provence, 256-258;
and the death of Turenne, 260-263 ;
illness of, 269-271; visits Vaux,
276; and the Capuchins of the
Louvre, 277; and the Hétel de
Carnavalet, 282, 293-294; at
Nantes, 289-290; and her son’s
marriage, 294-296; visits her son
at Les Rochers, 296; at the per-
formance of Zsther, 301-302; in
Provence, 304; her last illness and
death, 305-307

Sévigné, Renaud de, 68, 79, 90, 106, 151

Madame Renaud de, 86

Simiane, Comte de, 305

— Comtesse de. See Adhémar,
Pauline d’

Soyecour, Marquis de, 81, 84

 

 

Tallemant des Réaux, G., 21-23

Tarente, Princesse de, 266-267, 285

Tétu, Abbé, 258-259

Thianges, Madame de, 258, 271, 281

Toiras, Marquis de, 5, 7, 8

Tonquedec, Marquis de, 88-90, 232

Toulongeon, Comte de, 3

—— Gabrielle de, 28

Turenne, Vicomte de, 92, 112, 113, 147.
260-263

Twelfth-night at the Court, 64

Vassé, Comte de, 53, 77, 91

Vatel, maitre d’hétel, 117, 133, 219-220

Vaux, 116-118, 132-135, 276

Vendéme, Duc de, 185, 291-292

Versailles, 171-172, 279

Vibraye, Madame de, 158

Vichy, 271-275, 284

Villeroy, Marquis de, 158-159, 253

Vincent de Paul, Saint, 96, 143

Vitré, 30; the States of Brittany at, 227-
246

Vivonne, Catherinede, See Rambouillet,
Marquise de

Voiture, Vincent, 43-44

Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford, 15

Ytier, M., 212, 251

THE END
Printed by
Morrison & Gres LimitTep
Edinburgh
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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heath

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