LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 MRS. MACKINLEY HELM 

 
 MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 
 
 Great French Writers. 
 
 Edited by J. J. Jusserand.
 
 MADAME UE SEVIGNE 
 
 IlKl'ltODI'CED FKOM T II K DRAWING ]!V NANTKt II. 
 
 iii Iho possession of M. Ic Cointe di' I'Aiilieiiiii
 
 Great French Writers 
 
 MADAME DE SEVIGNE 
 
 BY 
 
 GASTON BOISSIER 
 
 (OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY) 
 
 bg 
 HENRY LLEWELLYN WILLIAMS 
 
 LONDON 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS 
 
 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL 
 GLASGOW AND NEW YORK 
 
 188.7
 
 GREAT FRENCH WRITERS. 
 
 ORDER OF PUBLICATION :- 
 
 i. MADAME DE SEVIGNE (with Portrait) By GASTON BOISSIER 
 (French Academy). Translated by H. L. WILLIAMS. 
 
 2. MONTESQUIEU. By ALBERT SOREL. Translated by GUSTAVE 
 MASSON. 
 
 3. VICTOR COUSIN. By JULES SIMON (French Academy). 
 
 4. GEORGE SAND. By Professor E. CARD (French Academy ). 
 
 5.- VOLTAIRE. By FERD. BRUNETI&RE. 
 
 6. RACINE. By ANATOLE FRANCE. 
 
 ^. TURGOT THE FINANCIER. By M. LEON SAY (French Academy). 
 
 8. BALZAC. By M. PINE BOURGET. 
 
 o. VILLON. By Professor GASTON PARIS (French Institute). 
 10 D'A UBIGNE. By Professor G. GUIZOT (College of France). 
 i-L.BOILEAU. By FERD. BRUNETIERE. 
 M.ROUSSEA U. By M. CHERBULIEZ (French Academy). 
 13. JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. By Viscount F. M. DE VOGUE. 
 14. LA MAR TINE By M. DE POMAIROLE. 
 15 MUSSET. By JULES LEMAITRE. 
 16.- -SAINTE-BEUVE. By M. TAINE (French Academy). 
 iT. GUIZOT. By G. MONOD.
 
 GREAT FRENCH WRITERS. 
 
 STUDIES BY THE PRINCIPAL FRENCH AUTHORS 
 
 OF THE DAY ON THE LIFE, WORKS, AND 
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE PRINCIPAL FRENCH 
 
 AUTHORS OF THE PAST. 
 
 FROM its commencement, our century has had a profound taste for historical 
 researches, which it will bequeath to the next age. It yielded itself up to it 
 with an ardour, a methodical application, and a success unknown to anterior 
 times. The history of our globe and its inhabitants has been wholly rewritten : 
 the archaeologist and pickaxe have unearthed the bones of the heroes of Mycenae, 
 and the countenance of Sesostris itself has been laid bare. Ruins explained, 
 and hieroglyphics translated, have allowed the reconstitution of the existence of 
 the illustrious dead, and, ofttimes, penetration into their minds. 
 
 With a still more intense passion, because affection mingles with it. our 
 century has applied itself to reviving the great writers of all literature, those 
 depositaries of national genius and interpreters of the popular thought. France 
 has not wanted for erudite pens to engage in this task : the works have been 
 published and the biographies have been made clear of the famous men cherished 
 as our own ancestors, who contributed, better than princes and captains, to the 
 formation of modern France, if not of the modern world. 
 
 For it is one of her peculiar glories, that the task of France has been less 
 accomplished by sword and cannon than by the arms of the spirit ; and the 
 action of that country has ever been independent of her military triumphs 
 indeed, it has preponderated in the most sorrowful hours of her story. Hence 
 the great thinkers of French literature interest not merely their direct descend- 
 ants at home, but the strangers around her numerous posterity scattered 
 beyond the frontiers wherever in England the Huguenots carried arts and 
 crafts, and in the Americas and Australia, where the Canadian -voyageur and 
 fur-hunter traversed the wilds, where Lieutenant Bellot sought for Franklin in 
 the eternal ice, and where La Perouse planted the red, white, and blue. 
 
 Imitators first, then difFusers at large, the French were the foremost in 
 the vortex of the turbulence marking the opening of the Middle Ages to 
 resuscitate literature ; the first songs heard by modern society in its cradle were 
 French. Like Gothic art and the institution of universities, study of mediaeval 
 literature commenced in France ere it was propagated throughout Europe. 
 But this literature ignored the importance of forms, steadiness, and restraint ; 
 it was too spontaneous and not sufficiently thought out, as well as too heedless 
 of artistic questions. The realm of Louis XIV lifted form into honour ; it was 
 the period of literary doctrines made common to the masses, preparing them 
 for the age of the philosophical renewal in the i8th century, with Voltaire and 
 Rousseau for its European apostles, and preceding our own electric and scientific 
 era. If their task had not been carried out as it was, the destiny of literature 
 would have been changed : Shakespeare, Spenser, Ariosto, Camoens, Tasso 
 all the foreign writers, those of the Renaissance and those subsequent would 
 not have sufficed to occasion the reform ; and, perhaps, our age would never 
 have enjoyed those impassioned poets, who are as well perfect artists, freer 
 than their old-time precursors, purer in form than Boileau dreamt, the Keats, 
 Cheniers, Goethes, Lamartines, and Leopardis. 
 
 Many works, justified in their issue by every reason, have been devoted in 
 our days to the great French writers, and yet, have these mighty and entranc-
 
 ing geniuses taken the places due to them in actual literature ? Nowise, for 
 multiplied causes. 
 
 In the first place, after having, in the last century, tardily welcomed the 
 revelation of Northern literature, ashamed of their ignorance, the French 
 became impassioned for the foreign works, not without profit, but to excess, 
 greatly detrimental in any case to their national ancestors. However, it had 
 not been possible to enter them into modern life, into the current of our daily 
 ideas ; or, at least not readily, on account of the nature of the labour given 
 them. How were they to be revived, indeed ? By their works, or our treatises 
 on them ? Something was done by both, and fine, full editions and artisti- 
 cally-composed articles rendered this communion of minds less difficult recently. 
 But this is not enough ; we are habituated nowadays to have knowledge made 
 easy, grammars and sciences have been clearly put before us, and travel has been 
 simplified. What was impossible yesterday has become a matter of course to-day. 
 This is often why the old papers on literature repel us, and complete editions 
 attract us not ; they are all very well for the studious hours which are rare out- 
 side our obligatory occupations but not for the leisure time, more frequent. 
 The book alone opened then is the latest novel ; and the works of great men 
 stand untouched in their fine array on the highest shelves of the bookcase, like 
 those family portraits truly venerated, but never contemplated. 
 
 They were loved and neglected. They seemed too wise, too distant, too 
 different, and too inaccessible. The mind is oppressed by the idea of the 
 Complete Edition in many volumes, with notes that distract the attention, the 
 scientific surroundings mayhap the vague remembrance of classic studies and 
 juvenile tasks dinned into us at college ; away flies the hour without occupa- 
 tion, and one becomes accustomed to leave the old authors,' mute majesties, 
 and not seek familiar converse with them. 
 
 The design of the present collection is to bring to the fireside these great 
 men enthroned in seldom-visited temples, and to re-establish between 
 descendants and forefathers that union of ideas and sayings which alone may 
 ensure, notwithstanding time's changes, the integral preservation of genius. 
 In these volumes will be found precise information on the life, work, and in- 
 fluence of each of the writers remarkable in universal literature or representing 
 an original facet of French wit. 
 
 The books are short, the price moderate, so that everyone can possess the 
 whole series. They will be uniform in all respects of mechanical execution 
 and material with the first volumes. 
 
 On doubtful points they will give the latest statement of knowledge, and 
 hence will be useful even to the well read ; they contain no notes, as the name 
 of the author will be sufficient guarantee of thoroughness for each work. The 
 concurrence of the most noted contemporaries is ensured to the series. Finally, 
 an exact reproduction of an authentic portrait will enable the reader to make, 
 in some degree, the acquaintance by sight of the great French writers. 
 
 In short, our principal aim is to remind the reader of the parts these worthies 
 played, better known to-day, thanks to erudite searches ; to fortify their action 
 on the present time ; to tighten the bonds and revive the affection uniting us to 
 past literature ; by the contemplation of that past to excite faith in the future, 
 and, if possible, to silence the doleful voices of the disheartened. We also 
 believe that this series will have several other advantages. It is right that every 
 generation should count up the budget of riches found in ancestral inheritances, 
 learning thus to make a better use of it ; moreover, it unveils itself, and makes 
 itself known by its judgment. This series is useful to reconstitute the past, 
 but it will be still more useful for making the present known. 
 
 J. J. JUSSERAND.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT may appear hard at present to speak about Madame de 
 SeVigne" ; so much has been written upon her that it seems 
 nothing considerable can be said. As she had particularly 
 a sincere and open character, the writers who have treated 
 of her have generally drawn an exact portrait, and have not 
 been put to much trouble to depict her as she was. The 
 consequence is that, if a writer endeavours to do otherwise 
 than they, there is a risk of painting her likeness untruth- 
 fully ; the more apparent parts would, perhaps, be neglected 
 under pretext that everybody had seen them, and others 
 would be given more than suitable importance, so that, to 
 show her with a fresh face, a fanciful one would be traced. 
 
 This is a danger to which I do not care to expose myself. 
 I shall, therefore, make no effort to seek novelty. I shall 
 not busy myself in hunting for unknown inferences, and 
 discovering quotations never heretofore cited. After having 
 read again the SeVigne Letters, I am going plainly to tell 
 the impression they left on me, without stopping to question 
 if I repeat what has been previously said : this is all the 
 method I shall follow in this work. 
 
 I do not believe there is any great interest in here relating 
 Madame de SeVignd's life anew in a consecutive arrange- 
 ment. Others have done that with an abundance of details 
 which leave nothing to be desired. Those who wish to 
 know her biography thoroughly need only read Walckenaer's 
 uneven yet agreeable " Memoirs," or, which will more 
 greatly please them, the happy notice Mesnard has set at 
 the head of the edition of Les Grands Ecrivainsde la France.
 
 viii Preface. 
 
 There is nothing romantic in this life, all things considered, 
 being composed of the ordinary incidents of a lady's life, 
 and it can be summed up in a few words. 
 
 Born in 1626, in the midst of the reign of King Louis 
 XIII, of a great Burgundian family, orphaned at seven 
 years, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal married the Marquis de 
 Se'vigne', a Breton nobleman, in 1644. It was not a happy 
 marriage ; the Marquis was killed in a duel in 1651, leaving 
 two children. One was a man of wit and a brave soldier, 
 but, heartsick at not being promoted, and homesick to boot, 
 he left the service whilst young and married in Brittany ; 
 and a daughter who was espoused in 1669 to the Count de 
 Grignan, Lieutenant-General of Provence. Into his lord- 
 lieutenancy, as we may term it, she followed her husband, 
 and all Madame de Sdvignd's existence was in waiting to 
 see her daughter, going to see her, thinking of her, and 
 writing to her. Thus arose that correspondence which 
 has caused her fame. In 1696 she died, during one of 
 those meetings which she yearned for with so much ardour, 
 in the Chateau de Grignan. 
 
 These few dates will be ample to guide us in the study 
 we undertake. 
 
 The letters are quoted out of the " Grands Ecrivains" 
 edition, rectified and completed by the " Lettres Intdites" 
 of M. Capmus.
 
 MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 
 \ 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE WOMAN. 
 
 THE most interesting person in the Sevigne Cor- 
 respondence is that lady herself. We must try 
 to know her by what she says of herself or by what 
 others say. We possess nearly rive hundred letters 
 written or received by her; more than what is 
 requisite for her to be entirely viewed. It is very 
 probable that a woman who wrote so much, even if 
 she were mystery-loving and dissimulative cer- 
 tainly not faults of Madame de Sevigne must 
 have let all her secrets escape. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the first place, was Madame de Sevigne lovely? 
 We are not wishful to know out of futile curiosity. 
 Although we are chiefly bent on learning the parts of her 
 mind and heart, it will not be useless to have power to 
 
 B
 
 io Madame de Sdvtgnt. 
 
 place them in a living figure : the union will better 
 impress us in the whole person. Unfortunately, 
 portraits preserved of her do not well agree with one 
 another, and many excite plenty of doubt. Nanteuil's 
 pastel (the one reproduced to face our title) appears 
 alone to be of incontestable authenticity, but it has 
 the defect of portraying the Marchioness when no 
 longer young. 
 
 It is a kindly face broad, lively, and smiling, reflecting 
 good nature and intelligence; but it is not a lovely 
 woman's countenance. Looking on this, surprise cannot 
 be helped that she had so many worshippers. We shall 
 see how when she was a wedded woman, and after she 
 was widowed they mobbed her to supplant or replace the 
 husband; and among these numerous suitors were the 
 handsomest of courtiers and bearers of the grandest 
 names in the kingdom. Evidently they would have 
 been much less eager to please her had she been un- 
 comely. In her winter days, as she had been told, her 
 grand-daughter Pauline resembled her. She wrote to 
 Madame de Grignan : " Was I ever as pretty as she ? It 
 was said I was very pretty." 
 
 In her portraits, it must be owned, she is but mode- 
 rately good-looking, and, taking her face as the painters 
 represent her, we cannot see in it what justified Conti, 
 Turenne, Rohan, Bussy, du Lude and the rest, to pay her 
 so much homage. There is temptation to accuse the 
 limners of not having fairly copied her charm of face ; but 
 as they were men of merit, renowned in their art, it is
 
 The Woman. 1 1 
 
 more likely that the charm partly fled in the painting, and 
 that the features delighting in her aspect were the very 
 ones the pencil had most trouble to depict. 
 
 In the portrait Madame de la Fayette made of her 
 friend under a fictitious name, she said : " The bright- 
 ness of your wit cast so great a glow on your eyes 
 and complexion that, although it would seem mental 
 brilliancy can only affect the ear, yet it is certain yours 
 dazzled the eye." This sentence, meseems, explains the 
 powerlessness of artists to represent our subject as she 
 appeared to her friends. How could this gleam of the 
 mind on the countenance, this illumination of the features 
 by interior lustre, be painted ? Still it was the principal 
 attraction of Madame de Sevigne, and the peculiarity of 
 her beauty. 
 
 Therefore, if her true likeness be sought, much must be 
 added to the one left by the painters. Let us take it, if 
 you like, as in Nanteuil's crayon drawing, and begin by 
 removing many years. When we shall have placed her 
 back in "the flower of her twenty summers," as Madame 
 de la Fayette words it, let us give her what no one refuses 
 her not even her grudging cousin Bussy thick, fluffy 
 fair hair, eyes full of fire, an admirable complexion with a 
 splendour and freshness " such as one sees on the love- 
 liest spring roses when Aurora rises ; " embellish all this 
 with the charming gleams of goodness and intelligence 
 which lighted up her visage ; her soul could be read in 
 her features ; and we understand how albeit she may 
 not have been in very deed beautiful she produced 
 
 B 2
 
 12 Madame de Stvignd. 
 
 more effect immediately than many women of irre- 
 proachable beauty. 
 
 It is stated that the winningness of her first glance 
 was almost irresistible. 
 
 " Methinks I see her yet," relates Abbe Arnould in his 
 "Memoirs" " as she appeared on the first time I had 
 the honour to see her ; arriving in her open carriage, 
 seated at the back between her son and daughter. All 
 three were such as the poets picture Latona beside 
 young Apollo and the little Diana. So shone beauty and 
 pleasingness in mother and children." 
 
 It was a little later, when the early surprise had 
 passed, that the flaws in her face were noticed, where all 
 had at the outset enchanted. It was remarked that " her 
 eyes were too small and of different hues ; the lids odd 
 and the nose a trifle square at the tip." But these blem- 
 ishes did not long shock the gazer. As he would be 
 nearer her then, her voice could be heard and her 
 conversation was another witchery which none ever 
 withstood, "When you are listened to," said Madame 
 de la Fayette to her, " it is no longer remarked that your 
 features fail somewhat in regularity, and you are con- 
 ceded to have the most finished beauty in the world." 
 
 II. 
 
 So far we have made Madame de Sevigne's acquaintance 
 but rapidly and very confusedly. We have scarcely seen 
 her, and only from afar and in a rather indistinct manner.
 
 The Woman. 1 3 
 
 If desirous to know something more of her than her 
 facial features, we must try to follow her into the high 
 society which she early entered and in which she spent 
 her life. We know little of her youth. 
 
 Bussy-Rabutin, a cousin to whom it was attempted to 
 marry her, asserts that he was alarmed at the hoydenish 
 manner in which he saw her act, and he considered her 
 " too much the prettiest girl in the world to be anybody's 
 wife." Though Bussy is a great slanderer, I am prone to 
 believe him when he speaks of Mdlle. de Chantal's hoy- 
 denish manners. She had been deprived of the boon of 
 being reared by a mother ; her uncle the good Abb de 
 Coulanges, who took so much care of her fortune, could 
 not teach her the little dainty traits which only a woman 
 can appreciate properly. At an early hour she mingled 
 in free society where no constraint was known ; she knew 
 closely the gallants and beauties entangled in amours 
 which were nobody's secret ; and it stands to reason that 
 with her fine observancy little of these transparent in- 
 trigues eluded her. Young though she was, she must 
 have comprehended what was only half hid : she heard 
 what was spoken in words of double meaning. Was this 
 regrettable in her case ? I do not know. In the educa- 
 tion of young womanhood it is a delicate problem 
 whether they should be taught everything or nothing. 
 There is no head of a family who has not been forced to 
 ponder over this, and contrary decisions are come to, on 
 this subject, by men equally wise. In fact, each method 
 may produce different effects, according to the pupils to
 
 14 Madame de Stvignt. 
 
 whom they were applied. There are some to whom the 
 revelation of evil is most harmful when it is made too 
 soon : it taints their imagination prematurely, and may 
 cause them precocious, incitement. Quite the reverse, 
 the heart of others is only tempered by it : the sights to 
 which they become accustomed at an age when they 
 might have fatal effect, preserve them eventually from 
 troublesome surprises ; by removing from some feelings 
 the attraction of the unknown, their violence is lessened. 
 It is a certainty that for Mdlle. de Chantal this premature 
 knowledge of matters of life had none of the dangers to 
 be dreaded. Later on, Bussy was compelled to acknow- 
 ledge as much. 
 
 At eighteen, as we have stated, our subject married the 
 Marquis de Se'vigne'. As she was free in her actions and 
 controller of her property, under the light guardianship 
 of the Abbe de Coulanges, it is probable that she was 
 not constrained, and Sevignd: pleased her. He was a 
 bold, handsome cavalier; on his side were birth and 
 bravery ; and judges as hard to please as Bussy, con- 
 sidered him witty. Marie de Chantal, kindly, affection- 
 ate, so apt to attach herself to her associates, had to make 
 no effort to love him. Hence we may suppose the 
 honeymoon, and beyond, was happy. They passed it 
 in their own country house of Les Rochers, and it lasted 
 so long that Bussy and his friend Lenet, a man of brains 
 deeply involved in the intrigues of the Fronde outbreak 
 against Cardinal Mazarin, felt it their duty to address 
 the billing and cooing pair, who would not leave their
 
 The Woman. 1 5 
 
 nest, a request in agreeable verse to win them back to 
 society : 
 
 " All hail !* you couple, deep afield ; 
 So close in Brittany up-sealed, 
 Attached unto your country seat, 
 Beyond what can in sense be meet ;" etc. 
 
 It cannot be doubted this was a happy period for the 
 young wife ; but it did not endure. Sevigne turned out 
 to be the most fickle of mates. " He loves on every 
 side," Bussy tells us, "yet can nowhere love anyone as 
 lovable as his own wife," a capital jest, applying to many 
 another than the Lord of Sevigne. At the same time that 
 he was distressing her with his infidelity, he was ruining 
 her by his follies. It must be owned that among fine 
 ladies of that epoch, on whom Victor Cousin expended 
 so much eulogy, many as often sold themselves as threw 
 themselves away, and Sevigne found it very simple to 
 purchase his sultanas out of his wife's fortune. Hence, 
 no doubt, sharp wrangles on the hearth. Like all who 
 expect reproaches deservedly, the husband anticipated 
 attack; he was brusque, grumbling, and brutal, and 
 showed the conceit of resembling the Grand Prior, Hugues 
 de Rabutin, whom he styled " My uncle the pirate." As 
 he did not take any pains to conceal his treachery, 
 Madame de Sevigne could no longer esteem him highly ; 
 but it is asserted that she still loved him, and could not 
 help weeping when he fought a duel for one of his light- 
 
 * "Salut k vous,"etc.
 
 1 6 Madame de Sevignd. 
 
 o'-loves and was killed by his rival. Whatever Bussy 
 may put forth, her tears were genuine ; but it is readily 
 understood that, after the first natural emotion was over, 
 she quickly entered into the repose and freedom given 
 her by widowhood. Moreover, she forgot the spend- 
 thrift and libertine husband so utterly that she never 
 mentions his name in her correspondence with her 
 children. 
 
 She was twenty-six or seven when she returned to the 
 world after her mourning. Here we commence to be- 
 hold her more closely. We have a goodly number of her 
 letters of this date, and the testimony of contemporaries 
 upon her becomes more precise. This return of the young 
 widow into the fashionable reception-rooms was a great 
 triumph for her, as she came back more enchanting 
 than hitherto seen. Her good looks, as we have de- 
 scribed them, better suited maturity than maidenhood. 
 Her assurance in conversation, perhaps out of place in 
 a young lady, was a great charm in a woman ; she had 
 the right to let the vivacity of her mind have full flight ; 
 she had no need to check the witticism rising to her lips, 
 and she could yield without constraint to that intoxication 
 of tittle-tattle wherein the chatterers spur one another and 
 each gains by the neighbours' spirit. " When we fell a- 
 talking, I did not come out badly," she says. She must 
 have been incomparable. It follows that she speedily 
 had a court of worshippers. The memoirs of her time, 
 and Bussy's correspondence, make some of them known 
 who clustered around her. As aforesaid, they were the
 
 The Woman. 1 7 
 
 highest personages of the royal court : a prince of the 
 blood, Conti; a victor in battles, Marshal Turenne; a 
 financial minister, Fouquet ; the Duke du Rohan ; the 
 Marquis de Tonquedec, the Count du Lude perchance 
 the one most likely to carry away the belle ; but they all 
 failed, we must believe, since Tallement slander's self 
 and Bussy-Rabutin, who had smarts to soothe, find 
 nothing to say against her. But the latter, who does not 
 like to make a panegyric, tries to pare down in some 
 degree the merit he is forced to recognise, saying : "She 
 is cold-blooded ; at least, if her late husband is to be 
 credited. Hence her behaviour is no thanks to her 
 virtue." 
 
 Here we have, certainly, one of the unkind cuts doing 
 the most injury to the Marchioness in her cousin's spite- 
 ful sketch of her. A woman does not like to hear that she 
 is only virtuous because of her nature ; some, mayhap, 
 would even prefer to be deemed slightly naughty. This 
 explanation of Bussy's was bound greatly to irritate her 
 friends. Shall I admit that it is hard to find any other ? 
 Remember that she was not one of the widows of whom 
 Bossuet speaks : " Truly forlorn widows, they enshroud 
 themselves in the mausoleum of their dead husband." 
 She lived in a circle of amorous folk, and was very fond 
 of it. She called on women whom critics, not severe, 
 accused of being "a little too rompish" (gidllerettes). 
 She liked to be in a swarm, and willingly received tribute."' 
 She did not detest broad sayings ; it is asserted that she 
 had the talent to enter opportunely into what was
 
 1 8 Madame de 
 
 suggested and drive her interlocutors farther than they 
 thought of going ; the words are " they sometimes showed 
 her a wide stretch of country." How comes it that all 
 this did not turn out badly for her? and how, that a 
 handsome woman who played so wantonly with fire was 
 not consumed in the end ? She has herself furnished a 
 reason which appears truthful on the face of it. It is 
 v that love of her children shielded her from all peril; 
 more than one heart is needed to love several objects at 
 once. " I perceive every day that the big fishes eat up 
 the little ones," says she to her daughter. But this 
 explanation does not explain everything. In reality 
 Madame de Sevigne's affection for her daughter would 
 not have sufficed had she felt any need of another affec- 
 tion. These are of different natures and do not exclude 
 one the other ; beside maternal love there is ample room 
 for another sort. Must we therefore, as suggested, 
 ascribe the honour of her virtue to her devotion ? But 
 she was at this time little religious ; besides, religion pre- 
 vents a woman sinning, but not taking a second husband. 
 Around her she frequently had examples of this ; there 
 is no period when bereavement was less long submitted 
 to. The Count de Grignan had married twice already, 
 so that Mdlle. de Sevigne' was only his third wife. " He 
 steps from one wife to another as upon stones across a 
 brook," run Bussy's words to that effect. The Prince 
 de Guemene had lost a very dearly-beloved life partner, 
 and (so they said) was plunged in the blackest grief, 
 when, at the end of three months only, he made a mid-
 
 The Woman. 1 9 
 
 night marriage without anybody's knowledge save the 
 King's. " He has lived on salt all his life," wrote Madame 
 de Sevigne to her daughter, " and cannot do without it. 
 Three months' widowerhood have seemed three centuries 
 to him; he might taste other condiments, but had to 
 come back to the standard table relish ; and his affection 
 will always settle on this unrivalled solid attraction." 
 The Duke de St. Aignan waited a thought longer six 
 months he bewailed his wife, and wore the mien of 
 one going to retire into the desert ; but he quietly wedded 
 " a little tiring-woman " of the duchess's, at the age of 
 three-and-seventy. Next year he had a son, who be- 
 longed to the French Academy like himself, and who 
 lived up to 1776, so that we have a span from the father's 
 birth in the reign of Henry IV., to the son's decease 
 under Louis XVI. Women did like the sterner sex, and 
 neither would have blamed Madame de Sevigne if she 
 had found a successor to the husband whom they 
 considered she had too long lamented. It is true that they 
 said her experience of married life was not apt to give 
 her a desire for repetition ; but there is no lack of wives 
 no more fortunate than she, but not discouraged for all 
 that. On the contrary, they believe they have a claim 
 for recompense, and their losing first is no proof that 
 they will not be winners last. If the widowed Mar- 
 chioness had not acted like them, it arose from her not 
 having the inclination and not being impelled by her 
 nature. In this her daughter resembled her, and so 
 did her son notwithstanding his wildness. He had
 
 2O Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 mistresses, but merely to be like men of his age and 
 rank ; and La Rochefoucauld, a good judge in such cases, 
 pronounces him " not of the wood to make Cupid's 
 shafts." Their cold-bloodedness was a maternal in- 
 heritance in the Sevigne's. 
 
 III. 
 
 Bussy must not be believed when he tells us his 
 cousin had " all her warmth in her mind." She has 
 loved considerably and steadily, too ; but she rendered 
 unto Caesar-friendship what she refused to Pompey- 
 love. She spent her youth in making friends whom she 
 preserved to the end of her days ; is there a more 
 enviable fate than hers ? She willingly lent her ear to 
 declarations made her because such a proceeding did not 
 displease her ; she was right glad to inspire them with 
 feelings not shared by herself; but, I believe also, that 
 she feared showing herself too severe lest it rebuffed men 
 of sense and cordiality whom she saw flock to her. Above 
 all things, she could not bear to lose a friend ; there- 
 fore, without scruples, she encouraged their assiduity. 
 As she was no prude, and mere speech did not shock her, 
 she let them prattle on. Nothing equalled her skill in 
 checking them with a smile when it threatened their going 
 too far, and in reviving them with a cheering quip when 
 they began to despair. Was this really coquetry? It 
 has been said so, and there may be reason in it. But may 
 there not be friendly coquetry as well as loving coquetry ?
 
 The Woman. 2 1 
 
 Madame de Sevigne never deceived those who paid her- 
 homage ; she made them clearly understand how far she 
 might be led and what alone they might expect from hen 
 Within these " limits of becoming mirth," she was capa- 
 ble of going to great outlay to enchain them, and main- 
 tain that degree of warmth and liveliness beseeming true 
 affection. 
 
 Of all these adroit and alluring artifices, some trace 
 remains in her letters. It was upon her tutor, Menage, 
 that she, for the first time, perhaps, had to exercise her 
 dexterity. She was under much obligation to him and 
 bound not to hurt his feelings ; besides, it was not un- 
 pleasant for her to be celebrated by one of the sharpest 
 wits of her time. " Always speak well of me, it will do 
 me signal honour," was her appeal to him. This learned 
 man had the failing to want to shine as a beau ; he liked 
 to stand apart from scholars, whom he treated with pro- 
 found disdain. To overwhelm his enemy, Father Bou- 
 hours, he said merely, "this is a petty teacher of the 
 third class who is setting up as a ' pretty fellow.' " He 
 did all he could not to be taken for a pedant. In his 
 youth, he tried to learn the coranto and gavotte to have 
 the gait of good society ; but, he confesses, he was 
 obliged to give it up after three months' useless trial. His 
 conceit slipped into his most erudite books. In a dedica- 
 tory epistle addressed to a fashionable author, the Chevalier 
 de Mere, he says : " I entreat you to remember that, 
 when we paid court together to a lady of high quality 
 and great merit, whatever the passion I felt for that
 
 22 Madame de Stvignd. 
 
 illustrious personage, I willingly suffered her loving you 
 above me, because I love you more than myself." This 
 fustian is singularly placed at the head of " Observations 
 on the French Language.' 1 ' 1 He was a great runner after 
 the furbelows, and, as was the custom, freely uttered soft 
 speeches; the misfortune was that, in courting them 
 according to the ruling style, poor Manage was more 
 often caught than he liked. What should have been a 
 mere game like Voiture's wooing of Mdlle. Paulet, 
 turned out rather more serious for him. He began by 
 being deeply enthralled by Mdlle. de la Vergne ; then by 
 Madame de la Fayette, at the day when Cardinal de Retz 
 said of her, " she pleases me vastly, and the fact of the 
 matter is that I cannot do so with her." In order to be 
 happier, Menage showered compliments in every tongue 
 upon her, celebrating her in Latin verses in which he 
 called her, " Sequanidum sublime decus, formosa La- 
 verna " and in French and Italian. Then he wheeled 
 round towards Madame de Sevigne" whose assiduous 
 adorer he was for years. It is visible in her letters to his 
 address, which have come down to us, that it was not an 
 affection without storms. Menage was never satisfied ; 
 if refused anything, he bitterly complained ; and went 
 on complaining if too much was granted him, because he 
 feared this was. treating him as a person of no conse- 
 quence. The good opinion he had of himself did not 
 prevent him perceiving at whiles what a ridiculous figure 
 he cut in a quizzical world as a lover so old and wise ; if 
 he had not, his enemies he had many would not have
 
 The Woman. 23 
 
 left him ignorant. Naturally he became mistrustful, 
 abrupt, uncertain, and grumbling ; he was sulky or he 
 caused wrangles. We have verses of his in which he 
 runs tilt at the lady : 
 
 " My wrath's pent up no more !* 
 Ingrate ! I would ignore 
 So cruel, vain a dear 
 Who mocks my every tear. 
 Tigress, with steely heart, 
 I charge thee, quick depart ; 
 E'en mem'ry to entomb 
 In night's most sable gloom !" 
 
 Madame de Sevigne was always engaged in pacifying 
 him. Sometimes she gently bantered him to make him 
 smile ; at a pinch, she feigned to be jealous. " You are 
 only picking this sham quarrel with me to give yourself 
 entirely to Mdlle. de la Vergne," she writes. If he pre- 
 tended to shut himself obstinately at home, she would 
 write to him without any prudery : " Again I conjure you 
 to come hither ; and if you are determined it shall not be 
 to-day, make it to-morrow. If you come not, perhaps 
 you will not close your door against me, and you shall be 
 compelled to confess that you were a shade in the wrong." 
 Another time, as he was leaving town, probably angered 
 against her, she finished her letter by saying : " Farewell, 
 friend, of all friends the best ! " How could any man 
 resist so sweet a line ? The vexation did not last, and the 
 sulker was reconquered. 
 
 It was not very difficult to handle Menage ; but the 
 
 * " Enfin ma colere eclate," etc.
 
 24 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 lady was oft entangled with more dangerous signers. 
 Her cousin Bussy, who had scorned her, or rather, 
 dreaded her when she was a maid, in her teens, came 
 over to her side when she was married. He slyly sought 
 to profit by her husband's unfaithfulness, which he took 
 care to let her know, to incite her to be revenged. His 
 non-success did not dishearten him ; he relates how, after 
 her bereavement, he was the first to broach love to her ; 
 but he owns, with sincerity meritorious in him, that he 
 was none the more happy. Although the part of 
 "tame cat" did not appear wholly sufficient, he was 
 forced to content himself with it ; he had, as he said, 
 to wish her whatever she liked, and to love in her 
 own way. 
 
 Superintendent of Finances, Fouquet, offered still more 
 peril. " What state-treasurer ever met a fair one unkind ?" 
 (famais surintendent trouva-t-il de criiellel^) He as- 
 sailed the lady with the audacity of one habituated to 
 success, but he also was obliged to " submit to reason." 
 It is known how he did her the wrong of storing the 
 Marchioness's letters in the famous casket which con- 
 tained the secret of his luck with the sex. They were 
 found there, when a search was made in his papers by the 
 royal warrant ; but the monarch, and Tellier his minister, 
 who read them, declared that they were most honourable. 
 The all-powerful Fouquet had to resign himself like the 
 rest. " When you do not wish what others do," wrote 
 Bussy to his cousin, " they must do as you wish ; it is am- 
 ple happiness to remain one of your friends. In all the
 
 TJie Woman. 2 5 
 
 kingdom, you are the only woman who can reduce your 
 suitors into contentment for mere friendship." 
 
 Few have had so many friends as the Marchioness of 
 Sevigne. In all the crises of her life, her correspondence 
 shows her encompassed by devoted persons who vied with 
 one another to be useful and agreeable. She is herself 
 astonished at the general benevolence. " I receive a 
 thousand tokens of friendship ; I am quite ashamed of it. 
 I do not know why I should be esteemed so highly." 
 Yet the explanation is very easily found : she was liked 
 because she liked others ; say what you will, this is still 
 the surest way of attaching hearts ; only what is paid away 
 comes back. One of those best knowing her, La Roche- 
 foucauld, was wont to remark that " she reconciled her 
 idea of friendliness with all her circumstances and 
 dependencies." It is a pity the moralist did not develop 
 his opinion and tell us by what peculiarities Madame 
 de Sevigne seemed to him to earn this fine eulogium ; 
 we should have tractates on friendship from the hand of 
 a master. What he has not done, nobody can do now. 
 At our distance from the lady of letters, many things 
 escape us which those beside her saw. Let us, however, 
 inquire into her letters and seek to discover, if we can, 
 some of the grounds which made those love her who 
 lived by her. 
 
 What, firstly, strikes us [is to see how kind, amiable 
 and benevolent she is, in general. This merit is the 
 more remarkable as it crops up in a close correspondence, 
 in which she could fearlessly open her heart. Somewhere 
 
 c
 
 26 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 it is said by Pascal : " Human life is but one perpetual 
 illusion. Men mutually deceive and flatter. None dis- 
 cuss us in our absence as they speak in our presence. 
 The union between men is founded solely on this cheat- 
 ing, and few friendships would last if either knew what 
 the other said when he was away." But it seems to me 
 that if the majority of those spoken of by Madame de 
 Sevigne in her letters to her daughter, had read them, 
 they would not have found any of those stabs which can- 
 not be forgiven. This is a proof which few private 
 correspondences can withstand. When a writer believes 
 himself sure of the person addressed, and that his secrecy 
 can be relied upon, he unveils the fugitive impressions 
 flitting across the mind with how many precipitate con" 
 fidences, unjust suspicions, baseless accusations, escaping 
 in the first sting under a spite, and sharp sayings of 
 which he is not the master, but which he wishes to call 
 back as soon as they are out of his reach. Whatever may 
 be said, I see nothing well, almost nothing of the like 
 in the Sevign Letters. Their writer was too keen not to 
 see the seamy side of her associates, but she only pointed 
 out the fretted threads with a light finger. She is not 
 always tender to the fools who worried her and the im- 
 portunate shallow-pates who disturbed her; she does 
 repeat good stories to amuse her daughter and, once she is 
 in full flow of telling them, her animation sweeps her on- 
 ward, and she sometimes goes farther than she wished ; 
 but her jokes do not scratch as Bussy's do, and a smile 
 flies with her arrow. Taking it altogether, I do not see
 
 The Woman. 2 7 
 
 anybody entirely hated amongst all those mentioned in her 
 correspondence. She judges her acquaintances favour- 
 ably ; everybody is " good " in her eyes, as the good Bon 
 our good Troche that good d' Hacqueville this good 
 Marbeuf, and so on ; she sees mankind with a kindly eye 
 and all the earth looks fair to her. I am well aware that 
 she was irritated one day of ill-humour by Malebranche's 
 optimism. " I would really like to complain to Father 
 Malebranche of the mice devouring everything hereabouts; 
 are they in the beneficent order of things ? And what 
 about the good sugar, and fruit, and jam ? Last year, 
 was it in the beneficent order of things that nasty cater- 
 pillars should eat up all the leaves of our wood and 
 gardens, and all the fruit of the orchard? And how 
 about Father Pai'en, whose head was broken as he was 
 peacefully wending his way home, was that in the bene- 
 ficent order ?" This is only a merry fling ; ordinarily, the 
 world does not seem to revolve so very badly as is 
 asserted. She does not rebel against generally accepted 
 opinions as sour spirits do. " Listen to my old thesis," 
 she writes, "for which I shall be stoned one of these 
 days ; it is that the public are neither senseless nor un- 
 fair." Even when come to the decline of life, she does 
 not look back with bitterness, and she throws no sorrow- 
 ful glance on past years. Once she says to her daughter, 
 in reminding her of some thorny events she traversed : 
 "Do you think my fate very happy? well, I am content 
 with it." Sometimes, though, after dark, she had " brown 
 studies which become totally black in the night." But, 
 usually she left them in the shade of solitude and did not 
 
 C 2
 
 28 Madame de Sdvigtuf. 
 
 afflict her callers with them. She was one of those whom 
 society excites, and who are so much at ease amongst 
 friends that they forget their misery there and exhale 
 only their delight. She had a hearty laugh and a frank 
 mirthfulness which the most melancholy could not resist. 
 She could smooth out the wrinkles of Cardinal de Retz, 
 that disappointed man of great ambitions. When she 
 entered the garden of the Faubourg St. Germain, where 
 the morose La Rochefoucauld and the virtuous Madame 
 de la Fayette were sadly aging together, she came like a 
 sunbeam piercing mist. There are people whom a kind 
 of general indifference makes kindly to all, and who greet 
 everybody affably because they have no preferences. On 
 the contrary Madame de Sevigne's friendship had an 
 ardour which often surprised. On reading the letter she 
 wrote to De Pomponne during Fouquet's trial, Napoleon 
 the Great remarked that the interest she showed in the 
 financier was too warm, quick, and tender for plain amity. 
 But that was her fashion of loving her congeners, and 
 here was a particular reason to prevent any restraint and 
 to give more vivacity to the expression of her feeling : 
 the friend was in misfortune. 
 
 Let us remember on this point that the Marchioness 
 de Sevigne, by age and education, still belonged to the 
 younger generation of the seventeenth century. She was 
 one of those who first applauded Corneille's plays, and 
 formed their mind and heart out of the romances of La 
 Calprenede and De Scudery very paltry books as literary 
 works ; but an ideal of courtesy and heroism reigns in
 
 The Woman. 29 
 
 them which may ensnare a young heart long afterwards. 
 In the solitary retreat of Les Rochers, she read " Cleopatre" 
 again and found all her original emotions. She says : ' the 
 style of La Calprenede is faulty in a thousand places ; 
 long-winded passages of romance, wretched attempts at 
 jesting ; I know all that. I wrote a letter to my son the 
 other day in this vein which was very entertaining. I 
 grant that it is detestable, and yet I let myself be captured 
 by it as a bird by lime. The beauty of the sentiments, 
 the gush of passions, the greatness of the events and the 
 miraculous success of the redoubtable swords all these 
 carry me away as if I were a young girl again." Such 
 youthful admiration has left its imprint on her; she retained 
 from it a kind of almost natural taste for all that is grand, 
 bold, and heroic. It pleased her to cope with fortune ; she 
 felt pride in not changing with it, and in clinging to those 
 it cast off. Whilst the financier was all-powerful, she 
 judged him with cool reason ; when he was driven to 
 defend his life against prejudiced and malevolent judges, 
 she felt a tenderness for him which came near to love. 
 In the same way De Pomponne's disgrace made him 
 dearer. " Misfortune shall not drive me away from your 
 dwelling," she said, when she learnt that he had been dis- 
 missed from office, and she kept her word ; in her letters, 
 her affection is seen to become proportionably more 
 intense as she sees him more sad and abandoned. This 
 trait of generosity still farther relieves her natural kind- 
 ness and benevolence, and gives them an added charm. 
 Can we be surprised that, with such lovable parts, she 
 was so well loved ?
 
 30 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It does not seem to me enough to study Madame de 
 Sevigne to know her. There must be attention given to 
 some of those she loved, at all events. She was so 
 tenderly attached to them that they became part of her 
 existence, it may be said, and she would be incomplete 
 without them. 
 
 Let us commence this review of her bosom friends by 
 those nearest to her her children. Her son was good- 
 ness and honour themselves in one, and few figures in 
 all the Letters attract us more than his. He adored his 
 mother, and never caused her a single serious sorrow. 
 I would she had been angered to see him sometimes in 
 bad company and injuring his health and reputation by 
 gallant adventures ; yet we see she rather eagerly takes 
 his part. When she attempted to make some reprimands, 
 the son answered her so merrily that the sermon was 
 ordinarily smothered in laughter. Besides, when he 
 returned sore in heart to recruit in the refuge of Les 
 Rochers, he brought so much wit, geniality, matter for 
 conversation, and just appreciation of good works, that he 
 was a most desirable companion, and Madame de 
 Sevigne felt a vivid tenderness for le petit ami, and " her 
 little dear" could not be let go away. 
 
 It seems clear to us that Charles de Sevigne ought to 
 have been his mother's pet. To begin with, he was a boy, 
 and everybody knows the infinite complaisance for the 
 one who is to continue the line in aristocratic families.
 
 The Woman. 3 1 
 
 Moreover, he was the best of sons, the most affectionate 
 and submissive. Assuredly, the Marchioness much loved 
 him, but she loved her daughter better. We are ignorant 
 why, and it may be she could no more say than we. 
 Those around her were as puzzled to explain it, and her 
 best friends notably Madame de la Fayette spite of 
 their care taken to flatter her weakness, considered her 
 wrong. Moralists tell us that the strongest passions are 
 the least reasonable and least reasoned out. Madame de 
 Sevigne's for her daughter rose to an extraordinary degree 
 of violence, all the ardour of her soul rushed to that 
 quarter. Her maternal affection sometimes seemed akin 
 to love ; she suffered its agitations and storms ; like love, it 
 made the happiness and the torment of the heart it 
 entirely possessed. 
 
 The object of this passion, the Countess de Grignan, 
 has been judged with much severity by our times and 
 her own. Bussy says of her : " A woman with wit, but a 
 sharp one, and insupportable pride. She will make as 
 many enemies as her mother has friends and admirers." 
 Saint-Simon, who was familiar with her son, the young 
 Marquis de Grignan, treats her no better. The most 
 untoward thing for her is that the reading of the Sevigne 
 Letters does not appear to us of a nature to make us 
 revoke the sentence. Notwithstanding all the praise 
 with which she heaps her darling, the impressions thence 
 derived are not favourable to her. The poor mother 
 would be heartily pained if she could see herself the 
 cause of the antipathy we feel for Madame de Grignan ;
 
 32 Madame de Stvignd. 
 
 but she has surely injured her greatly without intending 
 jt. She has so endeared herself and appears so good, 
 sweet, and winning, that we wonder how a daughter, so 
 adored and belauded, had any difficulty in agreeing with 
 her. 
 
 It is not hard, however, to understand that, when it is 
 seen how they differed one from the other. Cast a glance 
 on their portraits, sometimes mounted in the same frame. 
 It is a perfect contrast Nothing less resembles the 
 broad, open face, breathing benevolence, sincerity and 
 good humour of the mother, than the daughter's little, 
 delicate, and finical countenance. But in their disposi- 
 tions there is far more diversity. Madame de Grignan 
 joined two defects seemingly opposite and not often 
 found together pride and timidity. When one has high 
 aspirations and too good an opinion of oneself, which 
 one wants the world to share, perpetual uneasiness about 
 what is thought is natural, and there is a fear to ven- 
 ture anything, lest the success may not be as great as 
 desired. When young, Madame de Grignan was wont 
 to colour up at the least word spoken to her, and her 
 vexation would be so great that she would run away 
 from the ball-room not to let the unkind spectators see 
 her embarrassment. Time and experience in society 
 had never yet imparted assurance. One day, when the 
 King was playing cards, or, more accurately, keeping the 
 bank, she was so agitated that she upset the pool on the 
 floor, and the Prince Royal bantered her pitilessly. This 
 v as " one of those cruel minor miseries " so sharply felt
 
 The Woman, 33 
 
 at court. Ordinarily, shy people appear haughty as, to 
 conceal the timidity of which they are ashamed, they 
 don an air of insolence. Their reserve, most often the 
 effect of their bashfulness, seems to come from their 
 scorn for others. The Countess de Grignan passed for 
 very disdainful, even in the eyes of those seeing her 
 oftenest. Her husband, before taking her away to his 
 province, said to her mother in confidence : " Madame, 
 she will not condescend to look at the poor ladies of 
 Provence." Disdainful persons, or those believed to be 
 such, are generally detested. Madame de Grignan well 
 knew she was not liked, and complained of it to her 
 mother, who only imperfectly soothed her. This con- 
 sciousness of being wrongfully judged made her sour and 
 spiteful. As none were sweet towards her she became 
 stern in her turn to others. There were few spoke well 
 of her, and she did not spare even her mother's best 
 friends. Madame de la Fayette's wit was not to her 
 taste ; the Duke de Chaulnes seemed to her a man of 
 evil surroundings ; she managed to find Coulanges dull ; 
 she teased Corbinelli, and rudely refused a present from 
 Cardinal de Retz, who called her his dear niece, and 
 talked of leaving his property to her. Here was re- 
 taliation for the bad opinion which she knew was held 
 of her. She avenged herself by deserving it. 
 
 How far this is from the broad kindliness of Madame 
 de Sevigne, and from her habit of seeing good in every- 
 thing and of judging people by their bright side ! At 
 least, she was neither vain nor shy, and did not fret before-
 
 34 Madame de 
 
 hand about the effect she might produce. When she 
 had to write or speak she " let the torrent gush forth," 
 and all that was in her mind and heart escaped at once. 
 On the contrary, Madame de Grignan felt a kind of cramp 
 of the spirit which prevented her feelings issuing. She 
 said of herself that she had no "communicative soul"; this 
 word, so much used now-a-days, but which she was one 
 of the first to employ, paints her wonderfully well. Be- 
 fore her mother, she could not speak out, she seemed 
 fettered and indifferent ; she did not know how to respond 
 to the evidences of friendship with which she was over- 
 whelmed. When she was alone, subsequently, and 
 beyond the presence chilling her, she recovered her free- 
 dom of action, and terms of affection came to the end of 
 her pen. " Naughty child ! " said her mother, " why do 
 you hide away such precious treasures from me, for fear I 
 should die of joy ? " When one is temperate, it is natural 
 the heat of others should be burdensome ; a kind of con- 
 fusion is felt in receiving marks of affection which, it is 
 felt, cannot be answered. Madame de Grignan grew 
 finally a little fatigued by her mother's exuberant love. 
 "There are persons," writes Madame de Sevigne, "who 
 wish to make me believe that the excess of my love incom- 
 modes you. I do not know, my dear child, if this be true, 
 but I do wish to say that it was assuredly with no design 
 that I gave you that trouble. I own to having somewhat 
 followed my impulse, and I saw you as much as I could 
 because I had not enough power over myself to deny me 
 that pleasure ; but I did not believe myself to be burden-
 
 The Woman. 35 
 
 some." She was burdensome sometimes, without being 
 aware of it. We have Pascal's saying that it takes skill 
 to love properly, for one who loves too well does not love 
 wisely. Instead of moderating and regulating herself, and 
 restraining the excess of her affection, the poor mother 
 only thought to weep and moan, and mutual life became 
 intolerable. During the winter of 1676, after an absence 
 of nearly two years, Madame de Grignan came to seek 
 her mother in Paris. Unfortunately they were both out 
 of the normal state just then ; the daughter had a chest 
 complaint, and the mother was recovering from a rheu- 
 matic attack. As each trembled for the other, both 
 wearied themselves with similar uneasiness : it was a con- 
 stant watchfulness, ceaseless cares, exaggerated foresight, 
 endless complaints and reproaches arising upon every 
 excuse. Under the pretext of curing one another the 
 sooner, they made themselves more unwell they drove 
 away that tranquillity of mind which is half the battle in 
 illness. Charles de Sevigne, laid up himself with a wound 
 received at the Siege of Valenciennes, related to his sister 
 how his mother and he arranged about nursing each 
 other, and with his pleasant common-sense, read her a 
 little lesson. "We take care of ourselves whilst allowing 
 fair liberty, and no petty feminine remedies. ' You are 
 well again, my dear mamma ! I am delighted ! Did you 
 sleep soundly last night ? How's your head ? No vapours ? 
 The Lord be praised ! Go, take the air run to St. Maur 
 have supper at Madame de Schomberg's walk about the 
 Tuileries gardens. Don't let anything hamper you; I
 
 36 Madame de Sevignd. 
 
 leave the reins on your neck. Do you like to eat straw- 
 berries or drink tea ? The strawberries will do you most 
 good. Good-bye, mother. I've a pain in my heel. You 
 may keep me, if you like, from noon till three, then the 
 boat sails ! Vogue lagalere !' There you are, little sister, 
 that's how sensible people act." But this pair were not 
 sensible, and reciprocal looking after one another became 
 so heavy in the end that they had to give up living to- 
 gether. "I leaped to the clouds," writes Madame de 
 Sevigne, " when someone told me : 'you will do one another 
 to death you must separate.' Upon my word, 'tis a fine 
 remedy ! " It was true, nevertheless ; they were killing 
 one another, and, whatever the mother thought, the part- 
 ing was to be an efficacious remedy for her child. She 
 had barely left town before she felt better, and when 
 she arrived at Grignan she was hale. 
 
 What pained Madame de Sevigne was her coming to 
 believe at whiles during these scenes that " her daughter 
 had an aversion to her." This was injustice ; Madame 
 de Grignan loved her mother. " It seems to me that 
 this is my best point," she said to Bussy. But she loved 
 her in her own way, which was not her mother's. What 
 proves this affection, though calmer, to be none the less sub- 
 stantial is that when the hour for parting came there were 
 tears on both sides. " You wept, my dearest," writes the 
 Marchioness to her daughter after her going ; " it is a 
 matter of course for you, but it's not the same for me, 
 but in my nature." Thereupon interminable correspon- 
 dence would begin betwixt the twain. Only think, that
 
 The Woman. 37 
 
 during five-and-twenty years, the Countess de Grignan 
 never missed a post when not prevented by illness. All 
 through the year, whatever her occupations, she would 
 write to her mother twice a week such letters that she 
 could but think them much too long, considering the time 
 and pains they must have cost, and begged her earnestly 
 to abridge them in spite of the pleasure she found in 
 reading them. These may be more tender and affec- 
 tionate than we suppose, forasmuch as they contented the 
 recipient whose love was so exacting ; it is probable that 
 this timid sensibility became bolder at a distance; Madame 
 de Grignan felt no more shame in giving free sway to her 
 thoughts when not under beloved eyes. She dared to 
 show her heart as it was, and the enchanted mother used 
 to cry out : "When you like, how lovable you are !" 
 
 I am, therefore, tempted to believe that we would have 
 a better idea of the Countess de Grignan if we could 
 read her letters. A bad service was done her in destroy- 
 ing them. In reality she may have been less selfish and 
 indifferent than supposed ; indifferent people do not feel 
 suffering, and she did. Her mother often admired her 
 depth, energy, and solidity of mind, and, in these points, 
 ranked her above herself. As being tokens of a firm and 
 venturesome reason, we are commonly shown her rash- 
 ness in opinions, her philosophical escapades on the 
 Descartes theory her tendencies towards heresy. I own 
 I rather see the disquiet of an unbalanced intellect 
 and a need to flutter about in the open air. At bottom 
 it was a sick, perturbed soul, nourished upon chimerse.
 
 38 Madame de Sevignd. 
 
 Obliged by duty to live in society, she sighed for solitude ; 
 she saw everything through smoked glass, and made a 
 cause for mourning out of everything. Her mother 
 reproached her for having a taste for despair and grief ; 
 she belonged to that army of blase and disenchanted 
 spirits so numerous since. Instead of blaming her, as 
 is usually done, we ought perhaps to pity her a little. I 
 fancy hers one of those hapless characters fated, whilst 
 torturing themselves, to be the torment of others. 
 
 V. 
 
 Next to her son and her daughter, there is no one who 
 interwove the thread of his life so closely with that of the 
 Marchioness de SeVigne" as her cousin, the Count de 
 Bussy-Rabutin. We should have a good deal to say of 
 him if we had to study him on all his facets, as he is one 
 of the most curious characters of the Seventeenth Cen- 
 tury. Let us, as much as possible, limit ourselves to 
 what is necessary knowledge to understand his relations 
 with his kinswoman. 
 
 Few men opened life as noisily as Bussy. A soldier 
 at sixteen, and remarked from the first day for coolness 
 and bravery, he commanded his father's regiment at 
 eighteen, and had already made much ado with his mad 
 freaks. At twenty he was appointed camp marshal of 
 the line ; he fought duels and had amorous adventures ; 
 none doubted he would speedily arrive at the highest 
 fortune ; he, least of all. Circumstances seemed favour-
 
 The Woman. 39 
 
 able ; an important war had begun, setting bold spirits in 
 relief; a great reign portended, and its on-coming was 
 felt. All was renewed ; manners and opinionschanged ; 
 the actors took a walk upon the outer stage who were to 
 play the principal parts on the greater one within, newly 
 decorated. Impatient to take his place, Bussy en- 
 deavoured to draw attention upon himself by every 
 means. He put on the good qualities and, chiefly, the 
 vices that were in fashion ; he struck the view, amazed all 
 eyes and, at need, scandalized them ; he forced everybody 
 to speak about him. Amongst the methods he em- 
 ployed to raise excitement was one which he assuredly 
 would not have conceived a few years sooner. It was 
 to pass as a skilful man of letters ; he made verses which 
 he gave to gentlemen and mostly to lady-friends, and he 
 composed a novel which he circulated in select society. 
 It was a sign of the times ; literature was becoming a 
 power, and Bussy used it as his lever to be prised into 
 renown. Everything at the start appeared to succeed 
 with him ; he was appointed lieutenant-general ; he com- 
 manded the light cavalry in Turenne's army ; he became 
 a member of the French Academy ; but, all at once, 
 the publication of his "Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules" 
 in which the merry dames of the court and the most im- 
 portant men of the realm were " shown up," as we should 
 say now, raised the ire of his victims ; he was clapped 
 into the Bastille for thirteen months and exiled to his 
 estate, where he remained eighteen years before he could 
 get leave to return to the capital.
 
 4O Madame de 
 
 It is in this work that he placed the sketch of the 
 Marchioness de Sevigne of which we have quoted several 
 passages. The remarkable thing about this portrait is that 
 nothing is perfectly exact and yet nothing is totally false. 
 Taken separately, the features are enlarged and dis- 
 figured, but they are recognisable collectively. Thus was 
 he able to gratify everybody's malignancy ; he infused 
 enough falsehood to make the malevolent rejoice, and 
 enough truth to let friends amuse themselves without 
 scruple. Corbinelli " the good Corbinelli " confesses 
 that he could not read it without laughing. The anger of 
 Madame de Sevigne", when she saw it printed and in all 
 hands, much surprised Bussy : he was one of those who, 
 speedily forgetting the evil they have wrought, are 
 astounded at those they have injured bearing it in mind ; 
 however, he finally begged and obtained pardon of his 
 relative and they resumed writing to one another without 
 interruption to the latest year of their life. 
 
 It is by help of this correspondence that we may follow 
 Bussy into his banishment. It is known that he did not 
 support it with courage, nowise surprising to those who 
 thoroughly knew him. Everything was superficial in him ; 
 he had more vainglory than ambition ; he liked uproar 
 more than fame, and, for all the airs of the swaggering 
 captain that he donned so willingly, he lack true energy. 
 He deemed it incumbent on him to assume resigned 
 attitudes, and utter some of the rounded sentences which 
 numskulls took for gospel. " As I know, " he wrote, "that 
 one must march into death from some place or other, I
 
 The Woman. 41 
 
 am as willing to go from Burgundy as from Paris or St. 
 Germain." The fact was, he meant to have death find 
 him not in Burgundy but at the court, his hope being 
 founded on a reason which he stubbornly clung to, and 
 often repeated to friends. "Nothing lasts and everything 
 comes round," he would tell them; "there is no good or ill 
 fortune for ever. While the happy man has to dread, the 
 hapless one may hope, for his turn will come some day, 
 but he must fight off death from cutting in between. 
 All the wisdom of an exile consists, therefore, in being 
 ready to grasp fortune in her second course round him." 
 Bussy looked to this, and endeavoured as well as he 
 could to avoid all emotions detrimental to health. 
 When he lost one of his best friends, the Marquis de 
 Vardes, he merely wrote to Corbinelli : " After both of 
 us honestly regretting it, let us only think how to avoid 
 soon following him." Still he could not help thinking he 
 was made to wait very long for the day expected with 
 so much confidence, the day of justice and reparation ; 
 more than once he lost patience ; his mask of resignation 
 fell off, and the pent-up bile was revealed in caustic spirts 
 of satire. Then he attacked the royal favourites and 
 mistresses and the ministers. In brief, here is Colbert the 
 finance minister's funeral oration : " The doctors found 
 seven stones in him ; this does not astound me so much 
 as their not finding his heart was all one." The death 
 of Madame de Seignelay at eighteen wrung from him this 
 outcry of savage glee : " We wretches should be all in 
 despair if heaven did not now and then regale us with 
 the death of a cabinet minister !" D
 
 42 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 Such flashes are rare in his epistles, which I deplore, I 
 vow ; for I would rather see him rebellious than submis- 
 sive. I cannot believe in his resignation, belied by his 
 ever-attempted efforts to disarm his enemies and win his 
 forgiveness. It must be acknowledged that his position 
 was very delicate, and that he was alive to its difficulties. 
 He knew that he was not generally liked; as he was 
 stubborn about his merits and his nobility, and sharp and 
 punctilious, he lived at peace with nobody. One day he 
 fell out with the Marshal de Bellefonds, who had made 
 use of the following phrase in writing to him : " I entreat 
 you to keep me in your good graces." He should have 
 written "the honour of your good graces." The " His- 
 toire Amoureuse" had attained a great success, but it was 
 one of those successes through scandal, which, whilst 
 gaining readers for the books, make enemies for the 
 author. Reading it is enough to confirm the opinion 
 that Bussy was an unbearable railer who respected 
 nothing. We have no idea at the present day of allow- 
 ing anybody to lay bare the private life to public view of 
 the leading personages in society, and recount their least 
 commendable doings with embellishments of abominable 
 details borrowed from the most cynical writer of antiquity. 
 However ruined in reputation were the Countess 
 d'Olonne and the Duchess de Chatillon, they belonged 
 to the foremost families under the crown, and had hus- 
 bands and relatives whom their public disgrace ought to 
 cover with shame. How can we understand it being 
 openly stated in a book anybody might read that they
 
 The Woman. 43 
 
 were debauched, perfidious, and mercenary in amours ; 
 changed lovers according to whim or want of money ; 
 and for two thousand pistoles smiled on upstarts without 
 rank or birth? Not a soul is spared in this satirical 
 romance; neither the Prince de Marcillac, shown like 
 Samson crushing enemies "with his ass's jawbone"; nor 
 the Counts de Guiche and Manicamp, to whom shameful 
 habits are attributed ; nor the Prince de Conde, " born 
 cunning, insolent, and without respectfulness" ; nor the 
 Duchess de Longueville, " who was uncleanly and smelt 
 strong." When Bussy was seen attacking everybody, of 
 course all were a-tremble for themselves, and glad to see 
 sauciness punished, from which none believed himself 
 shielded. Bussy was therefore aware that contemporary 
 opinion did not uphold him ; and what completed his exas- 
 peration was his perception of his not being able to rely any 
 better on the goodwill of posterity. He said to Madame 
 de Sevigne that he did not expect history to treat him better 
 than fortune, " because writers of it were court pensioners, 
 and made up their works out of ministers' memoirs." He 
 has been more unfortunate than he foresaw. It is not 
 only official historians who have maltreated him, but 
 independent writers expecting nothing from the court, 
 and detesting the cabinet. St. Evremond, an exile like- 
 wise, and for more futile motives, has not spared him, 
 saying : " To his promotion he preferred the pleasure of 
 making a book, and making the public laugh ; he set out 
 to make his freedom a meritorious act, and he has not 
 acted the character to the exit. When a man renounces 
 
 D 2
 
 44 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 fortune by his own deed, and willingly does all that M. 
 de Bussy has deliberately done, he ought to spend the 
 rest of his days in retreat, and sustain with some dignity 
 the awkward part he charged himself with." Saint-Simon, 
 not to be suspected either of servility, and not founding 
 his memoirs on those of cabinet officials, meeting Bussy 
 on his path, merely remarks that "he is known by his 
 ' Histoire Amoureusej but more by his vanity and the 
 baseness of his heart." 
 
 Bussy passed his exile of seventeen years on his estate 
 in Burgundy at Chaseu, Forleans and Bussy. Through a 
 rare and happy chance the Chateau de Bussy remains 
 to-day almost in the condition as left by its master. In 
 his letters he boasts of having built " one of the finest 
 houses in France" an excessive eulogy, we think. It is 
 a heavy-looking building, towering over a characterless 
 vale, surrounded by rising ground not mountains, and 
 watered by streams not rivers. Before the entrance ex- 
 tends a park handsomely timbered, but the unevenness 
 of the ground does not allow its extent to be embraced. 
 On the other side, a rather paltry lawn with straight 
 narrow walks and an apology for a brook, forming a 
 terrace, beyond which the eye meets a common average 
 horizon. At the foot of the mansion cluster the few 
 houses of a poor hamlet ; the rest scatter out upon the 
 plain or climb up the hill, so that there is neither wholly 
 the stern beauty of solitude nor the movement and bustle 
 of life. But Bussy was not a friend of nature. I sup- 
 pose the view out of the chateau windows was very
 
 The Woman. 45 
 
 unenticing to him, and that he only strolled in his park 
 walks in obedience to hygienic prescription. What was 
 an exile who could not endure the country to do amid 
 the fields to fill up the void of long days ? He tells us more 
 than once in his correspondence, as soon as he arrived 
 in Burgundy after coming out of the Bastille, he had 
 artists of all kinds from Dijon and even down from Paris, 
 chiefly architects and painters, and set to beautifying his 
 reception-rooms. These halls are what were most liked 
 in the Seventeenth Century, as reminding of the happiest 
 moments of life passed in charming gatherings of lovable 
 women and witty gentlemen ; so that Le Notre, to please 
 this world-loving society, planned the Park of Versailles 
 to reproduce the Palace itself with long galleries, where 
 the trees form a roof by arching over, leading to rooms 
 and halls of verdure. The manner in which Bussy 
 decorated his dwelling makes us see clearly in what state 
 of mind he was then, and what occupied all his thoughts, 
 He fed upon regrets and remembrances ; he mused only 
 upon the seductive company from which he was banished, 
 and wished at any price to have its simulacrum before 
 his eyes. Many rooms are adorned with emblems and 
 allegories, almost all recalling his mistress, the lovely 
 Marchioness de Montglas. Bussy who accused her of 
 having abandoned him in his blight, and had her repre- 
 sented now lighter than the wind, now more changeable 
 than the moon, and then more fleeting than the swallow 
 shows that he still loved her by the fierceness with which 
 he hunts her about. In one room he collected portraits
 
 46 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 of the great captains of the time, and unceremoniously 
 puts himself in their company. Elsewhere he had all 
 his amorous conquests depicted with inscriptions often 
 epigrams. No doubt, it did not seem to him he had 
 altogether quitted Paris and Versailles when all around 
 him he found familiar faces and forms recalling his 
 happier years. He could delude himself in gazing on 
 them and momentarily forget his exile. His correspond- 
 ence was another means of attaching himself to the 
 world from which he was debarred. Every post brought 
 him communications from the few friends he had pre- 
 served, principally of the softer sex, who showed them- 
 selves more faithful than men, albeit he had not spared 
 them ; with them were a small number of courtiers, such 
 as remember unfortunate friends, and several lights of the 
 colleges and academies highly honoured by being in con- 
 nection with a grand lord who prided himself on loving 
 literature. These letters were impatiently awaited, bring- 
 ing to him from afar an echo of the stir in that world to- 
 wards which his ear was always turned. But whilst his 
 curiosity found pleasure in perusing them, what cruel 
 wounds his pride must have experienced ! what bitterness 
 to learn the success of his former rivals, men who had 
 served with him ay, under him to whom he esteemed 
 himself superior, but they were mounting one after 
 another to the prime dignities of the State ! what vexation 
 to run over the lists of field-marshals and promotions 
 in knightly orders, where his name was not to be found ! 
 And when he was given the story of battles won, pro-
 
 The Woman. 47 
 
 vinces conquered and coalitions overcome, what fury for 
 a man of infinite conceit, who believed he was called 
 upon to command armies and bear away the laurels to 
 see all these great events come to pass without his being 
 by ! The pangs that rent Bussy's soul can be understood, 
 and one is prone to pardon the desperate efforts he made 
 to return into favour. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE Marchioness de Sevigne must be placed in the 
 foremost rank amongst the faithful correspondents who 
 undertook to send Bussy news from the court and the 
 capital. She liked writing to him and receiving his 
 letters, finding her cousin's fire to kindle and excite her 
 own ; his sharpness piqued her into animation, and, in 
 answering him, she felt one of the pleasures to which we 
 are most sensitive self-contentment. 
 
 Yet she had friends whom she better liked and to whom 
 she wrote more freely. A great number can be cited 
 with whom she held ceaseless communication; but as 
 space is limited, I shall merely mention the better known, 
 those who took up most place in her life. First, 
 Madame de La Fayette, and La Rochefoucauld, and the 
 Coulanges. 
 
 When Madame de La Fayette died, in 1693, Madame 
 de Sevigne" said that their friendship had lasted forty 
 years, dating from the time when Madame de La Vergne } 
 mother of Madame de La Fayette, made a second
 
 48 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 marriage with Chevalier Renaud de SeVigne. Madame 
 de la Vergne's daughter and Henri de Se"vigne's young 
 wife felt drawn to one another by similarity of age and 
 tastes. Of those early, distant years we know very little, 
 and I shall not allude to them. When the SeVigne Letters 
 to the Marchioness's daughter begin, Madame de La 
 Fayette had long been a widow, and had formed a close 
 relation with the Duke de La Rochefoucauld which was 
 a bone of contention in society. 
 
 What was its nature? A very delicate question, I grant ; 
 but it is hard to elude having to answer it. Their 
 contemporaries asked it with malicious curiosity. 
 Madame de Scudery writes to Bussy : " The Duke de La 
 Rochefoucauld is living openly with Madame de La 
 Fayette ; there appears only friendship in it. The fear 
 of God on one part, and on the other hand, mayhappen, 
 politics, have at last clipped love's wings. She is his 
 favourite and foremost friend." But Bussy, a mistrustful 
 fellow, suspected another matter, answering : " For my 
 part, I maintain there is still love in it." It may not be 
 wise to throw too much light on such delicate ground. 
 If their connection commenced in 1665, as Sainte-Beuve 
 thinks, the Duke was then fifty-two and the lady 
 thirty-two. Under pressure their ages may allow any 
 amount of supposition, though it must be pointed out that 
 a long career of barren agitation and baffled ambition 
 had worn out La Rochefoucauld ; as for Madame de La 
 Fayette, no doubt of her having been gay and lively in 
 her bloom, and when she was in a set of sure bosom
 
 The Woman. 49 
 
 friends, it had happened her sometimes to speak out 
 freely. A long while afterwards, Madame de Sevigne re- 
 minds her daughter of it : " For all her goodness, we had 
 many a laugh and acted such nonsense ; do you remem- 
 ber ?" But goodness had retaken the upper hand, and 
 she was a ripe and serious woman, although only thirty, 
 when La Rochefoucauld met her in Madame de Sable's 
 salon. It is my opinion that the acquaintance was slowly 
 formed, neither being of the age or mood to feel one of 
 those violent and inevitable passions which spring up at 
 a touch. No doubt the Duke perceived the sense in 
 the lady's remarks, and was struck by her perfect know- 
 ledge of high life, and her clear, sure manner of judging 
 men and events. On her part, we may conclude she 
 felt most flattered when she marked the effect she 
 produced upon so distinguished a nobleman, who had 
 played an important part in public matters. Therefore 
 the mind had at first the greatest place in the acquaint- 
 ance, but the heart was not totally stranger to it. The 
 Duke was not intended for those fierce passions in which 
 the hazard of his romantic adventures had once en- 
 tangled him. Madame de Sevigne had rightly said of 
 him : " I do not believe he has ever been in love, as we 
 understand it." When past fifty only did he meet a love 
 of the kind he was capable of reciprocating. Although 
 he had seen much of life up to this, Madame de La 
 Fayette opened out new prospects. She inspired him 
 with a moderate and reasonable affection, the only one 
 suitable to both their natures, and one that gilded their
 
 50 Madame de Stvigne'. 
 
 declining years. In these stormless intimacies late in 
 life, there is still much charm, and they may have the 
 tempered lustre and gentle warmth of an autumnal sunset. 
 " I believe that nothing can surpass the strength of such 
 a connection," says Madame de Sevigne. Thencefor- 
 ward, they never left one another. Gourville, who hated 
 Madame de La Fayette, leaves us to infer that she en- 
 tirely won La Rochefoucauld. It is sure that she was by 
 nature imperious and domineering, and laid the yoke on 
 her friends, but, in this case, the yoke was accepted with- 
 out resistance. There is servitude to which one is happy 
 to submit ; and, besides, we know that the lady only used 
 her power to mollify the bitter moralist who had recently 
 written " The Maxims" and reconcile him with the 
 human race. It was at the height of this association 
 that " La Princesse de Cloves" appeared under the name 
 of Segrais, which everybody knew to conceal Madame 
 de La Fayette, and many suspected that the Duke had a 
 hand in it. The devotee Madame de Scudery writes to 
 Bussy hereon : " The Duke de La Rochefoucauld and 
 Madame de la Fayette have made a romance on the 
 court of King Henry II. ; they are not of an age to 
 make anything else together." At present it is impossible 
 to know if, indeed, the Duke aided the authoress, and 
 what is his in "La Princesse de Ctives." All that can be 
 said is that there seems to be some trace in this charm- 
 ing work of the dual authorship, and that the state of 
 mind of the lady in writing it can be surmised by the 
 perusal. The calmness seems to me to be felt of a
 
 The Woman. 5 1 
 
 soul enjoying shared affections from the repose befalling 
 her. She gazed with amiable and compassionate sympathy 
 upon the hapless passions of others, and shed upon the 
 objects of her dreams that soft and even light which is 
 the very medium wherein she was passing her life. 
 
 The following years were less blissful. As ever, age 
 brought ails : the gout chained the Duke to his easy chair. 
 Always going to die, his consort never could form any 
 project for the morrow. She tells how, having started for 
 Chantilly where the Prince Royal was expecting her, 
 fever seized her on the Pont Neuf and she could not go 
 any further. This condition made each more needful to 
 the other. As their poor health compelled them to shun 
 company, they arranged more than ever to be company 
 enough between themselves. We are told by Madame 
 de Sevigne, who saw them more regularly after they were 
 more alone and cheerless, that " nothing could be com- 
 pared to the charm and trustfulness in their union." 
 
 To pass from this couple to the Coulanges, is to go 
 from one extreme to the other. As much as one were 
 grave and serious, the other were gay, bustling, and ani- 
 mated. Life and movement itself were this delighted 
 pair. It is impossible to have brighter mental gifts than 
 they minds of witty sallies and sprightliness, ever under 
 arms and ready to retort. In the connubial dialogue, 
 epigrams showered down in sparks. Dulness durst not 
 go nigh them, and consequently, everybody was fond of 
 them, sought them out, invited them, and strove to keep 
 them. For all this, when eyed narrowly, it was percept-
 
 52 Madame de Sdvigne". 
 
 ible that they did not very well harmonise. When these 
 merrymakers were alone they became serious, and, though 
 inexhaustible conversationalists away from home, found 
 nothing to talk about ; hence they were as seldom within 
 their own doors as could be. They had no children to 
 retain them there ; they were almost always unoccupied ; 
 the wife did not feel at all interested in household matters ; 
 and her lord and master, who had been successively 
 counsellor and clerk of petitions to the Parliament of Paris, 
 refrained as much as possible from attending office. The 
 pair were always out in the streets or on the roads. The 
 lady frequented the reception-rooms of the capital and 
 went visiting to Versailles, where she had high connections 
 of whom she was proud, such as the Premier Louvois, her 
 kin, the Duchess de Richelieu and the Marchioness 
 de Maintenon in particular, who much liked her turn of 
 mind. The gentleman allowed himself longer runs, spend" 
 ing whole seasons in the country residences of mighty 
 noblemen whom he amused. Once he travelled in Ger- 
 many with M. de Lyonne ; later on he accompanied the 
 Duke de Chaulnes on his embassy to Rome, sat out two 
 conclaves, and remained over two years in Italy. At the 
 period when the SeVign Letters make them more inti- 
 mately known to us, they had been seven or eight years 
 married, and their marital standing was continued to the 
 end. Each did as he or she fancied, and both had 
 settled down in their courses after this separation under the 
 same roof. Was this managed without conflict ? Of this 
 we are ignorant ; but it is hard to imagine there could
 
 The Woman. 53 
 
 have been any rough rupture between such well-bred 
 people, so hostile to noise and tolerant by nature. The 
 probability is that they softly drew apart when they found 
 less pleasure in dwelling together, and, as the parting was 
 gradual, there was no violent rending ; even as liquids 
 slowly cooling in a vessel do not burst it. But how came 
 it that these two winsome beings, so alike, did not agree 
 better ? Was it not because they were too much alike? If 
 opposite spirits risk clashing, it may be difficult for those 
 of too great a resemblance totally to convene. It is 
 better that, between persons fated never more to part, 
 there should be likeness enough for them to comprehend 
 one another, yet enough variation for them to need one 
 another for mutual completion. In any case, esteem for 
 each other had survived in this semi-detached couple, and 
 even more, a basis of trust and unity ; whence it may be 
 concluded that the merely nominal husband and wife had 
 never felt a very fervent love for one another; since, accord- 
 ing to Bussy's most just reflection, out of a fierce love 
 one sooner goes into hate than friendship. In a very 
 serious illness of Madame de Coulanges, there was the 
 edifying sight of the husband showing tokens of the most 
 profound sorrow and the dying wife only thinking of her 
 husband. It is true that when she was out of danger, all 
 went on as usually. This blending of reciprocal atten- 
 tions and mutual indifference, of complete separation in- 
 doors and a seemly show to public eyes, forms a most 
 curious contrast ; can one not see in it a forward glimpse 
 of a fashionable alliance in the Eighteenth Century ?
 
 54 Madame de 
 
 There is one important point missing, however. This 
 airy husband who flitted about beyond the cote, had not 
 any strange mate, as far as we know ; not one of those con- 
 nections which replace family life was apparently formed 
 by him. He chiefly liked good cheer, high-spiced talk 
 and boon companions. Wherever he was welcome he 
 sat at ease. At first agreeable, he soon became necessary ; 
 but he amused himself in entertaining others, and was 
 fully content with this jester's existence, not to everybody's 
 taste. Some vexations he met not a doubt of that; who 
 can entirely avoid them ? Once he was urged to sue for 
 an important financial office which, although he was a 
 kinsman of the Marquis de Louvois, the Prime Minister, 
 he did not obtain. He felt the rebuff, for all his philo- 
 sophy; but the chagrin did not last, and, as was his wont, 
 he comforted himself with song : 
 
 " Fortune with me hath picked a bone,* 
 But on it left meat to atone." 
 
 and recommenced his jolly vagabond roaming. " What 
 a gladsome life !" writes Madame de Sevigne to him, 
 " and how softly fortune handles you ! always beloved 
 and held highly ; always bearing joy and pleasure about 
 with you ; always the favourite cheek-by-jowl of some 
 potent friend a duke or a prince or a pope (I throw in the 
 Holy Father for rarity's sake !) ; always hale and never a 
 burden upon anybody ; never bothered by business or 
 fretted by ambition ; and, above all, with the blessing of 
 never growing old ! It is the climax of bliss. You fear a 
 
 * " Fortune tu m'as fait querelle," etc.
 
 The Woman. 55 
 
 little that you are aging, by computation of time and 
 years; but the dread is afar, and does not foreshadow any 
 horror, as it do.es to some people I could name ; it is 
 your neighbour who is getting on in years, and you have 
 not really that alarm which is usually caused when our 
 neighbour's house catches fire. In short, after duly 
 musing over it, I see you are the happiest man in the 
 world." 
 
 But how about Madame de Coulanges ? Was she con- 
 tented with what sufficed her husband? How did she 
 accept the loneliness in which he left her ? Was there no 
 hawk who profited by the chance to glide into the empty 
 place ? Saint-Simon, not to be suspected of kindliness, 
 tells us that she was always irreproachable ; and we may 
 believe him. Not that she lacked for suitors who offered 
 to console her during her husband's absence. Madame 
 de Sevigne names three who paid her assiduous 
 court. In the first place comes Abbe Tetu, a wit of 
 the alcove the ladies' pet, whom they fought for at con- 
 versational gatherings. He had divided up his time 
 regularly. In the fine season he was not to be found 
 he was keeping company with the witching Abbess of 
 Fontevrault, and in the darksome weather he returned 
 into winter quarters, to use his own words, at Madame 
 de Coulanges'. Though often jealous and overbearing, 
 our Abbe had the advantage of not injuring the reputa- 
 tion of ladies to whom he attached himself ; it was known 
 that all his ardour lay in murmuring sweet nothings, 
 and that he never went beyond madrigals. The next was
 
 56 Madame de Stvignt. 
 
 still less dangerous, being the eccentric Count de Brancas, 
 about whom the Marchioness de Sevigne often made 
 merry : he was in the same breath amorous and devout, 
 and pretended that he was striving to win Madame de 
 Coulanges only to help her save her soul. She preferred 
 to save it single-handed, but willingly entertained herself 
 with this mystic suppliant who, in his proposals, mingled 
 theology and gallantry, in the Tartuffe vein. There was 
 more to apprehend from the third, the Marquis de La 
 Trousse, Coulanges' cousin, one of the leading officials in 
 the royal household. He was deeply smitten with his 
 relative, and never quitted her when in town ; but she 
 treated him no better than the others. " He is ever 
 assiduous," we have Madame de Sevign^'s word for it 
 thus, "and she was ever hard, bitter, and scornful." The 
 trio of lovers did not displease the lady with their be- 
 haviour, and she rather liked seeing them contend against 
 one another. What is more singular is the husband's find- 
 ing sport in it, and taking pleasure in noting the progress 
 and chances of each one, and celebrating them in his 
 songs : 
 
 " Tetu hath Brancas overcome,* 
 La Trousse is thrown, supine and dumb : 
 The tourney queen is gay, 
 Whilst trolls her lord this lay : 
 Tetu hath Brancas overcome, 
 La Trousse is thrown, supine and dumb !" 
 
 Behold a married man of rare tolerance and disinterested- 
 
 * " Tetu est vainqueur de Brancas," etc.
 
 The Woman. 57 
 
 ness. Madame de Sevigne was not wrong in saying, on 
 the eve of his starting for Rome : " His wife had no 
 particular reason for wishing him well off upon this jour- 
 ney, for he really was not at all in her way." 
 
 On the whole, it is likely that marital confidence was 
 not deceived. Madame de Coulanges took pleasure in 
 the badinage of light gallantry, but, we see, Saint-Simon 
 affirms that she did not drink too deep of the cup. She 
 may have regretted this - at stray moments ; it is possible 
 that she caught a glimpse beyond these futile flirtations 
 of some deeper affection, which would have made her feel 
 unknown sentiments. In one of her letters I come 
 upon a sentence that sets one thinking ; it is speaking of 
 the Marquis de Villeroy, the Prince Charming, as they 
 styled him, who was wildly in love with a deceiving fair : 
 " Everybody deems him worth pitying, but to me he ap- 
 pears to be envied." Meseems that these words, if you 
 read between the lines, allow regrets to be divined. But 
 the fact is, her nature did not soar into the firmament 
 of grandes passions ; the lightness of her spirit protected 
 her during the perilous years. Towards the close, she 
 became grave and religious. We have a letter of hers 
 wherein she upbraids her husband for his wayward 
 humour and incorrigible youthfulness. "For my part," she 
 tells him, " I confess that I believe myself little caring 
 about society. I no longer find myself fit for it because 
 of my age ; thank Heaven, I have none of those engage- 
 ments with it which retain one in it in spite of themselves ; 
 I have seen all it has to show, and can, in return, only show 
 

 
 58 Madame de 
 
 it an old face, and nothing at all new to discover. So why 
 recommence that eternal round of visits and agitation 
 over occurrences not concerning us? My dear, we 
 ought to think of more substantial things." 
 
 The Ladies of La Fayette and Coulanges were the 
 Marchioness de Sevigne's best friends. Sometimes she 
 doubtlessly suffered from the one's imperious spirit, and 
 the frivolity of the other often irritated her ; but, through 
 all crosses, she fondly loved them both. In allusion to 
 Madame de La Fayette, she said : " We never saw the 
 faintest cloud dim our friendship," and she might have 
 said the same of Madame de Coulanges. On their side, 
 these two felt all the charm and solidity of her affection. 
 On the point of dying, Madame de La Fayette wrote 
 to her : " We must end when God pleaseth, and I am 
 submissive. My dearest, believe that you are the person 
 of all whom I most truly loved." Madame de Coulanges 
 had the pain of surviving her, and she felt the loss most 
 keenly. " No more friends are mine ! " she said when she 
 received the news ; and, a year subsequently, she wrote : 
 " The woe of seeing her no more is ever fresh ; so very 
 much is missing at the Carnavalet Mansion !" What an 
 eulogium for Madame de SeVigne to be equally loved by 
 two of such opposite humour ! It is this assuredly which 
 gives us the best opinion of her.
 
 CHAPTER II. THE WRITER. 
 
 VICTOR COUSIN points out that in the first half of the 
 Seventeenth Century the epistolary style became very 
 fashionable; letters, like portraits and conversation, 
 occupy a great part of the current novels, being, in 
 Madame de Scudery's, printed in different type in order 
 to catch the eye. This vogue is easily understood. It 
 is a very common failing to like speaking about one's self, 
 and putting one's self forward, and, in correspondence, 
 there is nothing else to be done. The ego dominates 
 and is quite in place. What is a fault elsewhere becomes 
 a necessity here and the very rule of the style. Hence 
 we all like to write letters, because we can speak of our- 
 selves as we fancy ; and we like to read them, too, because 
 it is nice to enter into others' minds and learn their most 
 secret feelings, particularly when they do not wish them 
 known. It follows that the epistolary style is sure of being 
 agreeable to the conceited and inquisitive, which is tanta- 
 mount to saying almost all mankind. 
 
 This is why, doubtlessly, Balzac and Voiture give their 
 
 K 2
 
 60 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 principal works the form of letters, unfortunately, only 
 the form. Read all Voiture's correspondence, wherein he 
 prates of himself the whole time ; when done, you will not 
 know whence he came, what he did, on what grounds he 
 was received in the society where we know he held so 
 important a place, why he remained in town and why 
 he left it, and what he went to do in the distant lands 
 whence he wrote so many lines to his friends. He never 
 reveals his true feelings. He belonged to a society 
 where every man took a part and conscientiously played 
 it, as the lover, the jilted, the moping, the coquettish, the 
 careless, and the proud. Once chosen, a line of char- 
 acter could not cease to be enacted, or at least walked 
 through; speaking or writing, one was always in stage 
 clothes. It was understood that Voiture was to be the 
 unhappy lover of the severe Mdlle. Paulet, la belle lionne, 
 as she was termed, and he acquitted himself regularly 
 of that task as long as he frequented the Hotel de 
 Rambouillet ; even his travels did not free him. From 
 Brussels, Rome, or Madrid, he never wearied of sending 
 elegant "fiddle-faddle." From Ceuta he wrote to her once : 
 " I have left Europe and crossed the Strait which serves as 
 its boundary ; but the ocean between you and me cannot 
 extinguish aught of the passion I feel for you ; and, 
 though all the slaves of Christendom become free on 
 landing here, I am none the less in your bondage." I 
 need not tell you that he never felt a word of the pretty 
 stuff he uttered in so believing a tone : it was a fashion- 
 able pastime which cheated nobody a kind of literary
 
 The Writer. 61 
 
 exercise which may seem piquant, but contained nothing 
 serious or sincere. 
 
 Consequently it seems to me that, whatever may 
 have been the success of Voiture's " Letters," anyone feels 
 the lack of something in reading them. Even those 
 most delighted with them, doubtlessly muttered that they 
 would be still more enjoyable if truly letters in which 
 the writer, believing himself safe from betrayal, speaks 
 out confidently and tells us what he feels and thinks, 
 in lieu of expressing conventional sentiments in short, 
 shows himself as he is. If, furthermore, this writer shows 
 talent and in the rush of the pen, during close com- 
 munion those qualities to him natural which are due to 
 toil in others, then there is no more to desire. What 
 proves that sound heads hold this idea, at present, of a 
 perfect letter- writer, and that above Voiture's " Letters" 
 though so much read and admired they perceive others 
 more admirable and joining the merit of sincerity to 
 that of style, is their never hesitating, upon their being 
 given the Sevigne Letters to read, to acknowledge at the 
 first instant that these are perfection. Public opinion 
 has perhaps never so promptly and unanimously hailed 
 a fine work. When, after Bussy-Rabutin's death, 
 his daughter brought out his correspondence with the 
 letters he received from his cousin, the latter ravished 
 the world. Bayle was so enchanted that he declared 
 "this woman deserves a place among the illustrious 
 of her sex and period." About this epoch, a Jesuit 
 published a Latin poem, entitled "Ratio Conscribendce
 
 62 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 Epistolcz" in which he proclaimed the Marchioness de 
 Sevigne^s writings to be the model of style, and that she 
 wrote with so much facility that some of her letters call 
 for more time to read them than she took to compose 
 them. 
 
 It is clear that our reverend poet imagined Madame 
 de Sevigne' as one who dashed off a letter in one breath, 
 without taking any pains to trim and polish it. It is true 
 that she suggests this when she tells us that she even " let 
 her pen run with the bridle on its neck," and, generally, 
 it has been taken on her word. But there have been 
 some doubting Saint Thomases to whom this mode of 
 composing masterpieces seemed suspicious. The very 
 merit of her letters made them surmise that they cost her 
 more trouble than she pretended was the case. The 
 piquant grace of minutiae, the ingenious turns of thought, 
 the alluring variety in the repetition of the same reflec- 
 tions, and the wit in the expression of heart-emotions, 
 seemed to betray art and labour. " So much fineness and 
 care," they reasoned, " were not to all appearance ex- 
 pended upon one person ; a mother does not make so 
 much ado in writing to her daughter ; ordinarily, every- 
 day wit is kept for home consumption and the choicely 
 cut stones shown to strangers and the public." These 
 will have it that Madame de Sevigne' wrote under cover 
 of her daughter for posterity, and if so, these letters did 
 not miscarry on arriving to us. Let us seek for the truth 
 in their opinion, as it will be important to learn it, if only 
 to save us from being duped.
 
 The Writer. 63 
 
 There are distinctions to draw in the Sevigne Letters ; 
 she does not write to all her friends in the same way, 
 because she is not equally sure of them. She knew well 
 that some of them would not keep her letters to them- 
 selves. For example, in corresponding with Bussy, any 
 act might be expected ; did he not one day commit the 
 indelicacy of admitting the King into the secret of this 
 intimacy, and show his Majesty her letters as well as his 
 own? Is it not, therefore, natural that she should be fettered 
 sometimes in writing to Bussy ? could she know what 
 would become of confidence sent to him ? What Bussy 
 often did for his own gain, Coulanges did for the writer's ; 
 the admiration he felt for her wit was so vivid that he 
 could not keep it to himself. She strongly suspected this, 
 and was tempted, in addressing him, to dress herself a 
 little not to be caught in dressing-gown and slippers by 
 prying eyes. We ought not to be surprised at some con- 
 straint and even some preparation springing from this ; 
 it was not in her power to be long the mistress of herself; 
 ere long her spirit overcame her and swept her on ; she 
 forgot the precautions she meant to take, and gave her- 
 self up entirely to current inspiration ; and it was well she 
 did so, for she became never more bewitching. 
 
 In any case, she had nothing to fear in writing to her 
 daughter, even if the impression of this uncertain and 
 unknown audience did exert any influence over her when 
 she wrote to Coulanges and Bussy. Now we are in the 
 narrowest circle ; all that lies on the heart may be spoken 
 with full trustingness, that can be related which might
 
 64 Madame de Stvignt. 
 
 not be repeated without peril ; private and State affairs, 
 the neighbours' gossip, the most scandalous stories and 
 the most compromising confidences all is stated. Hence 
 the Countess de Grignan never let her mother's 'letters 
 get about, and when by chance she was reading a passage 
 about important news, she tells us she took the greatest 
 care that nobody should read over her shoulder what 
 ought not to be seen. The writer, therefore, believed 
 herself safe from the outside world ever knowing these 
 letters, and was at ease when writing them. She gave 
 herself no pains about meditating, watching, and taking 
 a style which, for her, were cothurnce. ; she abandoned 
 herself to the flow of her thoughts and feelings : " Do you 
 know what I am going to do ? what I have so far done ? 
 1 always commence without knowing how far I shall 
 run ; I am unaware whether my letter will be long or 
 short ; I wrote so much that it pleases my pen, and that 
 governs the whole." Elsewhere we read : " Firstly I send 
 my love to the Count ; I much admire him, and you too> 
 my child, for liking my letters so well ; I am always as- 
 tounded at the good words you tell me about them, for 
 they fly so quickly from me that I never feel what they 
 are worth, or that they are worth anything at all." She 
 must have written at a pace to have written so much. 
 With all the social duties obligatory upon her, if she had 
 attempted to compose pieces of eloquence, she would 
 never have found time to write such a great number of 
 letters ; above all, she must have made them shorter. 
 Nothing more plainly shows her improvisation than her
 
 The Writer. 65 
 
 wealth of detail, and abundance and amplitude of narra- 
 tion, the traits that delight us, but which she sometimes 
 blamed herself for as for crimes. When she thought 
 of the fatigue she was imposing on her daughter to go 
 through all this " chatter," she resented it herself, asked 
 her forgiveness, and promised to be more sober in the 
 future ; but once she set to converse with her, all her 
 good resolutions were forgotten and she did not know 
 how to stop. " I am pouring forth prose with a facility 
 which must be the death of you." 
 
 WE have before us a young woman, lively, sprightly, 
 much in request by society and passing her days in it, 
 very busy pleasuring, without the faintest notion of com- 
 posing literary works, and yet, the first time she takes 
 up the pen, in letters addressed to one person, without 
 dreaming of the public or attitudinising in its view, she 
 writes with the sureness and exactitude of a professional 
 author ; she knows how to say what she feels and thinks ; 
 she hits on the fit word ; she avoids floundering, repetition, 
 and the obscurity from which literary craftsmen escape 
 so difficultly ; in short, without trying for it, almost with- 
 out being aware of it, she is perfect. 
 
 How is it done, and by what miracle did she so quickly 
 acquire the art demanding such study and effort from 
 others ? 
 
 The reply first coming into mind is, 'that she received
 
 66 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 peculiar gifts from heaven, and that it was her nature to 
 write well ; but nature must be aided by labour. We do 
 not see born artists knowing music before learning it, and 
 they do not play an instrument well the first time they 
 touch it. In all arts there is a portion of handiwork 
 which must be obtained, and the art of writing is not an 
 exception ; quite the reverse, there is none harder. " It 
 is no trivial matter," says Victor Cousin, patly to Madame 
 de Se'vigne', " to express ideas and sentiments in a natural 
 order, with their true shades, in terms neither too vulgar 
 nor too refined, which shall not exaggerate or enfeeble 
 them." These delicate powers presuppose some study 
 and practice. I do not believe there ever was a writer 
 who became so without any apprenticeship ; and if it seems 
 to us that men of genius need no preparation, that is be- 
 cause we do not perceive in what way they were made 
 ready. We are too prone to believe that the only educa- 
 tion to form the mind is that given in schools, after the 
 usual methods ; in reality, there are a thousand methods, 
 strongly differing from one another. Some require a 
 master, others are self-taught. To one, solitude is neces- 
 sary, and he must shut himself up in a study to dwell 
 amongst books and in brooding; on the contrary, 
 another never secludes himself, but seems entirely yield- 
 ing to the maelstrom of the world ; but, without having a 
 meditative aspect, this sort let nothing be lost of what 
 they see and hear. Everything serves as a lesson to him 
 who can profit by it. Instruction may come from the 
 instructed and the unlearnt, from the literate and the
 
 The Writer. 67 
 
 ignorant, in toiling and in doing nothing ; but, as there 
 are a multitude of means to learn which elude us, it seems 
 to me always rash to assert that some one knows what he 
 never learnt. 
 
 Be this as it may, we can be sure that Madame de 
 Sevigne was taught to write; and it is an interesting 
 study to seek how she formed her style. 
 
 In the first place, she had for masters in her youth two 
 of the most learned men of the era, Chapelain the poet, 
 and Menage. Chapelain must have been the first to 
 give her some lessons. We know that he was attached 
 to the Coulanges family, and it is natural he should be 
 called in to finish Mdlle. de Chantal's education whilst 
 he was charged with that of her cousin, M. de La 
 Trousse. Chapelain's reputation is bad, and he has never 
 recovered from Boileau's attacks ; and he judged himself 
 with much severity. While everybody agreed upon 
 celebrating beforehand the glory of his work as one certain 
 to make France illustrious, he spoke of it most lowly to 
 his friends. " Referring to my ' Pucelle] " he wrote to 
 President Maynard, " she is still so crude and rustic that 
 she will not venture out of my study except along of me, 
 and then in the dusk, when her imperfections less appear. 
 With great impatience I await our good fortune bringing 
 you hither that I may entreat you to give her a little 
 brushing up." He wrote to Balzac elsewhere : " Believe 
 me to be of little account, and what I do still less. The 
 world, perforce, and counter to my intention, wishes 
 to consider me a great poet ; and even though I should
 
 68 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 not be quite the other thing, I do not long to be looked 
 upon only in that light. Meseems, I have that within me 
 to pay in better coin, and coin more justly of my minting." 
 It is Boileau's line to a dot : " Why does he not write in 
 prose?" Alas, that is still too favourable ! Chapelain is 
 not a bad poet, but none can say he is a good writer 
 of prose. The two volumes of his letters which have 
 been lately published are of dreadful heaviness. His 
 jests in particular are worthy of a hippopotamus. One 
 day when he wished to write a gallant note to the 
 Countess de Grignan, concerning a visit she was about 
 to make to the Fountain of Vaucluse, he said : " Although 
 I be not as tender a rhymer as Petrarch, still I do rhyme 
 like him, and the vocation common to us both may 
 cover my admission to him to obtain his doing a part 
 of what he owes a lady of your rank. As for 
 his mistress, I do not despair of making her under- 
 stand that she runs no risk in making you welcome, and 
 that your attachment for his lordship the Count de 
 Grignan will not permit ycur displaying all your charms 
 at Vaucluse to entice away her lover." This is not Madame 
 de Sevigne"'s style; evidently Chapelain did not teach 
 her to write; but he knew Latin well, and Italian and 
 Spanish ; he did her a great service in teaching her to 
 read Virgil " in the majesty of his own text," and under- 
 standing " The Jerusalem," and "Rolando Furioso" One 
 day when she consulted him upon Tasso's rather man- 
 nered verses, he answered her that "a proneness for 
 point-lace and network made him take modes of awkward
 
 The Writer. 69 
 
 and obscure expression ; but because a racehorse runs 
 wild now and then, its hams are not strung." The re- 
 mark is apt enough, but what a dreadful style ! Chapelain 
 was very proud of his pupil, and she, on the whole, very 
 grateful to her master ; but gratitude did not prevent so 
 bright a girl from perceiving her professor's ridiculous 
 traits. I daresay that, on seeing him come up to her 
 with his lowly mien and negligent apparel, the remem- 
 brance of "the uncowled" Chaplain sometimes crossed 
 her mind and she could not restrain a smile. Without 
 overmuch respect, she called him her good or old Chape- 
 lain. His airs of a majestic pedant had not escaped her. 
 In acquainting her daughter with his having had an 
 apoplectic stroke preventing him speaking, she said: "He 
 confesses by dumb show, as he sits in his chair like a 
 statue; so heaven confounds the arrogance of philoso- 
 phers." We must own to this being but a meagre 
 funeral oration. 
 
 I suppose Madame de Sevigne owes more to Menage 
 and was more attached to him. He was much younger 
 than Chapelain, and, above all, more of a man of the world. 
 We have alluded to his paying court to his pupil, 
 who did not grow vexed at it. As none of the pieces of 
 verse he dedicated to her bear her maiden name, it may 
 be inferred that he did not know her intimately until 
 after her marriage. Then her education was finished, 
 and had merely to receive the gilding upon the gold from 
 Menage. It is likely that she was very glad to know a 
 man enjoying high renown, whose name Balzac and
 
 7o Madame de Stvigne. 
 
 Saumaise never uttered save with respect. Manage is 
 neither a Scaliger nor a Casaubon ; his learning is less 
 sure and profound than that of the great erudite writers 
 of the preceding epoch. He himself acknowledges (at 
 least, the "Menagiana" makes him say so) that he did not 
 understand Pindar well enough to take any pleasure in 
 him, and that he had never read any Greek author with- 
 out the translation by. His clear and elegant Latin is 
 not correct, and his adversaries have picked out rather 
 gross flaws. None the less, he was a wise man, whose 
 knowledge had much extent. He published poetry in 
 French, Latin, Greek, and Italian. Truth to tell, they 
 were often poor, and he rather guilelessly avows it, spite 
 of his not liking to be told so. In the number, though, 
 there are some of easy turn mainly in Latin ; and it is, 
 at all events, a rare merit to rhyme in four languages. 
 Unfortunately, Menage had more pretension than deserts. 
 He was free of two different classes, namely the learned 
 and the fashionable, and he endeavoured to please each 
 equally, two aspirations which were contrary. When one 
 tries to be agreeable to two of such a pair, there is a risk of 
 displeasing both : the wiseheads deem us too frivolous 
 and the featherbrains too heavy. Thus it came about 
 that towards the close Menage's fame declined. It was 
 his misery to perceive it, for his vanity did not completely 
 blind him, and he sadly observed to his friends : " I am 
 out of fashion." Several awkward affairs which he had 
 the imprudence to draw upon himself, set the laughter 
 against him. Notwithstanding all his efforts to appear
 
 The Writer. 7 1 
 
 of his time, he remained in many respects a pundit ot 
 the Sixteenth Century; like Scaliger and the Lipsiuses, he 
 was of combatable humour, and overwhelmed with insult 
 whomsoever dared be not of his opinion. He raised 
 noisy quarrels for motives seemingly futile to those not 
 of the craft ; he launched huge volumes against Baillet, 
 d'Aubignac, and Bouhours ; he abused Cotin, who re- 
 torted with a heavy pamphlet entitled " La Menagerie.' 1 ' 1 
 For both, this wrangle had disastrous consequences for 
 Moliere saw sport in it and made it immortal. Who does 
 not know the famous scene between Trissotin and Vadius 
 in "Les Femmes Savantes" ? Trissotin is Cotin beyond 
 mistaking ; and is not Vadius as clearly designated ? 
 Menage had the good-sense not to see his own likeness, 
 which proves that he did not altogether lack discernment, 
 but the public were not hoodwinked. However, Madame 
 de Sevigne had no need for Moliere to point her out her 
 master's ridiculous features, for she saw them herself. 
 To her, these clapperclawings of pedants, in which he 
 found pleasure, appeared very foolish. Apropos of the 
 laughable conflict between Father Bouhours and him, 
 this cruel cut escapes her : " They vent truths at one 
 another, and often they are insults." "Behold," says 
 Mesnard, very appositely, "what Menage reaped by 
 sowing Tacitus : ' Flagitia invicem objectavere, neuter 
 false.' " 
 
 Although she could on occasion jest a little at Chape- 
 lain and Manage, she never ignored her obligations to 
 them. More than once she gratefully speaks of "the
 
 72 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 good teachers she had in her youth." These good 
 masters taught her French in two ways ; first by making 
 it known to her in Latin, Italian, and Spanish, there is 
 nothing better than these comparisons made with foreign 
 tongues to render us masters of our own; then they 
 taught it to her directly by the mode in which they 
 studied and practised it together. Both were meritorious 
 grammarians, taking an important part in the work in pro- 
 gress to cleanse their language, that it should become 
 purer and more precise and regular, better prepared, in 
 short, for the great literary epoch commencing. It may 
 be said that this work went on around Madame de 
 Sevigne ; she knew familiarly almost all undertaking it, for 
 they were her friends and masters. As the higher classes 
 had taken a taste for these researches, she might hear in 
 the drawing-rooms where she resorted, pupils of Vaugelas 
 discussing the meaning and value of terms, condemning 
 such as they deemed badly framed, and giving to others 
 their definite form. Were we to say arondelle or hironddle, 
 and so forth ? Were we to accept urbanite, which Balzac 
 wished to place in credit, and prosateur, invented by 
 Manage ? Not only were the ladies lookers-on in these 
 debates, but often judges. The gallant Father Bouhours 
 rated their suffrage highly, and, to win them over to his 
 side, heaped them with eulogy. " There is nothing more 
 fit, proper, and natural than the speech of most French 
 women," he said. " The words they use seem quite new 
 and expressly made for what they say, albeit common; and 
 if Nature herself could speak, I believe she would borrow
 
 The Writer. 73 
 
 their tongue." Thinking of the sex witnessing these 
 learned discussions and their taking part in them, one 
 might be tempted at the outset to feel some distress for 
 them, more than all if there be a recollection of the blue- 
 stockings, Philaminte, Armande, and Belise, so wearisome, 
 pedantic, and conceited, about their grammar : 
 
 " Grammar, who acts the regent e'en o'er kings, and awes, 
 As, with high hand, she makes them bow unto her laws." 
 
 But Philaminte and Belise are silly women who would 
 abuse anything, as they did science and grammar. 
 Their example does not prove that a woman of sense 
 and brilliancy cannot draw good profit from them. 
 When one hears about the origin of words around one, 
 and follows the changes through which they have passed 
 and endeavours to establish a real acceptation, there must 
 remain some gold at the bottom ; without special training, 
 by only listening to what is said, one falls into the habit 
 of employing the proper word and placing it timely. It 
 must not be believed, above all, that the surrounding 
 influence of grammar can hamper those, as asserted, who 
 undergo it, so as to lessen the freeness of their pen by the 
 care of exaggerated purity. On the contrary, I find that, 
 far from enslaving them, it delivers them from the most 
 irksome of servitudes, that of words. What is most 
 lacking in women, even when they write well, is 
 originality of expression. As, in general, they have not 
 received the more profound education given to the 
 sterner sex, they only know words by their daily use, 
 
 F
 
 74 Madame de S&vign, 
 
 and dare not employ them except in the way everybody 
 does. On the contrary, the student who knows their 
 origin and, it follows, their proper value, is not enchained 
 to that usual course ; he is more free with them, and sees 
 that he may turn them from that ordinary meaning and 
 place them in a new manner. It may be said, he is the 
 master and they obey him, or rather that he does not 
 heed them and they present themselves to mind without 
 being called up ; they c ome to express his thoughts in all 
 the variety of their hues and in the plenitude of their 
 significance. If the company of Manage and Chapelain 
 did this service to Madame de Sevigne, she was right 
 in being grateful to them. 
 
 To the education imparted by her masters, must be 
 adjoined that due to reading. From all times she was 
 " a great devourer of books." Everything interested her. 
 She liked novels, as we have seen, but the most serious 
 books did not alarm her. History greatly delighted her, 
 even that of the Turks, in which she found some who had 
 many Christian virtues. Her curiosity agreed with all, 
 from Virgil to Father Maimbourg, spite of his dog of a 
 style ; from Nicole, who frightened her, to Rabelais, who 
 made her die of laughter. It was chiefly during her 
 leisure at Les Rochers that she had recourse to all kinds of 
 reading to occupy the days. " We have lovely weather. 
 We are reading a good deal, and I feel the pleasure of 
 having no memory, for everything comes up again before 
 me without tiring me Corneille's comedies, Desprdaux's 
 works, and Sarazin's and Voiture's ; without tiring, I say
 
 The Writer. 75 
 
 I mean, just the reverse. Sometimes we give ourselves 
 up to Plutarch's 'Morals] admirable they are! the 
 'Prejuges' (of Arnauld); the ministers' replies; a page of the 
 Koran, if we like ; in short, I do not know what country 
 we do not beat up." When too much ground is beaten 
 up at the same time none are thoroughly probed. 
 Madame de Sevigne was not ignorant of this : she never 
 tried to pass for a sage. In alluding to her neighbour in 
 Brittany, Madame de Kerman, who read a great deal like 
 herself, she said : " She has a smattering of everything 
 and I, a faint tinge, so that our surfaces merge in very 
 nicely together." After all, it may be better for a woman 
 thus to skim over the garden of authors from the Koran 
 to " Cleopatre" than to draw all the honey from one 
 plant : she may be superficial, but at least she will not be 
 a pedant. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne always congratulated herself upon 
 the education she received or acquired herself; and, con- 
 sequently, passionately desired her grandchildren to be 
 brought up in the same way. She wished them to be 
 looked to early, and nothing to be neglected to form their 
 mind. " It is presuming too much to expect everything 
 out of a blessed disposition," she says. When the young 
 Marquis de Grignan returned from Philipsburg with the 
 scratch which made her so proud of him, she sought to 
 persuade him to profit by his spare time to read some 
 good books, but he was too busy running about society 
 and dancing with the young ladies of the Castelnau family 
 to hearken to his grandmother's advice. "His young 
 
 F 2
 
 76 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 blood makes such a buzzing in his ears that he does not 
 hear," she said. She was happier with her granddaughter 
 Pauline. Nothing is more touching than the trouble she 
 took to have her well reared. She watched over her from 
 afar ; as soon as any little difference arose between mother 
 and daughter, she flew in ; " Pauline is not perfect, eh ? 
 so much the better. You will have the joy of remodelling 
 her." In particular, she wanted to prevent Madame de 
 Grignan, in an angry fit, sending her daughter back to 
 the nuns of Aubenas, among whom she had been kept 
 several years. " Do not believe," she says, " that a con- 
 vent can repair an education either as regards religion, 
 which our good sisters know little about, or other 
 matters." The mother would much better understand 
 how to correct the trifling outbreaks of an umbrageous 
 temper, but she ought to deal with her gently. " Lead 
 her softly. The desire to please you will do more than 
 scolding; endeavour to speak reason to herwithout scolding 
 or humbling her, for this makes one revolt ; and I answer 
 for your making her a little marvel." Her joy is great 
 on learning that Pauline likes reading: "What a fortu- 
 nate, sweet disposition ! now she is out of the reach of ennui 
 and idleness two vile reptiles !" Not to repel her, she 
 wished they would leave the reins loose, lest she were 
 hampered in her choice of books. " I would rather she 
 swallowed some bad stuff, than failed to acquire a longing 
 for good." She grew irate at the scruples of a stupid con- 
 fessor who would not authorise the reading of theatrical 
 pieces. "I do not think," she says, " that you have the
 
 The Writer. 77 
 
 courage to obey Father LanUrne ; would you not rather 
 give Pauline the pleasure able to appreciate them as she 
 is and to make use of them of reading the splendid 
 comedies of Corneille, and ^PolyeucteJ and ^CinnaJ and 
 others ? Not to have devotion without such a loss, not 
 to be brought within the grace of God, strikes me to 
 be wearing boots without stockings." About novels, 
 opinions were divided. "There are examples," she 
 says to her daughter, " of the good and the bad effect of 
 this sort of reading : you do not care for them, yet have 
 done very well ; I do, and I have not badly run in my 
 course; 'to the pure all things are pure,' as you say. 
 For my part, wishful to be upheld by my taste, I think 
 that a young man will become brave and generous by 
 viewing my heroes, and a maid become wise and honest 
 by reading 'CleopatreS Sometimes there are people who 
 take things askew; but they probably would go no 
 straighter if they did not know how to read. When the 
 mind is sound, it is not easy to mar it." Yet there are 
 works more liked by her than novels. She chiefly wishes 
 Pauline to get a liking for historical books. " If you have 
 to pinch her nose to make her swallow them, I am sorry 
 for her." Then come authors still more serious. " Has 
 she nibbled at Lucian ? is she able to wrestle with the 
 Little Letters ? As far as morality goes, since she will 
 not make so good a use of it as you, I do not at all wish 
 her little nose to be stuck into Montaigne or Charron or 
 any of the authors of that sort ; it is a little too early in 
 the morning for her to lose herself in those fogs. The
 
 78 Madame de Sdvigne". 
 
 true morality for her age is what she will learn in good 
 parlance, fable, history, and examples ; I believe this is 
 enough." 
 
 The reading she recommended to her granddaughter 
 is the same she had in her youth and so well profited 
 by. She speaks of it with a kind of effusion of grateful- 
 ness ; knowing all she owes it. By reading one grows 
 habituated to reflect and to write " and it is so sweet a 
 thing to know how to write what one thinks !" 
 
 II. 
 
 WE are not merely the pupils of our masters, but our 
 education is also made by the society we keep and the 
 persons we are mingled with. Nobody entirely escapes 
 the influence of the circle in which he is placed ; 
 Madame de Sevign must have suffered this more than 
 others. We see with what facility, in her mature age, she 
 took the opinions of those surrounding her, and how she 
 was speedily steeped with their sentiments. This dispo- 
 sition must have been still more marked in her in youth, 
 at the period when ideas are least settled, and one is most 
 impressionable to those of others. 
 
 We know that she first visited the home of the Ram- 
 bouillets, where she filled sufficient place for Somaize to 
 insert her portrait in his " Dictionnaire des Precieuses" It 
 was a gathering not to be gone through with impunity ; 
 hence some rigorous critics, convinced that she must 
 have been corrupted there, have hunted for traces of
 
 The Writer. 79 
 
 overdone refinement (preciosite) in her Letters. If there 
 are any, I believe they are not numerous. As we know 
 the Marchioness, she must have sooner imbibed the good 
 traits than the bad ones in that house. It was rather 
 easy for her to avoid the defects, as she was the reverse 
 of a Precieuse through her vigorous spirit, robust com- 
 mon sense, clearness and frankness of mind, and taste 
 for spiced sayings and broad talk. Let us not forget, more- 
 over, that she was but nineteen when Julie d'Angennes, 
 the hostess's daughter, wedded the Count de Montausier, 
 from which moment the society of Madame de Ram- 
 bouillet began to disperse. Madame de Sevigne only 
 knew it in its sere and yellow leaf when its importance 
 was much diminished. It was not there that she rounded 
 off the training of her mind. 
 
 It is likely that she owed more to the sets which 
 collected the crumbs of the Rambouillet Mansion and 
 essayed to continue its traditions. She was highly appre- 
 ciated among them, and, about 1661, one of her 
 admirers alludes to " the great and legitimate noise her 
 merit made in society." These circles, we know, were 
 very busy about literature ; new poetry and works fresh 
 to the day were eagerly conversed upon ; authors yearned 
 to please them and made sacrifices to merit their 
 applause. Therefore they influenced the literature of 
 their time in some degree, and if it be wished to know 
 into what channels they wafted it, we can see by the 
 stage, faithful image of society. It is the juncture when 
 the audience passed from Corneille to Racine ; gradually
 
 8o Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 they turned from the ideal of heroism and grandeur of 
 soul in fashion since 'Le Cid' '; instead of those inequalities 
 of tone, haughty familiarities, and roughness of touch 
 not displeasing to poorly cultured spectators, more tender 
 paintings were required, colours better blended, more 
 scrupulous correctness, and sustained dignity, nobleness 
 and elegance. The fashion of expression in the speech 
 was no longer quite the same. If I did not fear to fix 
 divisions too abrupt in what was gradually done by in- 
 sensible transition, I would say that there were two 
 French languages then, rather different, one succeeding 
 the other. The former, that of Descartes and Balzac, 
 appears to be the work of learned men from the model 
 of Latin oratory, and from that drew mainly abundance 
 and majesty. The other, written and spoken in the 
 second half of the century, refined and pruned without 
 cessation, continued to grow smarter, lighter, and more 
 active, and the forthcoming age used it as the weapon in 
 pitched battles ; it seems to me to have been formed and 
 fashioned in social conversation. Men of letters of 
 those days knew that drawing-rooms were a school for 
 them, where they learned more than they liked thus to 
 acquire. Voiture seems only a kind of shorthand clerk 
 to the witty persons who allowed him into their company. 
 " Mark how well I bring in the pretty talk I heard 
 spoken," he says. Manage relates M. de Varillas' telling 
 him that out of ten things he knew, nine had been 
 gathered out of conversation ; and he hastens to append : 
 " I can almost say the same." These are not mere polite 
 phrases.
 
 The Writer. 81 
 
 I believe that it can be proven by examples that 
 Voiture and Menage spoke the truth, and that society 
 does teach a good deal to its components. As the cen- 
 tury advanced in age, men were to be met who, having 
 no other training than good community, became more 
 exacting and more dainty in the manner of expressing 
 their ideas, and fell more deeply into the habit of writing 
 well. Let us turn back to the epoch of Louis XIII. 
 and the Fronde ; the high-born dames of that period, de 
 Hautefort, de Longueville, de Maure, and de Sable, had 
 certainly most elevated sentiments and much distinction 
 in manners ; it is probable that they spoke fairly, but, 
 surely, they wrote badly; their sentences are heavy, 
 draggling, clogged with involutions, full of vulgar turns 
 and common expressions ; to read their letters through 
 demands an affection for them proof to all vexations. 
 The Duchess de Longueville thus concludes her 
 announcement to Madame de Sable of the decease of her 
 confessor, Singlin, the celebrated director of the Nuns of 
 Port Royal : " In truth, I am very much touched, for 
 besides the obligation I was under to this holy man for 
 his charity towards me, behold me newly fallen back 
 into the embarrassment in which I lay before taking him 
 I mean, the need of some priest with no knowledge 
 where to find one. I entreat you to pray God for me. 
 I do not doubt that you are affected also and over and 
 above the link of friendship and necessity, by seeing 
 death strike down one of your friends, which is much 
 akin to having his blow on oneself." Twenty years later
 
 82 Madame de S&vignt. 
 
 nobody wrote in this style. To establish this, I do not 
 wish to oppose this informal note with the SeVigne* 
 Letters ; it would be too easily snatching a success ; and 
 again, it might be said that she is a woman of excep- 
 tional brains with a talent peculiarly her own, and that 
 her example proves nothing as regards others. Let us 
 rather select among her correspondents second-rate hands 
 of modest repute who will better set a common standard. 
 Here is a provincial lady, a young Breton, of whom the 
 Marchioness augured poorly at the first, from her being 
 timid and embarrassed ; she was her step-daughter, 
 Charles de Se"vigne's wife ; we have some of her letters, 
 not masterpieces like her mother-in-law's, but with fitting 
 expressions and an easy turn. In writing to her sister- 
 in-law, the Countess de Grignan, she glides agreeably 
 into pleasantries put upon her small stature and fragile 
 air, saying : " I must beg your son not to call me 'aunt,' 
 for I am so ' small ' and ' delicate ' that I am scarce the 
 size of a cousin. Madame de Sevigne"s health is not at all 
 like mine, for she is 'large' and 'strong'; I take such 
 care of it as would make you jealous. Still, I own that 
 it is without any constraint I let her roam the woods by 
 herself and with her books, and she rushes into them 
 naturally like the slug into the toad's maw. You overjoy 
 me, sister dear, by telling me Madame de SeVigne likes 
 me : my taste is good enough to tell the value of her 
 friendship and to make me love her also with all my 
 heart." Madame de Se*vign was right in finding what 
 her daughter-in-law wrote to be " very fair" ; it is an
 
 The Writer. 83 
 
 easy flowing language, well expressing what she wanted 
 to say. On another time, she was led to insert in one of 
 her letters a few lines from her grandson the Marquis de 
 Grignan, returning home from his first campaign. She 
 was, as usual, writing news of the town and court, when 
 she was suddenly interrupted : " But here comes the 
 Marquis from yonder. I set up singing : 
 
 " ' The hero I expect, will he return no more ?' 
 
 He is playing with my pen, which I let him keep to go 
 on for me." 
 
 It must be granted that the boy officer of sixteen did 
 not bungle with this dread pen. As follows he gives an 
 account of his sayings and doings to his mother : " I am 
 fresh from Versailles, madame, where I went last Sunday. 
 I was first at the Marshal de Lorges to beg him to pre- 
 sent me to the King ; this he promised, and made the 
 appointment at the door of Madame de Maintenon's 
 apartments to bow to his Majesty when he came forth. I 
 did salute him, and he stopped to nod and smile on me. 
 Next day I paid my respects to Monseigneur and her Royal 
 Highness the Dauphiness, and the royal princes at their own 
 residences, and I was nicely received everywhere. Thence 
 I went to the Duke de Montausier's, where I stayed to 
 see the play; it was 'AndromaqueJ a novelty to me; so 
 judge, madame, what a pleasure I found in it." He 
 continues sprightlily to relate his other delights, and ter- 
 minates : " You have an exact report, madame, of what 
 happened in Versailles. Allow me, on seeing your
 
 84 Madame de Se"vignd. 
 
 portrait, to lament the inability to cast myself at the feet 
 of the original, kiss her hands and aspire to kissing one 
 of her cheeks." It is clear that this sprig of the ancestral 
 tree had come from hearing the fine speakers of the mode. 
 Since his return from the army he did not quit good 
 company, and he repeated to his mother what light stuff 
 was rattled off there. His letter is, nevertheless, of an 
 easy and pleasing turn, not in a jot resembling those his 
 peers wrote a score of years earlier. Not that he had 
 studied much, for we know, on the contrary, that his 
 education had been at first badly neglected ; it began late 
 and ended early, for at fifteen he was a soldier, and 
 went off into Germany in the Dauphin's army. His grand- 
 mother strongly wished his making up the deficiency in 
 his leisure, but we see that she could not fill him with the 
 craving for sound reading. Happily he liked society, and 
 it was enough for him to move about through it, to take 
 on a gloss of polite manners and an ease of style, of which 
 his letter bears a trace. 
 
 What did Madame de SeVignd owe to the society in 
 which she spent her life ? It is hard precisely to say ; 
 but we may be sure she owed something to it. 
 
 III. 
 
 WE see that our subject prepared to write well by means 
 of her excellent education, reading, and association with 
 the most distinguished personages in Paris and at the court. 
 She knows her language, and wonderfully well speaks it ;
 
 The Writer, 85 
 
 in the circles where women of intellect were met at every 
 step, she passed for one of the most sprightly and intellec- 
 tual : her repartees were quoted and her judgments were 
 repeated as an authority's. At the same time hers was 
 the good fortune to be present at the blossoming of a 
 great literature. In her youth, she had read the "Lettres 
 Provinciates" at the time when they were circulating 
 among the upper classes as a clandestine pamphlet ; 
 later, she saw the first pieces of Moliere brought out, as 
 well as Racine's earliest tragedies and La Fontaine's 
 Fables; she heard the preaching of Mascaron, Bossuet,and 
 Bourdaloue; she chatted familiarly with Retz and La 
 Rochefoucauld. Intelligent as she is, sensitive to all the 
 beauties of superior works and never refusing to try 
 novelties, although with a secret preference for the idols 
 of her girlish years, she understands everything and 
 profits by them ; she assimilates all. Let an occasion 
 come to agitate her mind profoundly, and all these 
 accumulated treasures will pour out into daylight. We 
 can rely on her knowing how to tell all she thinks and 
 feels. This occasion was, for her, the departure of 
 her daughter. 
 
 No doubt she had previously shown herself to be a 
 woman of mind, who could write highly agreeable letters 
 and come nicely out of entanglements in delicate 
 relations. She had even risen into eloquence when 
 demanded for defence against Bussy's subtleties and 
 impertinence. But this was nothing yet ; to show her 
 real standing, it was compulsory for her to be moved in
 
 86 Madame de 
 
 her liveliest affections. Then her pent-up passion gushed 
 all of a jet from her heart, and it may be said that her 
 talent rushed out entirely with her tears. 
 
 Her daughter had left her to rejoin her husband at 
 the world's end in Parisian eyes in Provence. Before 
 reaching that distant land, whence she returned only at 
 rare intervals, she had to brave perils that made the 
 boldest quail : the descent of the Tarare, the Rhone, the 
 Sainte Esprit bridge, and what not. The mother thought 
 of this, and dreaded it all beforehand. Before her eyes 
 ceaselessly arose chasms, precipices, runaway horses and 
 foundering ferryboats. On her return to the empty 
 home, where everything reminded her of the lately gone, 
 she caught up her pen and relieved her heart by writing : 
 " My sorrow would seem so slight in words if I could 
 depict it, that I shall not try. In vain have I sought for 
 my dear daughter. I cannot find her more, and every 
 step she takes carries her farther and farther away. I 
 have gone to kneel to the Virgin, always weeping and 
 crying ; meseems my heart and soul have been torn from 
 me ; and, indeed, what a rough parting it is ! I asked 
 to be left alone, and I was taken into Madame du 
 Housset's room, where a fire was made ; Agnes looked 
 at me without speaking, as was agreed between us. I 
 stayed there till five o'clock without ceasing to sob. All 
 my thoughts brought deadly wounds." Three days after- 
 wards, her daughter's first letters came to hand, and her 
 wail recommenced. " I receive your letters, darling, as you 
 receive my ring ; I melt into tears in reading them ; my
 
 The Writer. 87 
 
 heart feels as if it split in twain. . . . You make me feel 
 for you all that it is possible to feel in the way of tender- 
 ness ; but if you think of me, my poor dear, be assured 
 also that I am continually thinking of you. The devout 
 call this an habitual mind, what we should feel towards 
 God if really dutiful. Nothing can give me distraction 
 I am always with you, seeing your carriage rolling away 
 and never returning towards me ; I am always out on the 
 highway ; sometimes, methinks, I am afraid it will upset. 
 The three days' rain we have had fills me with despair. 
 The Rhone gives me a strange fright : I have a map 
 before me, and know the places where you will sleep ; 
 to-night you will be at Nevers, and Sunday at Lyons, 
 where you will receive this." Then comes endless 
 advice about all the dangers a traveller incurs. " Have 
 pity on me and take care of yourself if you want me 
 to live. You have so thoroughly persuaded me that 
 you love me that, if only to please me, you are 
 bound not to be venturesome. Tell me how you conduct 
 your bark. Alas ! how dear and precious to me is this 
 tiny bark which the Rhone so cruelly buffets !" Days go 
 by , but the grief is ever with her. Scarce a fortnight has 
 passed since her daughter left her, and it seems to 
 maternal eyes an age. " Ah ! my darling, how I am 
 longing to see you a little while hear you and fondle 
 you only see you pass by, if the rest is too much to 
 ask ! " Everything replenishes her fount of tears, letters 
 reaching her ; friends and acquaintances bringing her 
 their compliments ; the sight of places she and her
 
 88 Madame de 
 
 daughter saw together, but now beheld alone. " I pre- 
 tend I am in solitude," she says when she went back to 
 Livry for the first time ; " I am making this a little monas- 
 tery of La Trappe, to pray Heaven herein and make a 
 thousand meditations. But, my poor dear, what I can 
 do better than these is muse upon you. Since I came I 
 have not ceased, and in my powerlessness to contain my 
 sentiments about you, I sit to write to you at the end of 
 that darksome little walk you so dearly liked, on the 
 mossy bank on which I have seen you sometimes 
 couched. But oh ! heavens ! where have I not seen you 
 here ? How all these thoughts traverse my heart ! I 
 see you, you are present ; I think and still again think of 
 it all ; my head and heart become hollow with exhaustion ; 
 but in vain do I call up and seek the dear child, whom I 
 love with so much passion, who is two hundred leagues 
 away. I have her no more. And I fall a-weeping with 
 no power to stay a tear." 
 
 Let us pause, we must be reasonable. When once 
 Madame de Sevigne* is allowed to speak it would be 
 happiness to let her talk on. Nothing is more difficult 
 than to tear oneself from the pleasure caused by her 
 letters, by her proceeding alone and by studying and 
 judging them. But we must do it if we mean to gauge 
 our pleasure and enhance it by analysing it. 
 
 The above-quoted passages look so simple, and so 
 naturally put forth what we all feel, that we read them at 
 the outset with surprise ; there seems to be nothing to 
 remark but this simplicity and naturalness. Yet these
 
 The Writer. 89 
 
 are points not attracting attention ; they are hardly visible 
 in the works where they are to be found ; in reading 
 such as lack them, we feel all their value. Yet here, as 
 soon as we reflect, we are amazed to mark how this 
 great emotion expresses itself in so firm, and sure, and 
 correct a language, without any wandering or hesitation. 
 The life in these laments presupposes their having flowed 
 straightway, and yet the perfection of style seems not to 
 be attained without some study and retouching. Some- 
 times it is said that a great emotion creates the language 
 it is expressed in at the first outcome ; I strongly doubt 
 it. On the contrary, it appears to me that, when the 
 soul is keenly struck, the expressions by which the feelings 
 experienced are unfolded, always seem dull and cold, 
 and one is impelled to force them and exaggerate them 
 till they rise to the level of one's joy or grief. Thence 
 comes at whiles excessive terms and unsuitable meta- 
 phors, tempting one to believe them coldly imagined at 
 leisure, whilst, quite oppositely, they sprang from the 
 prime impulse by our instinctive effort to find an expres- 
 sion corresponding to the intensity of our passion. There 
 is nothing of the kind in the Sevigne Letters; and how- 
 ever violent may be her grief, it always is uttered in meet 
 and exact diction a precious and very rare merit. Lest 
 we be too much surprised at finding it hers in so high 
 a degree, we must recall what has been said of the way 
 in which she was unwittingly prepared to become a great 
 writer. 
 
 Another characteristic of these Letters, not the less 
 
 G
 
 90 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 remarkable, is that the most tender things are said with 
 fineness. I am not speaking only of a few isolated 
 phrases which have sometimes appeared overwrought, as 
 " I like me not the wind at Grignan hurting your chest." 
 " My darling, how your affliction weighs on me /" " I 
 dare not read your letters from the fear of what reading 
 them has given me." These are but passing words ; but 
 almost everywhere, whenever she appears to yield to her 
 emotion, she employs ingenious turns and makes witty 
 reflections ; she is agreeable, piquant, and coquettish. To 
 some, this seems to come from a mind very self-governed, 
 not sufficiently occupied with feeling to omit studied 
 speech. I placed but now naturalness among Madame 
 de SeVignd's leading gifts ; those not of this opinion assert 
 that this is precisely the merit most deficient in her ; but 
 we must fully agree on the meaning of words. For each, 
 naturalness is what conforms with his nature, and as we all 
 have natures very different from one another, it cannot be 
 the same to everybody saying nothing of education and 
 habit which give us a second nature, often stronger than the 
 first. In the society Madame de Sevigne" frequented, its 
 members prided themselves on fine speaking. The first 
 time a new-comer entered, he would have to study and try 
 a little to reach the tone of others ; conversationalists kept 
 on the alert to find those welcome repartees which, among 
 the regular visitors at the Hotel de Rambouillet or 
 Richelieu, gave the novice a good reputation ; but, in a 
 while, the happy thoughts came of themselves without 
 any more need to hunt for them. What might appear
 
 The Writer. 9 1 
 
 to the outside barbarians subtle and refined, was to the 
 disciples natural and matter-of-course. In speaking or 
 writing, ideas took a certain form, not of other worlds ; 
 and quick, witty, and dainty quips, which would have 
 required labour from others, shot out of their own 
 volition. Assuredly, I do not mean to say that Madame 
 de Sevigne wrote well without knowing it ; that is what 
 an intelligent woman always perceives, and, for that 
 matter, her friends did not let her dwell in ignorance. 
 "Your letters are delightful," they told her, "and you 
 are even as your letters." This belief was all the more 
 easy to her as she whispered to herself the compliments 
 they shouted on the housetops. One day, when she had 
 written to her friend Bourdelot the physician, she said to 
 her daughter : " Gracious ! what a capital retort I made 
 him ! it's silly to say this, but I had a good pen, and 
 I was so wide-awake that day." It is a great charm to 
 feel one is witty, and it is readily understood that Madame 
 de Sevigne sometimes gave way to it with a little com- 
 plaisance. In her most private letters, when she least 
 thinks of the outer world, some lines may be noted in 
 which she is happy to resume her idea and deck it up, 
 embellish and supplement it with fresh details more and 
 more dainty and ingenious. She does it without exertion, 
 to satisfy her individual taste and give herself the joy of 
 pleasantly saying what she thinks. In good speakers 
 it has been noticed that the praise of others is not all 
 they are sensitive to, but they also wish to please them- 
 selves, independently of their surrounding audience, and 
 
 G 2
 
 92 Madame de Sdutgnd. 
 
 willingly listen to their own speeches. In the same 
 sense it may be said that Madame de Sevigne' sometimes 
 gloated over her own writing, one of those unaffected 
 weaknesses, this, which, in the fair sex, does not exclude 
 sincerity and may be wedded to what is natural. 
 
 This manner of justly and exactly speaking, and fine- 
 ness and brightness in the expression of the heart's 
 emotions, are rare parts ; yet they are not what best 
 characterised Madame de SeVigne. These she was not, 
 then, alone in possessing ; for instance, they are to be 
 found in the correspondence of her friend Madame de 
 Coulanges. But what was her own trait to raise her to 
 the foremost rank was her having a quick and mobile 
 fancy above anyone else. In a marvellous manner she 
 possessed the enchanting gift of seeing to a distance and 
 travelling mentally. Is it necessary to say that La 
 Provence and her daughter's house were the usual goals 
 of such journeys? In her moments of bitter sadness, 
 she would think of the winged steed which spans the 
 earth in two days, and say, " Oh ! that I had the hippogriff 
 at my command !" Really, she had no need of it her 
 imagination sufficed. From the first separation, she 
 knew Grignan so well, although she had never seen it, that 
 as soon as her daughter went away from it, she was lost. 
 " I believe you are at Lambesc, my dear ; but I cannot 
 see you clearly from here ; there are clouds in my 
 imagination which cover you in my view ; I had learnt 
 the Chateau de Grignan by heart : I could see your 
 rooms and promenade upon your terrace. I went to
 
 The Writer. 93 
 
 mass in your handsome church : but I do not know 
 where I am following you." Another time, having asked 
 news of her dearly-loved Chevalier de Grignan, whose 
 infirmities kept him in Provence, she adds : " Tell me 
 which room you have put him in, so I can pay him 
 visits." She only knew her granddaughter Pauline by the 
 flattering pictures made upon her pleasing countenance, 
 and the beauty of her eyes in chief. Thereupon her 
 imagination enkindles, and she exclaims : " Oh ! how 
 pretty they are, I can see them from here ! " This is 
 not mere words ; she did really see them. With dis- 
 tant friends she chatted as though they were by. Her 
 letters are conversations, as she herself says, and they 
 have all the advantages of them. At the start, one meets 
 a piquant variety and disorder, as happens in the 
 familiarity of a dialogue. She is not like her cousin 
 Bussy, who puts exemplary regularity in his letters, 
 priding himself upon answering all observations in per- 
 fect order, and even all jests made him ; each thing has 
 its place and coming in its order. Madame de Sevigne 
 has no method, and does not draw up an anterior plan. 
 It is her imagination leads her over to any side and tells 
 her so many singular things which she never thought of 
 at first, so that she becomes slightly confused. " If the 
 post knew with what our packets are filled, they would 
 be dropped half-way." As she saw the events, she 
 relates, at whatever distance they take place ; the pictures 
 she draws are incredible with life and veracity. I am a 
 little embarrassed to furnish the proof, not from lack of
 
 94 Madame de S&vignd. 
 
 examples, but these charming descriptions are too well 
 known know n by heart in fact. How could I venture 
 at this day to repeat the death of Turenne, the story of 
 the Archbishop of Rheims returning from Saint-Germain, 
 the way in which the game of basset brought about the 
 separation of La Fare and Madame de la Sabliere, or the 
 merry chatter about Langlee and the Marchioness de 
 Montespan's dress? But here is one less known, I trust; 
 in a few strokes it is a finished picture ; it represents the 
 great Conde", ordinarily very careless about looks and 
 attire, as he appeared to the astounded courtiers on the 
 day when the Prince de Conti wedded Mdlle. de Blois : 
 " I have news for you, the greatest and most extraor- 
 dinary you could hear : it is that the Prince de Conde 
 has had his beard cut yesterday ; he has been shaved, 
 really ; it is no illusion nor chance assertion, but a truth. 
 All the court was witness to it, and Madame de 
 Langeron, watching for the nick to catch him with 
 folded paws, like the lion he is, had a diamond- 
 buttoned doublet clapped on him ; a valet, also abusing 
 his patience, curled his locks, and powdered him, and 
 made him a fashionable gem of the first water, with a 
 curly pate which blotted out all the periwigs. Behold 
 the prodigy of the wedding." 
 
 With so lively an imagination and so mobile a nature, 
 it was natural for her to yield unresistingly to any im- 
 pressions others wished to give her. She accepted the 
 ideas of those she loved and quickly shared their feelings. 
 "I am always of the last speaker's opinion," she observed.
 
 The Writer. 95 
 
 It is clear she knew herself well ; she even joked upon 
 her own weakness, saying of herself : " And I, the led 
 horse, as you know me ;" or again : " You know that I 
 am as others wish, but I invent nothing." In her Letters 
 can be picked out amusing examples of the facility with 
 which her friends made her shift in opinion. This is a 
 defect of character assuredly in the woman, but it has 
 become in the writer a source of great beauties. This 
 ease in feeling with others adds to her own, and their 
 thoughts are fuel to her flame. It is not she alone that 
 is heard when she speaks, but she is often the echo of 
 the great minds whom she meets. 
 
 By the mode of her expression, it seems to me one 
 can tell who the people were most lately quitted, and 
 from whom she gleaned those stories and reflections 
 repeated to her daughter. Had she not spent the day 
 with La Rochefoucauld at Madame de La Fayette's, 
 when she made so fine a painting of our good d'Hacque- 
 ville, the lover, in spite of himself, and without his own 
 knowledge : " You ask the symptoms of this love ? 
 primarily, it is a sharp, anticipatory negative ; an over- 
 done air of indifference proving its contrary; a suspension 
 of all movement in the round machine ; a relaxation of 
 all ordinary attention to tend to one alone ; a perpetual 
 satire against aged lovers : ' Truly a man would have to be 
 insensate, mad ! what, with a young woman ? nice busi- 
 ness for me ; and it would suit me to a dot ! I would rather 
 have both my arms broken.' To which the inward 
 answer of ours is : ' Well, yes, it is true, but you do not
 
 96 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 escape being in love. You speak your reflections, 
 which are true and apt, but they are your torment ; you 
 are in love all the same. You are full of reason, but 
 love is stronger than all reason. You are out of health, 
 for you weep and fly into rage ; in short, you are in love.' " 
 In a very sad letter written to her daughter when starting 
 for Les Rochers, in other words, addingahundred leagues 
 to the distance separating them there suddenly breaks 
 forth a grand tirade on Providence : " Whosoever should 
 rob me of the delight of Providence would remove my sole 
 comfort ; and if I believed it were within ourselves to 
 arrange and disarrange, do and not do, will this thing or 
 another, I do not think I should find one moment's re- 
 pose. I need the Author of the universe to account for 
 all that happens. When it is He against whom I am to 
 cavil, I renounce any revolt whatever, and submit. It 
 was preordained that there should be a Madame de 
 SeVigne to love her daughter more than any other mother 
 does hers, that she should be often banished afar from her, 
 and that the sufferings she has most keenly felt in her 
 life should be caused by this dear child." We have no 
 need here to go wide afield to seek the suggestion of this 
 meditation : she herself informs us that she had come 
 from dining with people of intellect " who would never 
 dislodge that opinion." These were her dear friends of 
 Port Royal who had developed before her the great doc- 
 trine of the grace of God ; she had simply applied their 
 creed to her particular situation. One of her prettiest 
 letters is that relating the initiation of the Chevalier of
 
 The Writer. 97 
 
 the Order of the Holy Ghost, in the grand promotion of 
 the seventy-four, to which her son-in-law belonged. She 
 had not seen it herself, but Coulanges had been out to 
 Versailles expressly to view it, and she says he came to 
 tell her all about it. There was no need of that in reality, 
 for, it seems to me, we should have known that without 
 warning ; it is his voice and gesture, his spirit of parody 
 and buffoonery which makes him mainly see the comic 
 lining of grave things ; it is he who caught sight in passing 
 of the burlesque incidents of this majestic ceremony, 
 such as M. de La Trousse's wig shifting awry, M. de 
 Monchevreul and M. de Villars hooking their sword-hilts 
 within each other with such fury that no mortal hand 
 could part them. " The more they tried, the closer they 
 became interwoven like the puzzle-rings. As the climax, 
 all the ceremony, all the bows, all the procession had to 
 stop and wait whilst the twins tore away from each other 
 perforce till the stronger bore off the palm." It is he 
 amusing little fellow who recounted the mishap befalling 
 good d'Hacqueville. " He was arrayed like Bretons and 
 Provencals, that is to say, in loose vest over a shirt, and 
 breeches ; but his page's trunks being less properly fitting 
 than his usual wear, his linen positively would not remain 
 tucked in, whatever prayers he offered up for its repose ; 
 for, knowing the trouble, he tried incessantly to keep 
 it in order, but always uselessly ; so that H.R.H. the 
 Dauphiness could not any longer contain roars of 
 laughter, a great pity, the very majesty of royalty was 
 threatened ; and never, on the register of the Order, was
 
 98 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 such disorder chronicled." Thus to intertwine her wit, 
 and appropriate the humour of others, thus to receive 
 the shock that makes the recipient " see stars," and yet 
 " invent nothing " whilst lending a fresh charm to ideas 
 from without, to rejuvenate them, refresh them with the 
 vivacity of feeling and fineness of expression is the magic 
 and characteristic of woman. In this sense it may be 
 said that Madame de Se'vigne' was more womanly than 
 any other. Her qualities are such as we expect to find 
 in her sisters, and which please us most not the initiative 
 and power to create, but the talent of reflecting those 
 dear to her, and entering into their thoughts, so as to 
 reproduce them more striking and brighter. 
 
 It is not surprising that her style thereby does not 
 essentially differ from her contemporaries'. She writes 
 better than they, but similarly. Even when she recounts 
 trivialities, her phrases are broad and in periods; without 
 being ponderous like the Duchess de Longueville's or 
 Madame de Sable's, she ordinarily has copiousness and 
 amplitude. Long developments do not displease her 
 she lays stress on ideas, and reiterates them; she knows 
 how to insert oratorical flourishes, as was the habit around 
 her. But, she has also ways of speaking personally ; 
 she creates expressions belonging to her alone, freer and 
 livelier than professional writers employed in the Seven- 
 teenth Century. Wonder-stricken by the wealth of the 
 country when she crossed Burgundy, she did not hesitate 
 to say : " It's all bursting here with corn !" and, speaking 
 of a progress M. de Marcillac made through his estates,
 
 The Writer. 99 
 
 where he had a quantity of damage to repair : " He was 
 neither amused nor diverted; he had our fat friend 
 Gourville with him (who has not often time to give), whom 
 he drew about over his fields like a flood to enrich them with 
 fat and fertility." I only see her and Saint-Simon writing 
 at this time in so original a manner ; perchance because 
 neither of them cared about the public. She believed 
 that her letters would never leave the family circle to 
 which they were addressed ; and as for the Duke as 
 he deferred for a hundred years the publication of his 
 Memoirs, the fear of his distant readers could not have 
 much fettered his freedom. 
 
 When one reads the Sevigne Letters, it is natural to be 
 somewhat surprised that a person of so much talent, and 
 conscious of it, should not have been tempted into writ- 
 ing a solid work. Why did she not, for instance, compose 
 Memoirs like Madame de Motteville, treaties of social 
 morals like Madame Lambert, or novels like Madame de 
 La Fayette ? Sometimes this is deplored ; and it seems, 
 at first blush that, with her happy nature and rich 
 fancy, she ought to have left us some masterpiece. 
 We may be wrong to think so. The grounds for admir- 
 ation in her epistles are not at all those demanded for 
 a long-sustained work; to succeed in this there must 
 be the capability of self-containing and self-possession, 
 time given to meditation, and knowledge of how to think 
 out and plan beforehand. This habit is not one easy to 
 assume when the custom was to give up to the momentary 
 impression, and to let the pen race at hazard. It has
 
 ioo Madame de 
 
 been remarked that newspaper writers, forced to impro- 
 vise an article daily and come to making them with 
 marvellous art, cannot after a time produce anything but 
 newspaper articles, and never a book. Madame de La 
 Fayette wrote such good romances because her tempera- 
 ment was not her friend's, and she guided her talent in 
 another course. It is visible that she was born to be an 
 author. Her letters, irreproachable in form, and full of a 
 discreet and winning spirit, are generally short and dry. 
 It is the tone of a woman who reserves better things, 
 making secret provision for her works in mental progress. 
 On the other hand, Madame de Sevigne gives us all she 
 has in her heart and keeps nothing back when she takes 
 up the pen. It is therefore likely that, had the fancy 
 struck her to imitate Madame de La Fayette by writing 
 another "Princesse de Cleves" she would have found a void 
 and poor preparation, and her success might have been 
 less than we conjecture. But she has left us her Letters 
 do we want anything more ?
 
 CHAPTER III. THE WORKS. 
 
 ALL agree that one of the greatest gains to be drawn 
 from sincere letters of intelligent and well-informed 
 persons, is their more deeply introducing us into the 
 society they moved within. As they were ignorant that 
 we should read them, they did not strive to influence 
 our opinion, and had no thesis or system ; they give us 
 upon events their first impression, which is the good 
 one ; they show themselves as they were seen in their 
 times, and we make them our contemporaries ; having 
 them under our eyes, we can better judge them, and we 
 formour own opinion on them. 
 
 This is a service which Madame de Sevigne has better 
 than any.one done us, from her possessing in the highest 
 degree the gift of animating what she narrates. We can, 
 therefore, treat her Letters as historical documents ; but 
 it would be endless labour if we were to undertake to 
 extract all they contain of information upon her time, so 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERS TT Y OF CMTFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 IO2 Madame de Stvignd. 
 
 we must limit ourselves and select. Imagine that we 
 have read her whole correspondence and, closing the 
 book and depending on our recollection, ask ourselves 
 what idea she gives us of people she knew, and in what 
 her society is like ours, and in what does it differ. There 
 are two points of equal importance for bringing to light, 
 for, if there be a great interest in showing that common 
 fund by which all men resemble and recognise themselves 
 at all ages, it is not the less curious to mark how usages, 
 ideas, and even feelings change from one to another 
 period ; thus we learn that what exists has not always 
 been what it is and cannot be otherwise ; this is a truth 
 not felt at the first however elementary it be, and im- 
 portant to bear in mind to prevent us being too stubborn 
 in our opinions, too firmly anchored to our prejudices, 
 and too rebellious to all useful innovation. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE SeVign Letters are principally composed of those 
 to the Countess de Grignan, and what these first show 
 is family life. On this head it may be believed that we 
 will have no new remarks to make. The relations of a 
 mother with her offspring do not appear susceptible of 
 much change ; it would seem that a kind of affection so 
 near akin to nature ought to be evinced in very nearly 
 always the same manner. Nevertheless, from the first
 
 The Works. 103 
 
 letters, it is easily perceptible from peculiarities that these 
 Letters were not written in our days. 
 
 To begin with, the love is almost everywhere measured 
 and respectful, and there reigns a gravity which astonishes 
 us ; assuredly, no mother nowadays would make so much 
 ceremony over addressing her daughter. I know well 
 that we must not be the dupe of appearances ; much of 
 the surprise felt in reading these Letters arises from 
 an external cause. Near relatives then were not in the 
 habit of speaking together familiarly (tutoyer) ; the 
 vous (for you} used then, contrary to modern French 
 usages (which employ tu, thou, in the same relations), 
 suffices to change the aspect of these confidences and 
 give them an air of constraint and coldness. In Bussy's 
 letters we find a rather curious proof of the repugnance 
 felt to employing forms too familiar in sacred relations ; 
 Father Bouhours writes that he is singularly shocked to 
 see poets unceremoniously use "thou" and "thee" to- 
 wards kings and princes : 
 
 " Great king, cease thou to vanquish or I'll cease to write." 
 
 " Latin," he says, " no doubt does this in verse, but 
 because it is so in prose. It is not the same in our lan- 
 guage, in which ' thou ' and ' thee' are used to varlets and 
 petty folk ; this is so true that a lover never says to his 
 lady-love either 'thou ' or 'thee.' " Bussy is at bottom of 
 his advice wishful, like him again, to bring the poets back 
 to respect for sovereign majesty. On one point, how- 
 ever, he makes a reservation. " It is not true in love,
 
 IO4 Madame de Stvignt. 
 
 my reverend Father," he corrects him, " that one's sweet- 
 heart is never called 'thou'; but you are not bound to know 
 that." Bussy knew this very well, having had occasion 
 to write many letters of that sort. Beside him, there was 
 no ignorance of it either in his darling daughter, the fair 
 and romantic Marchioness de Coligny, who fell in love 
 with La Riviere, a dubious nobleman but certainly not 
 an honest man. We have the despairing missive she sent 
 to her lover to tell him that she was going to be separated 
 from him for ever. "Thou mayest believe," she writes, 
 " that it would not be hard to induce me to quit my life 
 the sweetest fate that can befall poor me after having lost 
 thee. Do not seek to see me ; nothing would be more 
 dangerous for thee and myself; nor even to write me 
 without extreme precautions, for they are taking most 
 extraordinary ones to learn if we write to one another. 
 Adieu, my all ! I have death in me, thank God ! " If 
 Father Bouhours had been able to read this letter, he 
 would have been forced to acknowledge that in love 
 sometimes they say "thou" and "thee"; but it is sure that 
 it required as critical circumstances and as fervent a pas- 
 sion for the ordinary trammels to be broken through. 
 
 In all Madame de Sevignd's Correspondence, I have 
 only found one passage where she allows herself the use 
 of " thou." She was at Les Rochers, in one of her sad 
 and lonely hours when the absence of her daughter drove 
 her out of her wits. "You say that Grignan sends his 
 love," she writes; " thou losest respect, my poor Grignan ! 
 come and play a little in my game of pallmall, I
 
 The Works. 105 
 
 entreat thee ; it is such lovely weather I do so long to 
 watch you play, you play with such gracefulness, and 
 deliver such fine strokes. You are very cruel to refuse 
 me only anhour's stroll. And you, my little one, come 
 let us chat. Oh, goodness ! what an inclination I 
 have to weep !" Remark that it is her son-in-law she 
 applies the " thou" to, and not her daughter; the Countess 
 inspires respect which the Count does not impose. 
 Madame de Grignan was so ceremonious that, one day, 
 speaking to her mother of Baron du Chantal, she called 
 him " his lordship (monsieur) your father." " I feared 
 we were not relatives," replied the elder, a little vexed ; 
 " what are you to him, pray ?" 
 
 But, I repeat, these are but outward shows which 
 change nothing of the basis of things. One must guard 
 against drawing inferences too rigorous in any sense. I 
 see persons who, enamoured of the good old times, and 
 bent on proposing them for a model, much admire stern 
 respect towards parents, and think it helps to preserve dig- 
 nity in intimate relations. In order to undeceive them, 
 it will be enough to read the very risky confidences made 
 by this mother to her daughter in her stately speech upon 
 Charles de Sevigne's conduct, his amours with Ninon 
 de 1'Enclos and the beautiful Duchess de Villeroy which 
 had unpleasant sequels for him, and to see with what 
 gusto the younger woman hearkens to all these tales ; it 
 must be owned that gravity is completely absent from 
 these light stories. As for those who pretend that the 
 stiff personal pronoun is troublesome because it fetters 
 
 H
 
 106 Madame de Sdvigne. 
 
 the liberty of relations and casts a chill over the expres- 
 sion of feelings, the entire Correspondence of Madame 
 de SeVignd: will show them that there is no need of any 
 set form of address for men and women to love passion- 
 ately and acquaint one another with the fact. 
 
 It is true that we must not judge the whole epoch by 
 the SeVignd example ; she was an exception to her gene- 
 ration. Some surprise was caused around her by the effu- 
 sion of feeling for her daughter, of which she is so lavish in 
 her letters, and which in daily life she could not entirely 
 restrain. Evidently, none were accustomed to it. The 
 Countess de Grignan feared her mother would be blamed 
 for these great outbursts of passion, and that she would 
 herself become ridiculous if shallow-brains laughed at it. 
 It is therefore certain that, ordinarily, people did not go 
 so far as Madame de Sevigne", and that it was good taste 
 to rein in the manifestation of sentiment with reserve. 
 In our days, none trouble about expressing themselves 
 as they feel ; it seems to me that, in lieu of containing 
 themselves, some conceit is shown in making a parade of 
 them ; what of old was discreetly concealed is, latterly, 
 sought to be made an honour : it is a point important to 
 notice. 
 
 But the difference goes further ; all is not limited to 
 appearances. Whatever surprise may be experienced, it 
 must be recognised that mothers have not always loved 
 their children in the same way ; and that in the mode 
 of treating them, in the care taken of them, in the 
 place made for them, and the importance accorded them,
 
 The Works. 107 
 
 there are palpable changes from one epoch to another. 
 Antiquity was not tender to the newly born. Tacitus 
 says : " The child, soon after its birth, is handed over 
 to a miserable Greek slave, to whom is added one or 
 two of her companions in servitude, the vilest usually, 
 and most incapable of any serious employment." The 
 mother never attended to it, and as children held very 
 scanty place in woman's life, they filled none at all in her 
 affection. In one of his epistles, Cicero speaks of a poor 
 little child of his daughter's which did not live ; his terms 
 are of strange coldness and hardness. He almost calls 
 it an abortion : " Quod quidem est natum,perimbecillum est" 
 The explanation of this frigidity is to be found in the 
 following paragraph from the Tusculanes : " When a child 
 dies young, consolation is easy ; if at birth, there is nothing 
 to fret about." It is known that law and custom au- 
 thorised the father of a malformed infant, or if it were one 
 whose mother refused to nourish it, to put it out at his 
 door to perish of cold and want, unless some passenger 
 carried it home to do whatever he liked with it. Seneca 
 considered this usage quite natural, and the Emperor 
 Constantine was the first to be shocked at it and to 
 interdict it. There existed nothing of this sort, of course, 
 in the Seventeenth Century society ; and yet it may be 
 said that, up to a certain age, children did not enter as 
 much as to-day into the life of a mother. Pleasures and 
 occupations did not leave them time to take care of them. 
 Society was so agreeable and so exacting; there were 
 so many social duties to fulfil and so many visits to pay 
 
 H 2
 
 io8 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 and receive ; consequently, daughters were packed off . 
 to a nunnery as soon as possible to give the mothers 
 quiet ; and they tried to keep them there, once inside. As 
 for the boys, they would hardly arrive at the age of reason 
 before they would be put under a tutor, with more heed 
 to select a gentleman whose title did the pupil's family 
 honour than a man of merit fit for the task. 
 
 All this is quite distinctly perceived in the SeVigne 
 Letters ; only, between the lady and her daughter some di- 
 vergence of opinion on the subject can be noticed, of which 
 they may not have had full consciousness. The younger 
 lady yielded wholly to the ruling prejudices, whilst the 
 other withstood them. The Countess de Grignan's first 
 pledge of affection was not well received being a daughter, 
 and a son had been looked for. There is sadness and 
 disappointment in the few words written by the young 
 mother on her sick-bed to her husband, retained by his 
 office in Provence : "If my good health can console 
 you for only having a daughter, I shall not ask your par- 
 don for having given you no son. I am out of danger, 
 and only think of going to meet you. My mother will 
 tell you the rest." The mother does take up the pen, 
 but to speak in another tone. She is quickly consoled 
 for her discomfiture, and, from the earliest words, it is 
 clear that her good-humour is unimpaired. " Madame 
 de Puisieux says that if you desire a son you will have to 
 realise your desire yourself, and I rate her speech the 
 most pat and best in the world. We let you have a 
 daughter and you have given us another." A few months
 
 The Works. 109 
 
 later, Madame de Grignan, having gone to join her hus- 
 band, the child, not appearing to be strong enough to 
 support the long journey, was left with the grandmother. 
 She took the task seriously, and did not shift it off upon 
 others, as was so often done around her. The amusing 
 letter must be read in which she relates to her daughter, 
 with a good-humour which shocked the Chevalier de 
 Perrin, how she introduced a fresh nurse, and her pleasure 
 in finding her grandchild recover good health. "She 
 had never drunk at such a fount. Her wet-nurse had 
 scanty milk ; this one is a downright cow, a good rustic 
 woman, with no nonsense, splendid teeth, black hair, 
 sunburnt skin, and twenty-four years of age. Her four 
 months' babe is as lovely as a cherub . . . Your little one 
 becomes a dear thing, and we are growing fond of it. In 
 a fortnight she will be plump and as white as snow, 
 and will never cease laughing. What dreadful items, 
 my darling ! You will not know me, I have become such 
 a veritable gossip ; I shall be Dame Partlet the Hen over 
 my brood ! " What usually happens on such occasions 
 came to pass : as it is a matter of course that children 
 are endeared by the pains they cost and the cares 
 they require, Madame de Sevigne was seized by a very 
 lively affection for her whom she called " her own little 
 trail" She wanted to take her away with her to Les 
 Rochers, where she would have been a blithe companion 
 and most agreeable occupation in that solitude; but 
 Madame du Puy-du-Fou, a wise woman of experience, 
 did not so advise. " She said that it was running a risk,
 
 no Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 and, on that, I laid down my arms ; I do not want to im- 
 peril her little highness ; I love her every bit. I have had 
 her hair cut and all in little curls under a cap, which is a 
 style made for her. Her throat, complexion, all her 
 little body, are admirable. She does a hundred little things : 
 speaks, caresses, fights, makes the sign of the cross, begs 
 pardon, curtseys, kisses the hands, shrugs her shoulders 
 dances, flatters and chucks you under the chin in short, 
 she is pretty every way you look at her. I amuse my- 
 self with her for entire hours. I do not wish this to die 
 away. As I told you the other day, I do not know how 
 there can be people who do not love their daughter." 
 No doubt the Countess de Grignan loved hers, but not 
 enough to remove her from the fate attending most 
 daughters in such great houses. The sweet and kind Marie 
 Blanche was soon sent away from the paternal domicile '> 
 as she was not going to live there, they would not let her ac- 
 quire a desire to dwell in it. At five years of age she was 
 put in a nunnery and out she never came ; at fifteen, she 
 took the veil without anyone even inquiring if she liked 
 the austere life. Her grandmother alone uttered from 
 afar a soft remonstrance merely a smothered sigh : 
 " Poor child ! may she be happy and contented ; beyond 
 doubt she is, but you know what I mean." 
 
 The Countess's second daughter, Pauline, was not born 
 in Paris like Marie Blanche, and Madame de Se'vigne' did 
 not see her for a long time. It looks as though she had 
 made some effort not to become attached to her. " Is it 
 love that thing?" she says, defending herself for this
 
 The Works. 1 1 1 
 
 affection as though it were robbery against her daughter. 
 " I am yours above all others. You know how far I am 
 from that dotage which makes women pass from maternal 
 love to that for grandchildren. My love has remained 
 on the first storey, and I only love these ground-floor 
 people out of love for you." But stoutly as she resisted, 
 her affectionate disposition was too strong for her, and 
 she perceived it with surprise : " Is it really possible 
 that I can still find room for love and new attachments ?" 
 But at the same time she confessed with sadness that her 
 feelings were not entirely her daughter's. " Meseems 
 that I love her, and you do not love her enough," she 
 tells her straight. Indeed, they began to find faults in 
 Pauline which require redressing in convents, and part*, 
 at the same time, which appear at the commencement of 
 a religious vocation. Upon this hint, Madame de Sevigne' 
 became uneasy, and next, irritated ; she must be kept out 
 of the cell, even if she has to be married in Beam, or if 
 never married at all, we must have the pleasure of bring- 
 ing her up and making a perfect woman of her. She 
 keeps on repeating this exhortation, so strange' to us, 
 addressed to a mother : " Love, oh, love Pauline !" Then 
 the Countess had a son, and, pursuant to the rule in high 
 families, everything was sacrificed to him. But here 
 arises something still more extraordinary : this son 
 while he is a boy, is never attended to, is neglected, in 
 fact, and reared badly. Although they were so proud of 
 him, and La Provence stood as his godmother, and he 
 had, as soon as he appeared, taken the foremost place in
 
 H2 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 his parents' affection, and for his sake it was thought to 
 send Pauline to keep company with Marie Blanche in 
 her nunnery at Aubenas, his mother left him at 
 Grignon during her journeys to Paris, and passed years 
 without seeing him ; even when she is with him, she leaves 
 him to underlings, and friends inform Madame de Sevigne 
 that " he is getting spoiled by the lacqueys." In sending 
 good advice to her daughter, the Marchioness feels the 
 necessity of appending these significant words : " You 
 do not yet fully understand motherly love ; so much the 
 better for you, as it is violent." 
 
 Perhaps we must not be too severe upon Madame de 
 Grignan, who only did as others do. Things have much 
 changed in our days ; children are no longer sacrificed 
 one to another, but parents offer self-sacrifice to them. 
 They are no longer left to the footmen in antechamber 
 and stablemen, but enthroned in the drawing-room there 
 to reign ; they have become the masters, often the tyrants 
 of the family. Although there is sometimes a little ex- 
 aggeration in this importance given them, and they are 
 tempted to abuse it, on the whole this excess is prefer- 
 able to the other way ; and in this, at least, our society is 
 better than our forefathers'. 
 
 II. 
 
 IT is likely enough that if some power allowed us to open 
 one of the mail-bags carried in all directions on the rail 
 nowadays, we should find less entertainment in reading
 
 The Works. 113 
 
 the letters than anticipated, and be struck with the 
 monotonous basis of all we saw. Life in our society 
 imposing the same burdens on everybody and rolling 
 round the same circle, it follows that we all have about 
 the same things to say. Speaking or writing, eighty 
 times out of a hundred, news is asked of the health, or 
 business is discussed : these are the ordinary subjects of 
 letters as of conversation ; and we shall see that Madame 
 de Sevigne, despite her originality of mind, was no more 
 exempt than the rest of us. 
 
 As she was for a long while in sound health she is not 
 uneasy about herself at the commencement of her corre- 
 spondence, but she is about others. Causes of distress 
 are not lacking ; at whiles it really seems as if a pesti- 
 lential wind were passing over those dear to her. Her 
 letters are full of sad news : now Cardinal de Retz is 
 dying at Commercy; or Madame de La Fayette is con- 
 sumed by slow fever beside La Rochefoucald, nailed by 
 gout to his armchair ; or Corbinelli, suffering from head- 
 aches which " threaten his reason," and can only be 
 borne by his taking potable gold. Beyond the familiar 
 circle with which Madame de Sevigne is always busy, 
 there are less intimate friends among whom ailments 
 make much ravage. Fever sits in permanency at Ver- 
 sailles and Saint-Germain, where the ground is being 
 continually upturned for building palaces and terraces and 
 excavating fountain basins. The King himself and his 
 family do not escape it, and the courtiers are decimated ; 
 those who resist it are overcome by small-pox, rheu-
 
 1 1 4 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 matism, and apoplexy. Then come "the numerous troop 
 of the Vaporeux" fashionable folk, used up with 
 pleasure-making, ill from disappointed ambition and 
 baffled hopes, suffering for their blunders and from the 
 success of others, fidgeting without motive, agitating 
 without aim, tainted with vague ills, with effects the more 
 poignant as the symptoms appear more slight. Amid all 
 these weaklings stands out the robust German Princess, 
 come from the Palatinate to take the place of Henriette 
 d'Orleans at the Palais Royal. Broad-shouldered, stout, 
 high-coloured, she forms a curious contrast to all these 
 frail and lymphatic creatures who lived upon physic. 
 "When her physician was presented to her, she said 
 that she did not know what to do with him as she had 
 never been bled or purged ; when she felt ill, she went 
 out on foot over a couple of leagues and walked it off." 
 
 After having long worried about her friends, Madame 
 de SeVign was brought to be alarmed about herself. At 
 fifty years, her triumphant health, as she styled it, 
 received the first attack. At Les Rochers she was seized 
 by severe rheumatism. During three months she " cried 
 out with pain," but she did nothing but cheer her 
 daughter. In every letter dictated to her son or her 
 friends, she speaks of a palpable improvement and 
 promises a speedy cure ; but it always was coming ; and 
 when she had exhausted all remedies she resigned her- 
 self to go and take the waters at Vichy. 
 
 By her letters from that place and Bourbon, an in- 
 teresting picture might be drawn of the life led at these
 
 The Works. 1 1 5 
 
 watering resorts at that period. It was not pleasant and 
 brilliant as it is to-day. It was not the habit to go there 
 for pleasure indeed. "It is drink or be ennui'd!" says 
 our patient. The great object was to be healed. In the 
 morning the waters were drunk. " At one we go to the 
 spring, where we all meet and drink and make ugly faces, 
 for you must imagine that they are boiling waters with a 
 highly nasty salpetrous flavour. We turn round and go 
 away, we come back and saunter about, we hear mass, 
 ' and render unto Terra the brine which was Terra's, and 
 we confidentially acquaint each other with this welcome 
 fact ; nothing else is talked about up to noon." Then 
 comes the douches a much more terrible matter. " I 
 commenced the douche this day ; it is not a bad rehearsal 
 of purgatory. They put you stripped into a little under- 
 ground place where there is a spout of warm water which 
 a woman directs over you wherever you like to have it. . . 
 At first, you have it all over you to wake you up generally, 
 and then the hose plays on the joints particularly attacked ; 
 but when it comes to the nape of the neck, there's a kind 
 of fire and surprise not to be understood without expe- 
 rience. Yet this is the key of the business. You have to 
 undergo it all, and you do suffer it all, but you are not 
 scalded, and then you are put in a warm bed to perspire 
 freely, and you are cured." In the intervals there would 
 be visiting and social gatherings. Madame de Sevigne 
 had such a wide circle of acquaintances that it was not 
 hard for her to find some at Vichy and Bourbon whom she 
 was pleased to see and hear. In the number were also
 
 1 1 6 Madame de S&uignt. 
 
 several ridiculous persons who were butts on occasion, 
 which helped to pass away the time. " I would never 
 believe that I could see at Vichy such dogs of faces," she 
 remarks. One belonged to Madame de Pequigny, " the 
 Cumsean Sybil," who " endeavoured to cure herself of 
 her seventy-six years of age, very burdensome upon her" ; 
 another that of one Madame de La Barois, " her tongue 
 partly palsied from apoplexy so she splutters " ; the poor 
 woman, after twenty years' widowhood, had fallen in love 
 with a young blade who deceived her after having obtained 
 all her property. " It is a huge blessing," Madame de 
 Sevigne had said upon a similar conjunction, "not to be 
 strung to such geese ; they had better be sent out to 
 pasture than be led thither by ourselves." There was 
 also the Duchess de Brissac, a very pretty coquette, 
 whose vanity it was to be always courted and attended. 
 Vichy did not offer her such a wide choice of devotees as 
 Paris or Versailles, but necessity rendered her less hard 
 to please. For want of better conquests, she contented 
 herself with quite paltry ones, taking up abbe's and even 
 monks at a pinch. " You ought to see," writes Madame 
 de Sevigne*, "how she shoots at all game, without picking 
 out any sort. The other day with mine own eyes I saw 
 her set fire to a poor Celestine." To the pleasure of 
 friendly chat and pulling the neighbours to pieces, were 
 joined that of strolls in the environs when one was strong 
 enough, and of the local dances (bourrees) by the maids 
 in the evenings to the music of the fiddle and the tam- 
 bourine with wriggles and twists " in which the curates
 
 The Works. 117 
 
 could find matter for censure." These were nearly all 
 the distractions offered by the spas to those who, whilst 
 being cured of ails, did not seek to perish of nothing- 
 to-do. 
 
 Nobody will be surprised that Madame de Sevigne', 
 who declared that she mocked at the doctor when she 
 was well, should speak in another tone as soon as she saw 
 her daughter unwell and herself attacked by rheumatism. 
 Such changes are natural. Thenceforward, her letters 
 are full of advice she gives or receives, reasoning upon 
 maladies and medical consultations. On any head the 
 two descant and discuss and make dissertations, mother 
 and daughter not being of the same mind. The latter is 
 fond of chocolate the other has her doubts of it, and 
 she quotes frightful examples of the damage it does : 
 " The Marchioness de Coetlogan took so much that her 
 little baby was black as an imp, and it died." Coffee 
 raises still more disputes. Doctors were not in agree- 
 ment upon the effects it produces. " Du Chesne hates it, 
 Brother Ange does not cry it down ; it fattens one and 
 makes another lean." What was to be done in this 
 quandary ? Attempt was made to make it inoffensive by 
 cream or sweetening it with honey ; but, as it was still 
 found pernicious, a great resolution was taken and it was 
 shamefully expelled from their abode. Tea, then making 
 its debut, was better welcomed. "The Princess takes 
 twelve cups a day, saying it cures her of all her ails, and 
 she assures me that the Landgrave took forty cups every 
 morning." " Come, come, Madame ; perhaps it was only
 
 1 1 8 Madame de Stvignd. 
 
 thirty !" " No, no, forty ; he was dying, and this brought 
 him round, so you could see the progress ! " At the least 
 ill in her daughter, Madame de Sevigne's imagination 
 flew about all over the fields. She ran around to all the 
 medical lights she knew, and, after them, to quacks and 
 charlatans. These swarmed at that period. Everybody, 
 women included, battled with one another to possess 
 marvellous secrets to overcome obstinate complaints. 
 Madame Fouquet applied a plaster to the dying Queen 
 which cured her, to the great scandal of the Faculty, 
 unable to save her ; and the Princess de Tarente served 
 out drugs to all her people at Vitre". " She is the best 
 doctor in the upper classes ; she has rare and valuable 
 compounds of which she gave us three pinches with a 
 prodigious effect." Nothing is more amusing than to 
 hear Madame de Sevigne discoursing with Fagon or Du 
 Chesne. She is full of her subject and speaks learnedly 
 in the proper terms, like a physician in Moliere's plays. 
 " He tells me that you are letting yourself die of inani- 
 tion. When your digestion is rapid, you must eat ; the 
 residuum is then consumed which would otherwise only 
 decay and exhale fumes, if you do not raise the heat by 
 aliments." More than all she entreats her daughter to 
 take care of herself, and she sets her the example. She 
 announces her taking medicine to please her, and adds, 
 in a supplicatory tone : " Do as much for me." She 
 sends her new panaceas by every post. Some are rather 
 mild, for instance the cherry water to which France owes 
 Minister Colbert's preservation ; " or the extract of peri-
 
 The Works. 119 
 
 winkles, which endowed Madame de Grignan with a 
 second youth. When you reappear so fair, people will 
 cry : ' O'er what blessed flower can she have walked ?' and 
 I will answer : ' On the periwinkle.'" Others have a more 
 gruesome aspect, to wit the viper broth, the uric acid 
 and the powdered crabs'-eyes. But here comes in some- 
 thing yet more startling. The Capuchins, who also 
 meddled with the healing art, treated Madame de 
 Sevigne's leg with plants bruised and applied twice a 
 day; taken away wet they were buried and, in proportion to 
 their rotting away, the place of application grew less in 
 pain as it perspired. The patient does not doubt the 
 efficacy of the remedy. " It's a pity yo/u ran and told 
 the surgeons of this," she writes to her daughter ; " for 
 they roar with laughter at it ; but I do not care a fig 
 for them." There is something better still in Bussy's 
 correspondence. " There's an abbe here," Madame de 
 Scudery tells him, "who is making a great pother by 
 curing by sympathy. For fever of all kinds, so they say, 
 he takes the patient's spittle and mingles it with egg and 
 gives it to a dog the dog dies and the patient recovers ; 
 so it is averred." She adds with entire confidence : 
 " They say he has cured a quantity of people." I cer- 
 tainly am not going to assert that we have arrived at the 
 point of unbelief in quacksalvers, and that quaint recipes 
 find no more credit in us ; yet our ladies of sense and 
 understanding, like Madame de Scudery and Madame 
 de Sevigne, would show more distrust than they did for 
 the Capuchins' plants and the priest who cured by 
 sympathy.
 
 I2O Madame de Sdvigne. 
 
 III. 
 
 NEXT to health, which occupies most space in the SeVigne" 
 Letters, comes business. All through, there is mention 
 of monetary troubles and the means sought to escape 
 from them. The French nobility, never very saving, 
 were then at the climax of ruin. " Nobody has a penny, 
 and nobody has anything to borrow upon," says 
 Madame de Sevigne". This was the common situation. 
 The high lords, attracted to the court by the King, 
 found they had to go to enormous expense there. The 
 mischief was that they acquired luxurious habits which 
 they carried down upon their estates and communicated 
 to all the petty lordlings and country squires. From high 
 to low, from Versailles Palace to the humblest manor 
 house, all the aristocracy made an effort each to eclipse 
 peers, and to rival their superiors, which fortunes, already 
 impaired, could not resist. 
 
 There was only one resource to uphold themselves ; 
 they solely relied on royal bounty. Except for this, all 
 this propertyless nobility would be reduced to eating 
 " bread made of leaves and fern." Consequently, all 
 this famished army dreamt to obtain a government, a 
 court office, or at least some pension or gratification. 
 These were fought for greedily and begged for without 
 shame. Bussy wrote to Madame de SeVigne apropos of 
 the King : " I will hug his knees and fawn upon him so 
 often that I shall finally peradventure reach his purse.''
 
 The Works. 121 
 
 His daughter, a little ashamed, had struck out the finish 
 of the sentence and put " to his heart," but Bussy was 
 not so timid he had the impudence of such a beggar. 
 
 Sometimes this baseness, greediness, and solicitation 
 succeeded. There were favourites who made immense 
 fortunes at this trade. It is incalculable what was gained 
 by ministers, the royal mistresses and their hangers-on, 
 fawners and friends, and those Saint-Simon calls "familiar 
 varlets" (valets interieurs). Shall we recall in what manner 
 Coulanges speaks to his cousin of the boundless domains 
 possessed in Lower Brittany by the Duchess de Louvois, 
 the Prime Minister's wife, who was rusticating at the time ? 
 " We are making some long journeys now, in this tempt- 
 ingly fine weather, to know the vastness of our kingdom, 
 and whenever curiosity pricks us to ask the name of a 
 village, as ' Whose is this ? ' upon my word, they answer, 
 'The Duchess's !' 'And that yonder?' 'The Duchess's.' 
 'But I mean, that one over there?' 'The Duchess's.' 
 'And these woods?' 'The Duchess's.' 'What a tre- 
 mendous stretch of plain ! ' ' It's the Duchess's.' ' But 
 I spy a handsome house on it !' ' That's Nicei, the 
 Duchess's, a large estate that used to belong to the 
 old counts of that name.' 'Whose is that other 
 chateau on a height?' 'That's Pacy, the Duchess's, 
 coming from the Mandelot family, to which her great- 
 grandmother belonged.' In one word, Madame, every- 
 thing in the country is the Duchess's ; I never saw so 
 much real estate in one ring fence." But this was the 
 exception. Others waited long and had to sue long 
 
 i
 
 122 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 before they were even poorly paid for their services and 
 assiduity. But this did not dishearten them ; they con- 
 tinued to lounge through the grand halls of the palace, 
 and glide into the King's way to remind him of their 
 existence ; as they had no other means of winning their 
 prize, they wished to dwell ever in the beams of the royal 
 munificence from which they expected fortune and 
 relief. Upon each new act of liberality from the King to 
 his favourites, they would recover courage and say, with 
 Madame de Se'vigne : " We must not despair ; although 
 we are not even his footmen, we may find what crumbs 
 they cast away by paying court to them." 
 
 Madame de Sevigne herself was rich. One day she 
 reckoned up to her daughter that she had 530, ooo livres 
 of property, about two millions of francs at this day. 
 This handsome amount would not have resisted the 
 Marquis de Se'vigne's attacks, if he had lived longer, for 
 money melted in the hands of that libertine and prodigal 
 husband ; when he died, after six years' wedded life, the 
 poor widow was half ruined. She happily had, for ex- 
 trication from this strait, her uncle's skill and devotion ; 
 the Abbe* de Coulanges who had been her tutor, remain- 
 ing her steward. 
 
 The "really good" gentleman, as his niece called him, 
 is an amusing figure. Although he did not often say 
 mass, and he accuses himself with humility, in his will, of 
 " having disgraced and profaned the holiness of his call- 
 ing by a life too much diverted from the duties to which 
 it should have been solely consecrated"; he was a pious
 
 The Works. 123 
 
 man of regular manners, a devotee and believer, who 
 " wept copiously every time he received the sacrament." 
 It is certain that the profession given to him suited him 
 but slightly ; it was his family thrust him into it when 
 nature intended him for a business man. To keep his 
 accounts in order, which many look upon as rather a stern 
 duty, was a pleasure and recreation for him. His greatest 
 pastime was to handle the counters " so good and true," 
 used in his calculations. He had no equal for order and 
 economy ; he did all kinds of service in the household; he 
 drew up the leases, managed the law processes, oversaw 
 the farmers, and settled all bills. When he dealt with the 
 tradesfolk, he obtained better terms than others, which 
 naturally made him vain. It was he who found for the 
 Countess de Grignan a suite of rooms most reasonable, 
 horses for a coach and a six-stall stable, all for 500 
 livres per annum. On another occasion, when Charles de 
 Sevigne meddled with the haggling about a boat to carry 
 his mother to Nantes, the Abbe had only one word to 
 say to have it for a pistole less than his nephew offered. 
 With so many good parts, he had some flaws, which are 
 merrily hit off by Madame de Sevigne, who saw them 
 clearly through her affection. Primarily, he sometimes 
 got out of humour, but this was chiefly against men who 
 reasoned falsely and badly calculated. When arithmetic 
 is offended, and the rule of " twice two makes four " is 
 wounded in any way, the good Abbe is a man beside 
 himself. His was not a sharp mind. His niece, travelling 
 with him to Les Rochers, foresaw that it would not do to 
 
 I 2
 
 124 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 rely too much on the charms of his conversation, and 
 supplied herself with a good book Fle"chier's translation 
 of "Life of Cardinal Commendon" " I am glad I am of 
 the thinking and reading mould ; or otherwise our good 
 Abb would little entertain me ; you know he is busy 
 with the shining orbs in his money-box ? But whilst he 
 is looking at it on all sides, Cardinal Commendon keeps 
 me company very well." He was fond of good cheer, 
 and lingered at table without being pressed ; he used as 
 cover the toasting of Madame de Grignan, and when the 
 wine was good, expatiated lengthily in her laudation. In 
 going through Burgundy to escort his niece to Vichy, he 
 was so well entertained in the house of the good Guitauts, 
 and was given such long and excellent repasts, that his 
 fair charge made him take the waters " to clear out the 
 bag he had filled too full at Epoisses." But these jests 
 did not prevent her doing him all the justice she was 
 bound to give for what she owed him. Upon his death, 
 she wrote to Bussy, who never liked him : " There is no 
 good deed that he did not do for me. He drew me out 
 of the abysm in which I was at M. de Sevigne's death ; he 
 won lawsuits, put my lands into good condition again, 
 paid my debts, and found mates for my children in a 
 word, it was to his perpetual care that I owe the peace 
 and repose of my life." Two months later, returning to 
 the same subject, she renews the eulogy to Bussy, and 
 finishes it in these terms : " He lived honourably and 
 died Christianly. May God serve us likewise." 
 
 For that matter, the niece of the Abb de Coulanges
 
 The Works. 125 
 
 was truly worthy of him. Her taste for mental pleasures 
 did not impair her business sense. To that, as to every- 
 thing else, she brought a sharpness of which she was 
 proud. We see her rejoicing one day at having found a 
 skilful expedient in an embarrassing case, of which " the 
 Really Good" steward was not advised. Racine, writing 
 to one of his sons who played the gentleman, and threw 
 away coin without counting it, observed with charming 
 kindliness : " We plain folk go about more simply, and 
 believe that to know clearly how one stands is not be- 
 neath an honest man." On this side, the Countess was 
 as a citizen's wife, and there is shown at her Les Rochers 
 house the book where she put down every item of the 
 household expenses. I do not know if she could, at a 
 pinch, do her own cooking, but she was capable of over- 
 seeing those who did it, and she analyses their merits 
 with a precision showing an expert. Her daughter hav- 
 ing charged her to engage a cook for Grignan, her answer 
 was : " We dined on his dishes the Chevalier, the Abbe, 
 Corbinelli, and I and tried master cook properly : the 
 fricassee was good, the tart excellent ; we had to give him 
 a hint to improve the crust ; the fry was a pale golden 
 colour. I really believe this man will be your mark." 
 It is a pleasure to see so distinguished a fashionable 
 lady fit for domestic matters. 
 
 It may be asserted that she never injured her fine for- 
 tune ; her children undertook that. She had to buy her 
 son a cornet's post, and subsequently a sub-lieutenant's, 
 in the Dauphin's gendarmes a very costly purchase.
 
 126 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 Moreover, she had to equip him afresh at every campaign. 
 At some moments the outlay struck her as heavy, for 
 Charles de Sevign had recourse to Madame de La 
 Fayette's intervention to soften his mother. On this 
 subject comes her following letter, which Madame de 
 Se'vigne must have found a trifle harsh (s'echette). "Your 
 son has just left me. He came to bid me good-bye, 
 and to beg me to write you his plea about cash. His 
 reasoning is so good that I have no need to explain 
 them at length, for you must see how the expenses of a 
 campaign are endless. Everybody is in desperation and 
 ruin, it is impossible your son should not have acted in 
 some degree like others ; besides, the great affection you 
 have for Madame de Grignan requires you to show the 
 same to her brother." It was not only the war that 
 ruined Charles de Se'vigne, for he had mad freaks at 
 whiles : he could not be acquainted with La Champmesle 
 the actress and Ninon de 1'Enclos, and keep up his 
 good and bad ties in the world without some outlay. 
 Once when pressed for ready money and fearful to have 
 recourse to his mother, be sold the timber of his Buron 
 property which belonged to him. Madame de Se'vigne 
 was very angry when she heard about it, and her ill- 
 humour brought out a whole torrent of mythology from 
 her pen : " I went to Buron yesterday," she writes to her 
 daughter; "and returned in the evening. I thought 
 I should weep to see such destruction on the estate. 
 There were the oldest trees in the world, to which my 
 son, ere his last going away, gave a farewell cut with his
 
 The Works. 127 
 
 axe. He received four hundred pistoles for the timber, 
 of which he has not a penny left. My darling, you should 
 see those afflicted dryads whom I saw yesterday, all 
 those olden Sylvans puzzled where to betake themselves, 
 ail those aged rooks settled two hundred years in the 
 horror of these woods, those owls which, in the gloom, 
 foretold woes to man by their fateful screeches all this, 
 I say, uttered lamentations to me yesterday, which sensibly 
 touched my heart." 
 
 But it was her daughter cost her most dearly. The 
 high noble whom she had espoused was Lieutenant- 
 General over La Provence, where he was deputy for 
 the Governor, the Duke de Vendome, who never went 
 there. As he had a lofty spirit which he liked to exhibit, 
 and spent without reckoning, his grand office cost him 
 more than its income. His fortune was deeply injured 
 when he made a third alliance with Mdlle. de Sevigne, 
 for, unfortunately, she was not of the kind to repair it. 
 More vain than her husband and prouder of her rank, 
 she only precipitated his ruin. 
 
 When one visits what is left of the Chateau de Grignan, 
 it is easy to form an idea of the grand life led in such 
 sumptuous dwellings, and the expenses of every descrip- 
 tion which are the inevitable sequel. Grignan is built 
 on an eminence rising in the midst of a vast plain. 
 The rock has been hewn, built up, and encompassed by 
 walls, to form an inaccessible substructure on which towers 
 the castle. Narrow streets wind down the rugged sides, 
 along which straggle the houses of a miserable hamlet
 
 128 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 seemingly hung up there to live under the wing of a 
 powerful protector. The castle entrance is defended by 
 a massive fortification pierced with loopholes, and flanked 
 by two crenelated towers. Once the gates are opened 
 and the interior is reached, the aspect changes : the for- 
 tress becomes a palace. Unfortunately it is in ruins 
 now, on the ground, there being left only pieces of wall 
 and remnants of halls ; but these fragments have a rare 
 stamp of grandeur and elegance. The walls contain 
 broad windows enframed in delicate columns reminding 
 one of the Renaissance ; within can be seen the binding of 
 vaulted ceilings, finely sculptured friezes and fragments of 
 monumental mantelpieces. The importance of the rub- 
 bish gives us an idea of the extent of the edifice. When, 
 in thought, they are reared up and the castle imagined as 
 it was, it is impossible not to be struck by the broad 
 development of the fronts and the great number of halls 
 and rooms it comprised. All around a paved, raised 
 walk gives the enjoyment of one of the fairest views ob- 
 tainable : a rich plain strewn with villages, country seats 
 and mansions, closed in on all sides by high mountains, 
 the Lance, the saw-edged chain of the Alpines, and the 
 snowy Ventoux on the skyline. 
 
 In this splendid abode all was made to feed the 
 master's pride, and give him a great idea of himself. 
 Everything apparently made it a duty to uphold his rank 
 and not to sink below the magnificence of his ancestors. 
 To people these high halls, and animate this immense 
 building, the company had need to be numerous and
 
 The Works. 129 
 
 brilliant. The masters and their family, with their kins- 
 folk and bosom friends, the officers and nobles, and the 
 pages attached to the deputy-governor, formed a con- 
 siderable body for a beginning, upwards of a hundred 
 persons who lived here and never quitted the bounds. 
 Join to them the guests coming from all the county or 
 the neighbouring ones to receive unstinted hospitality. 
 Friends, or even mere acquaintances, were lodged under 
 this roof with their servants and paraphernalia. It was a 
 hostelry never empty. Three tables had to be set up in 
 the grand gallery and they were always full : this is what 
 Madame de Sevigne called "the continual and cruel 
 cheer of Grignan," which no income could withstand. 
 After feeding this throng, they had to be entertained 
 mentally, for which all kinds of distractions were offered 
 them even the opera, and some pride was shown in 
 having the newest airs of Lulli played. Above all, card 
 play was carried on ; gaming was one of the scourges of 
 this society of the great nobles unemployed. The ex- 
 ample came from above : at Versailles gambling was 
 always going on heavily, and the majority of players were 
 ruined, although a few skilled hands, like Dangeau or 
 Langlee, owed fortunes to it. The Marchioness de 
 Montespan lost four hundred thousand pistoles in one 
 night at basset, and the King's brother, who owed a 
 hundred and fifty thousand crowns, was obliged to pawn 
 his gold plate. From Versailles the mania overran Paris 
 and the provinces. Play was heavy at Grignan, and the 
 hosts, being bound to surpass the guests, thus completed 
 the dispersal of their fortune.
 
 130 Madame de S&rigni. 
 
 On the subject of this ruinous splendour, Madame de 
 Se'vigne' was divided between contrary sentiments. She 
 could not entirely prevent maternal pride when told of 
 the lustre of receptions at Grignan. It pleased her to 
 picture the lovely Countess enthroned like a queen of 
 Provence " in her castle of Apolidon." But common- 
 sense soon overrode that weakness. She foresaw with 
 terror the disasters these wild extravagancies were sure to 
 bring. To her daughter, who sought to calm her by 
 lessening the amount of her gaming losses, she replied 
 with much wisdom that " little showers spoil many roads"; 
 to her son-in-law, always bent on appearances, and who 
 wanted to transport some of his Grignan pomp to Paris, 
 she wrote that six footmen were adequate for his wife 
 and himself, with six horses and one valet-de-chambre ; 
 above all, he was not to bring any pages : " they are a 
 provincial production, no good here." When she found 
 herself scarcely listened to and the expenditure going on, 
 she finally broke out. It was her son-in-law she first 
 accused : " The mania of M. de Grignan to borrow money 
 for pictures and furniture is a thing entirely incred- 
 ible, if one did not see it. How can he reconcile it with 
 his birth, his pride, and the love he ought to bear you ? 
 Can he not believe he abuses your patience, and that it 
 is not inexhaustible ? has he no pity on you ? to think 
 that we believed he loved you ! oh, what pretty love !" 
 Next she was enraged at the pair : " There is no limit to 
 ye two spendthrifts leashed one wishing everything 
 and the other approving enough to wreck the world."
 
 The Works. 131 
 
 (But was it not their world the grandeur and power of 
 that house ?) "I have no words to tell you what I 
 think my heart is too full. But what will you do ? I 
 cannot understand a bit of it. On what do you base 
 your present and future ? what can one do when at such a 
 point ? In short, it is death to those who have their heart 
 in it, and all the more because there is no remedy." 
 
 As one proceeds in the reading of the Correspondence, 
 the times are seen to become gloomier for everybody. 
 The wars never come to an end and they are less profit- 
 able; money grows scarcer, and public poverty augments; 
 all the grand nobility are at the last gasp. Bussy, who 
 boasted when his exile began of having paid a hundred 
 thousand crowns of debt, could no longer meet his expenses, 
 and his unpaid creditors seized his revenues. When Ma- 
 dame de La Roche drew a picture for him of the general 
 distress at Paris, he answered with cutting bitterness : " I 
 think matters are much better regulated than a dozen years 
 ago, madame : then there were thousands and thousands 
 who fared as well as the King and had as much sport as 
 he. Now everything is reserved for the master's mouth ; 
 nobody has coin or tid-bits, but is reduced to his wife 
 and a slice of beef. Is it not fair ? " 
 
 For a long time since, the Count de Grignan had been 
 living on expedients. The loans had been compounding 
 upon one another, with more and more onerous charges 
 for renewals. The creditors waxed wrathful and made 
 dreadful exposures. There was even one Parisian trades- 
 woman, Madame Renie, who had the courage to go a
 
 132 Madame de Stvignt. 
 
 hundred and fifty leagues to claim her dues, and fell 
 suddenly upon Grignan like a fury. These painful inci- 
 dents did not prevent things continuing as usual ; they led 
 a merry life and picnicked over all Provence; companies 
 were raised for the son of the house who was off to the 
 wars. It is ever a subject of amazement to us to see 
 entirely ruined persons find the means to keep themselves 
 up in a vacuum for several years, and persist in living 
 showily and figuring well in society in some unknown 
 manner, though without money or credit. Madame de 
 Sevigne" makes the remark about what she calls the 
 beggarliness of courtiers : " They never have a penny, yet 
 they go upon all the travelling tours, keep up with the 
 fashions, go to all the balls, running at the ring, lotteries, 
 and everywhere, though ruined." But in such delicate 
 situations, the least little event suffices to discover the 
 ruin, and it becomes irreparable. " It is a machine which 
 must not be touched lest all come down by the run." 
 What overturned the Grignan castle of cards was the 
 bankruptcy of the Treasurer of Provence. As he had an 
 interest in keeping on good terms with the acting-governor 
 he had advanced him three years' salary. All had to be 
 repaid forthwith, and the unfortunate Count de Grignan, 
 pressed by his creditors and finding no more credit, was 
 obliged to make an avowal of his distress to the Prime 
 Minister Pontchartrain, in a letter concluding with these 
 words : " I remain without any subsistence."
 
 The Works. 133 
 
 IV. 
 
 WHAT did the poor mother do to relieve this distress ? 
 After having given much useless advice in time, she did not 
 content herself with sending commonplace consolation in 
 pressing cases ; she came to her daughter's assistance as 
 well as circumstances allowed, and to make that succour 
 more plentiful, she quitted town, notwithstanding her 
 attachments and friends wishful to retain her, and bravely 
 retired to make economies on her estate. 
 
 The reasons then for taking the nobility to their country 
 seats were not the same as now, at fixed periods, to make 
 the upper classes leave the capital. Our habit is to make 
 two parts of the year : we pass the winter in town and 
 the summer in the fields. It is a means of introducing 
 a trifle more variety into our life, which would be too mo- 
 notonous if spent in the same spot. We go to the country 
 to repose from social fatigue, enjoy a purer air and find 
 other sights and pleasures. But formerly such changes 
 were not possible because of the difficulties of travel. 
 Only those who possessed rustic property around Paris 
 could so delight themselves. Madame de Sevigne had 
 this rare good fortune. Thanks to her "Really Good" 
 uncle who was Abbe of Livry, she could dispose of a place of 
 repose and retreat attainable in a few hours. Everything 
 at Livry pleased her : beauty of days, coolness of nights, 
 the pure and wholesome air " doing me as much good as
 
 134 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 milk," the music of birds which counteracted the vile cries 
 of the city street-vendors, the delights of gardens balmy 
 with woodbine, and the view of the " sweet little land- 
 scape" enframing them. In other places rain was a misery. 
 " It is always raining here," she writes out of Burgundy, 
 " it makes me angered." At Livry there was not a thing 
 disagreeable, and the rains themselves were welcome. 
 Hence she was happy every time she could go there. 
 She took her daughter and her dearest friends there 
 to enjoy their undivided company, but she was not 
 displeased when wholly by herself there. In all 
 seasons she went there during Passion Week, to 
 collect her thoughts and prepare to go through her devo- 
 tions ; in spring and summer, to enjoy the fine days. It 
 was the remedy for all her sorrows and lassitude. "When 
 I am vexed, I must have Livry," she says. Nothing was 
 easier than to get there, as it is a few leagues from Paris, 
 and she could go there for only a day or two ; but when 
 she went to her Burgundian estate, it was a long, costly, 
 and painful journey, not to be undertaken every year 
 and for a few weeks' sojourn only. Other motives 
 than to change her residence had to arise to decide 
 her upon it ; and, as such travel was not to be renewed 
 often for little gain, once it was reached a long stay 
 would be made. 
 
 Madame de SeVigne did not, therefore, cross the 
 hundred leagues separating her from Les Rochers, 
 for pleasures taken alone, no doubt thinking it payable 
 too dearly. It was duty took her there, to survey the
 
 The Works. 135 
 
 property closely, conclude some piece of business, and, 
 in chief, repair the breaches Paris life made in her 
 wealth. "I do not know how you find yourself pro- 
 gressing with your land," she wrote one day to Bussy, 
 "but for my part, cousin, my property of Bourbilly 
 amounts to next to nothing by the allowances to tenants 
 and the scanty sale for wheat and other grain. We cannot 
 keep out of poverty unless we live upon it." To which 
 Bussy makes answer : " Get yourself exiled, madame ; it 
 is not so difficult as is thought ; and eat up your own 
 produce at Bourbilly." She exiled herself, without wait- 
 ing for a royal order; when the necessity arose, she 
 departed courageously for some distant estate and some- 
 times lived a whole year there, collecting moneys owed 
 her and living on the manor. She was often deceived, 
 as we see by the following anecdote related to her 
 daughter : " This morning, a peasant trudged in with 
 bags all over him; one under each arm, some in his 
 pockets and in his breeches. Our good Abbe, who goes 
 straight to the point, believed we were rich for ever. 
 ' Heigho, friend, you are indeed well laden. How 
 much are you bringing ?' ' Master,' said he, breathing 
 hard, ' I believe there's up'ards o' thirty francs !' My 
 dear, the coins were farthings (doubles), which had fled 
 for refuge into this country along with conical hats, to 
 worry us out of all patience." Nevertheless, with her 
 ordinary skill, she finally arranged everything, raised the 
 rents of her tenants, settled accounts with her debtors, 
 and returned to town richer than she had set out. All
 
 136 Madame de 
 
 admired her wise conduct, for, according to the lines of 
 her friend Lenet : 
 
 " There are pat reasons, heaven sent, 
 To be afield to double rent." 
 
 At present, you can run down to Vitry from Paris in 
 seven hours. Madame de SeVigne required eight or nine 
 days, sometimes more, when she paused on her way at 
 some friendly house. Ten leagues per day was the out- 
 side work. The equipage was worthy of the Marchion- 
 ess's rank. " I go in two vehicles," she describes it to 
 her daughter. " I have seven coach-horses, a led horse 
 carrying my bed, and three or four mounted men. I 
 shall be in my calash, drawn by my best pair ; sometimes 
 the Abbe will be with me ; in the other, my son, La Mousse, 
 and He*lene. That has four horses with a postillion." As 
 is plain, this turn-out is seemly, but often better was seen. 
 The Marchioness de Montespan travelled as follows, 
 when going to take the waters at Vichy : " She is in a 
 three-pair coach with little De Thianges as maid ; more 
 attendants came in another coach with the same arrange- 
 ment as to horses. Then are six baggage waggons, six 
 mules and a dozen horsemen, not including her chief 
 servants; her whole train numbers forty-five persons." 
 As the road was long, precautions were taken against 
 being idle. Madame de SeVigne* took care to select 
 agreeable companions : in her carriage she had books she 
 liked ; so she chatted, or read Corneille or Nicole over 
 again, and looked out on the scenery now and anon.
 
 The Works. 137 
 
 These beautiful banks of the River Loire had been often 
 followed by her in very different moods : first, with her 
 husband when he took her down into Brittany as a 
 novelty, in the gladness and brightness of youth, then 
 with her son and her daughter, of whom she was so 
 proud. Long after, on seeing them by herself, she dis- 
 covered fresh beauties never noticed before. " There are 
 periods in life when one only sees oneself," she says. 
 On the whole, the journey is finished without weariness, 
 and Madame de Sevigne gives us such pleasant descrip- 
 tions that we, who no longer know such spun-out travels, 
 are sometimes tempted to regret them. 
 
 At length Vitry is reached, and thence the Chateau 
 des Rochers, only some six miles off. I imagine that 
 the lady's heart beat when her coach lumbered upon the 
 broad square extending in front of the residence. There 
 she would behold her servants and vassals gathered to 
 hail her. Once, she says, her bailiff Vaillant had pre- 
 pared a kind of triumphant reception to her son : more 
 than fifteen hundred men were marshalled under arms, 
 all neatly dressed and a new ribbon around the neck. 
 This olden nobility, so reduced and humiliated at Ver- 
 sailles, sacrificed to lawyers and financiers, cringing to 
 cabinet ministers' clerks rose on re-entering its own 
 gates and reassumed the feeling of its ancient grandeur. 
 
 The Chateau des Rochers still stands, and has not very 
 much altered in appearance since the time when the 
 Marchioness de Sevign inhabited it. It is a building 
 composed of two living portions in a square shape, sup- 
 
 K
 
 138 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 porting a central tower of the Fifteenth Century. The 
 aspect is simple and noble ; no useless ornaments are 
 upon it ; the tower alone, with elegant roof, belfry, and 
 turrets, has a rather proud mien. On the left is an isolated 
 rotunda which the garden wall and gate link to the main 
 building ; it is the chapel built by Abb de Coulanges. 
 Poor abbe ! notwithstanding his taste for saving, he was 
 possessed of an innocent craze : the building fever. 
 " His hands itched at bricks and mortar," says his niece ; 
 " and now and then when one could not help it, one let 
 him have a wall, to tinker at." It must be confessed 
 that he did not presume upon the permission : his round 
 house is quite modest and, from afar, might be taken for 
 a dovecote. 
 
 Between chapel and chateau a door opens on the 
 parterre. We may suppose without any strain that, after 
 having scantily rested after her journey, the mistress of 
 the castle hastened to run hither. What she most liked 
 was not the chateau finer places were familiar to her 
 but the parterre and park. She had no livelier pleasure 
 than to busy about them, modifying them without cessa- 
 tion, ornamenting and embellishing them, and bringing 
 them down to the reigning mode. She hastened first 
 to remove the box borders of the lawn, pleasing to the 
 courtiers of Louis XIII ; she multiplied the lawn and 
 filled it up with jessamine and orange-trees, so that when 
 the evening air was scented with them, she believed her- 
 self in Provence. As soon as Le Notre had won a 
 reputation in ornamental gardening, she applied to him
 
 The Works. 139 
 
 for designs and plans. When they were executed, and 
 Les Rochers had donned the air of a miniature Versailles, 
 she contemplated her work and felicitated herself upon 
 it. " Our heath has become what none ever would have 
 believed in its power to become," she cries to her 
 daughter, in a tone of triumph. From the parterre she 
 went into the park, which has preserved her memory 
 better than elsewhere. The walks planted by her still 
 exist, and the very names given by her are cited. Yonder 
 is the Solitary; the Infinite, which winds so that the end 
 cannot be seen ; the Mall, broad and straight on the con- 
 trary, ends in a wide expanse whence all the environs are 
 included in the view. Les Rochers are situated amid 
 a rather extensive table-land, rising a little at the ex- 
 tremities, with no variety of aspect, or that grandeur or 
 abruptness of perspective liked in our day ; no stream 
 crossing the level ; no steep mountain closing the scenes. 
 It is a quiet landscape which the eye placidly enjoys, and 
 it reposes the mind. The principal characteristic arises 
 from the trees being so crowded and leafy that nothing 
 else is seen up to the horizon, and it makes one believe it 
 the middle of a forest. Madame de Sevigne, who knows 
 how to use her eyes and observes with care, is not struck 
 by the abundance of trees alone ; but she admires the 
 sombre intensity of the verdure. "The green of this 
 wood is handsomer than that of Livry," is a remark 
 which can be verified by visiting the pretty park of Vitry, 
 or contemplating the country surrounding Rennes from 
 the height of the Thabor promenade. 
 
 K 2
 
 140 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 The life led at Les Rochers was dull. In one of her 
 latter visits to her old castle, Madame de Sevigne', after 
 her son's marriage, described how she employed her 
 days to her daughter. It was one day when she was 
 alone with her daughter-in-law, and " the little friend" 
 was absent. "We rise at eight ; very often I go about 
 nine, when the mass-bell rings to take the freshness of 
 the wood ; after mass, we dress, wish one another good- 
 morning, go about picking orange-flowers, and dine ; till 
 five, we work or read; since we have no son now, I 
 read to spare the weak lungs of his wife. At five, I leave 
 her and go into the pleasant walks, followed by a foot- 
 man ; I have books, and change my seat and vary the 
 turns of my strolls ; it makes a diversion to change from 
 a devotional to a historical work ; we muse a little on God 
 and His providence, on the soul and the future ; and, at 
 length, about eight, I hear a bell it's for supper. . . . My 
 dear child, there is nothing but you that I prefer to the 
 sad and tranquil repose I am enjoying here." This is a 
 downright monotonous life ; it is true that it was enlivened 
 from time to time by some unforeseen gay incident. 
 Visits were often received and not all agreeable. " You 
 who never have budged from Paris," said Bussy, " can- 
 not know what the rusticity of the provinces is." Yet 
 some in the number were welcome ; everywhere people of 
 mind can be met, with whom a few moments can be agree- 
 ably passed. Sometimes there were very great personages 
 who did honour to the Marchioness by stopping at her 
 house ; the Princess de Tarente, the Duke de Chaulnes,
 
 The Works. 141 
 
 and the Marquis de Lavardin, the Lieutenant-General for 
 Brittany. In the governor's absence this nobleman was 
 glad enough to display all the paraphernalia of his 
 power ; he came accompanied by his officers and guards, 
 preceded by his trumpeters, followed by an escort of 
 twenty gentlemen ; they stirred up the peaceful chateau. 
 The Marchioness was obliged to return the compliments 
 by paying visits all about the neighbourhood. Some- 
 times she even let herself be attracted, against her friends' 
 wishes, to the Parliament of Brittany; it was such a 
 journey ; she had to leave home and live at Vitry, or 
 Rennes, or Vannes. She was received there with a 
 heartiness which ultimately fatigued her a little ; she met 
 too much noise and bustle, feasts and dinners, "of a mag- 
 nificence that made one die of hunger"; she durst not 
 repeat the items to her daughter for fear of giving her 
 indigestion. After a few days, when she could decently 
 break away, she would leave the whirlpool and return to 
 Les Rochers, " hungry for fasting and silence." How 
 could a woman of fashion, accustomed to live amid the 
 best company of Paris, please herself to this point in her 
 Brittany castle, and remain there without ennui for entire 
 years ? It is natural that we should be surprised, for she 
 was so herself. " It is a strange thing," she observes, 
 " how the days fly and escape us in this sad and insipid 
 life." It was because she possessed a marvellous supple- 
 ness of character and knew how to bow to circumstances 
 as she did to accommodate herself without effort to every- 
 body. She says of her son, "he takes in the spirit of the
 
 142 Madame de Sdvignd. 
 
 surrounding place." It is evidently a characteristic he 
 inherited from his mother. This most worldly of women 
 when in the world, becomes countrified in the fields. 
 Solitude does not alarm her ; on the contrary, she often 
 seeks it. One day she wrote to her daughter from her 
 retreat at Livry : " Here I am, my dear daughter, quite 
 all alone. I did not wish to burden myself with any dul- 
 ness save my own. No company tempts me. I wish to 
 be able to vaunt of having been all the afternoon out in 
 this meadow, communing with our cows and sheep." 
 
 When, to the pleasure of being alone to read and 
 meditate, and to chat with cattle, is added that of saun- 
 tering over a flowery mead or under tall trees and gazing 
 on a fine landscape, she took so much delight in it that 
 it was with great difficulty she was enticed back to 
 society. 
 
 It has been said that Madame de Sevigne* was one of 
 the Seventeenth Century writers best understanding and 
 most loving Nature. It is a just observation, provided 
 nothing is exaggerated. It must be remarked that first 
 she has never made any of the long descriptions to which 
 we are habituated ; she paints with a sweep of the pencil, 
 and that trait is generally not her own and has no novelty. 
 Let us remember that she said : "I invent nothing." This 
 is the truth, and she must have an outward impulse in 
 any case. She began to see nature through her favourite 
 poets ; she first admired it in the " Jerusalem Delivered," 
 "Aminta," and the " Pastor Fido," and as these poems 
 are full of mythology, she has made a great use of it after
 
 The Works. 143 
 
 their example. In the most natural tone she says, " she 
 has been staying a couple of hours with the hamadryads," 
 or "strolling in the evening under the glances of En- 
 dymion's fair mistress." Thus they spoke around her ; 
 only her contemporaries restricted themselves to the 
 conventional paintings; when they alluded to sunrises 
 and sunsets, or spoke of spring or winter, they seem to 
 have never seen them but in poets' verses. Madame de 
 Sevigne* looked on nature directly; this was almost a 
 novelty, and she found quicker and more complete the 
 impression given her by the pictures of Tasso, Guarini, 
 and others. She repeats the terms they used, employs 
 their imagery and metaphors, but personal emotion re- 
 juvenates the whole. What she says with others' words, 
 we feel she has beheld with her own eyes ; the expression 
 is often commonplace, but the feeling is always genuine. 
 I repeat that this is her true originality. Remark how 
 she catches up her daughter, who has never looked out 
 on the country except from the windows at Grignan, and 
 who only knows about nightingales from poetical descrip- 
 tions : " Where did you learn that nightingales were to 
 be heard on the thirteenth of June ? Tut ! they are too 
 busy in caring for their little home arrangements. They 
 are no longer singing or lovemaking, but bent on more 
 substantial thoughts." She is not the one to commit 
 such a blunder. She assumes some pride in knowing about 
 rural matters. When the spring opens, she goes about 
 every day to see by what scarcely perceptible transitions 
 and delicate shades the leaves change from brown to green ;
 
 144 Madame de Sdvigne". 
 
 she goes from one tree to another ; when the hornbeams 
 are scanned, she passes to the beeches, and thence to 
 the oaks ; and when she has observed and noted every- 
 thing in the inspection, she says : " It seems to me that, 
 in case of need, I could make a spring myself." 
 
 Thus did time pass away at Les Rochers without her 
 noticing it. Every season had its pleasures for her. 
 Happy is she, no doubt, "to hear the nightingale, the 
 cuckoo, and the warbler open the spring-tide in the 
 woods," but she finds pleasure as well in " those lovely 
 crystalline days of autumn, which are 'twixt cold and 
 hot." And winter itself is not without attractions when 
 the sun shines during sharp frost "and the trees are 
 adorned with pearls and crystals." Time came, however, 
 for her to quit this solitude ; she returned to Paris with- 
 out eagerness, carrying to her daughter the important 
 savings she had garnered, which once rose above sixteen 
 thousand livres, and, I daresay, when she was congratu- 
 lated on her courage, she thought in her heart that it 
 was money gained without hardship. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE enchanting conversation filling the Sevigne* Letters 
 is not limited, as one may reasonably imagine, to family 
 affairs. Many other things are treated of. During five- 
 and-twenty years she kept her daughter " in the swim" 
 as to what was said and done at Paris and Versailles. 
 Madame de Grignan was very eager for such news in her
 
 The Works. 145 
 
 exile in Provence. The Mercure and the Gazette de France, 
 official newspapers watched over by authority, took care 
 not to say the very things people wanted to know. The 
 privately-circulating gazettes of Abbe Bigorre and others 
 only raised a corner of the veil. Madame de Sevigne, 
 who wrote for her daughter alone, was not obliged to be 
 careful. She narrates everything she knows ; and, as 
 she had grand relations and goes about in the good 
 quarters, she knows nearly everything that is done or is 
 on the eve of accomplishment. There is no intrigue, or 
 political or military event to which she does not allude, 
 so that if we wished to follow her in all her statements, 
 we should have to relate the whole history of the period. 
 This is work already done many times, and it appears 
 useless to give a repetition. In concluding, I shall only 
 make a few rapid observations. 
 
 It is not the same thing, by far, to study the Seventeenth 
 Century in histories as to seek to know it by contem- 
 poraneous letters. The impression from the two is very 
 different. Historians, who judge an epoch from distance, 
 represent it by its most general character ; they set forth 
 the dominant points alone, and, sacrificing all the rest, 
 trace pictures with precision and simplicity which charm 
 the mind. The reader becomes habituated to see it as 
 it was thus painted, and cannot suppose that there was 
 anything else in it than the features attributed to it. But 
 when the correspondences are read which report events 
 as they are occurring, without changing them or choosing 
 them, the opinion formed from histories upon men
 
 146 Madame de S&uignt. 
 
 and things is greatly modified. Then we perceive that 
 good and evil have been mingled as in all ages, and even 
 that the proportions of the mixture vary less than might 
 be surmised. Cousin says : " All is grand in a great age." 
 Just the reverse is the truth ; there is no era so great that 
 it had not a myriad of littlenesses, and this must be ex- 
 pected if disappointment would be avoided when one 
 undertakes to study it. No epoch has been more ad- 
 mired and celebrated than the reign of Louis XIV ; but 
 the Sevigne' Letters risk deeply diluting our admiration. 
 At every moment they bring up strange stories to make 
 us consider. When, in a society painted as so noble, 
 dainty, and regular, we meet such a many scandalous 
 adventures, shameful disorders, ill -united couples, fortunes 
 maintained by dishonest proceedings, great lords who buy 
 without paying, promise without keeping their words, and 
 borrow without returning, who are at the feet of the 
 ministers and their mistresses, who cheat at cards like 
 M. de Cessac, live on a great lady's purse like Caderousse, 
 sell their wives to the monarch like Soubise, or offer their 
 nieces like Villarceaux, or who uphold like Bussy " that 
 the most punctilious about honour ought to be delighted 
 when such an honour befalls their house," then, it seems 
 to me, we have the right to conclude that there is not 
 much difference between them and ourselves, that we may 
 be better than they on some points, and that, all things 
 considered, it is not worth the pains to use their example 
 to misguide our times. 
 
 In this they differed from us, to wit : then there were
 
 The Works. 147 
 
 certain things on which there was general agreement, the 
 very ones which have given place amongst us to the 
 greatest divisions religion and politics. Everybody, 
 then, was not devout, though many were ; but almost all 
 were believers, and scarcely anyone contested the divine 
 right of kings. Nowadays religious faith and monarchical 
 faith are all but died out, and there are next to no com- 
 mon opinions imposing upon all, breathed like the air, 
 impregnating without one's knowledge, and found at the 
 bottom of one's soul at an emergency, despite all the 
 changes due to experience. Is it good or evil ? must we 
 rejoice or lament ? each will answer according to his tem- 
 per and disposition. Bold spirits, feeling strong enough 
 to hold personal convictions, applaud themselves on 
 being delivered of those prejudices which fettered the in- 
 dependence of opinion, and on having free space before 
 them. But the others, the bulk with no high views, and 
 whose life, besides, is occupied by other cares, are un- 
 easy, troubled, and unfixed when they have to solve these 
 great problems ; they regret they have not the key with 
 the riddles, and sadly say with Lamartine's Jocelyn : 
 
 " Oh, why was I born* in these days of storm-throes, 
 When no man ever sees where his head shall repose, 
 Where the road comes to end, and the spirit of man 
 Is groping for issue with never a plan ; 
 Unable to dwell 'neath the down-crumbling past, 
 Or leap in the shades o'er the future forecast." 
 
 Behold a whirl of thought, unknown in the Seventeenth 
 
 * " Oh ! pourquoi suis-je ne," etc.
 
 148 Madame de Sduignd. 
 
 Century, as Madame de Sevigne's Letters clearly 
 show. 
 
 Though she was very deeply moved and highly gratified 
 when the King addressed her, and was, one day in her 
 youth, inclined to believe him a very great prince because 
 he came to persuade her to dance, she was not one of 
 those fanatics who made it a superstition to worship him 
 and award him almost divine honours. She saw the 
 ridiculousness of such overdone flattery, and derided it 
 on occasion. "We are informed," she writes to her 
 daughter, " that the Minims of your own Provence have 
 dedicated a thesis to the King in which they compare 
 him to God, but in such a way that it is readily seen 
 that they think the King of kings merely a copy. Too 
 much overdoes it I never would have suspected the 
 Minims to have come to this extreme." In this lady, 
 once a Frondeuse, there is always a spark of indepen- 
 dence and a secret yearning for opposition, which gives 
 the more value to her testimony when she shows to what 
 a point France was then enamoured of its sovereign. 
 "What do they not do to please their master ?" she says of 
 courtiers. " With what joy and zeal would they not run 
 to the hospital on his service ? Do they reckon their 
 health, their pleasures, their lives as anything when he is 
 to be obeyed and pleased?" Elsewhere: "If we acted 
 thus unto our God, we should be great saints ! " The 
 King inspired such a vast respect that the very persons 
 he had most cruelly treated did not hold him responsible 
 for his rigour. During his seventeen years' exile, Bussy
 
 The Works. 1 49 
 
 could not prevent some outbreaks of impatience ; he 
 inveighs against friends who forgot him, and reviles those 
 who seem to be in his place ; but choler never is aimed 
 at the sole and principal author of his woes. To the 
 King he is always respectful, submissive, tender, and im- 
 passioned. Even when he strikes, he is a kind master, 
 and he does not utter his name but with tears. " It is 
 natural," he says to his cousin, " to hate those who do us 
 evil ; but yet I love the King and wish him well, and 
 pray God with all my heart for him." This was really 
 being very generous. So the very critics who found the 
 most ill in this rule, did not conceive of a better one. 
 They would wish for the disgrace of a favourite or the 
 fall of a minister when they believed they had cause to 
 complain, but their desires went no further, and we do 
 not see them ever imagining any other government over 
 France than that they have lived under. 
 
 On religion minds were a shade more divided. There 
 were some incredulous men, a fairly good number. " You 
 must know," says Nicole, " that the great heresy is no 
 longer Calvinism or Lutherism, but atheism." Madame 
 de Sevigne speaks of some of these atheists, Saint-Ger- 
 main, Ninon de 1'Enclos, who laboured to pervert young 
 men, etc. " How dangerous this Ninon is ! You would 
 be horrified if you only knew how she dogmatises upon 
 religion." But do not let us forget that many of these 
 incredulous people were nothing more or less than per 
 verted believers. In connection with the odd anecdote 
 showing us Conde and the Prince Palatine trying with
 
 150 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 Doctor Bourdelot to burn a fragment of the true Cross, 
 Sainte-Beuve points out that this budding incredulity, 
 slenderly sure of itself in attempting sacrilege, is far from 
 the tranquil indifference which needs no proof not to be- 
 lieve. "After all," he adds, "these strong-minded men, 
 who made so much ado over burning the true Cross, 
 were of the same period as the other great minds believ- 
 ing in healing by' the Holy Thorn." Many of these 
 libertines, as they styled them, were only so from bragga- 
 docia, to astonish good folk and be talked of them by 
 them. At the siege of Leridas Bussy went and had 
 dinner in a church with some madcaps, and dug up a 
 corpse to dance with it to the violins ; in reality he dreads 
 spirits, and he confesses that he put his head under the 
 coverlet when he went to bed, " so as not to be able to 
 hear anything that might have frightened him." During 
 a fire which threatened his country house, he hastened 
 to throw a scapulary into the flames, and, the fire being 
 stayed at that nick, he could never say whether he owed 
 the fortune to the blessed token or to the wind having 
 shifted its direction at the critical moment. There need 
 be no surprise at the impiety of such pretended strong- 
 minded men not being very firm. Most of them became 
 devout when the age for "libertinism" passed. The 
 others did not want to raise any scandal, and, like every 
 body else, called in the priest at their last moments ; one 
 of them, Guy Patin, termed this dying more majorum. 
 These rare and timid rebellions were swallowed up in 
 the great uniformity of beliefs, and they ought not
 
 The Works. 1 5 1 
 
 to prevent us saying that, taken altogether, the age was 
 Christian. 
 
 But all were not Christian in the same fashion. Some 
 were so by habit, tradition, or conservatism, without 
 their belief much influencing their behaviour. Recall 
 the amusing tale told by Madame de Sevigne about the 
 Little Goodfellow (Petit Bon, the Count de Fiesque) 
 and the Mousetrap (Madame de Lyonne), who were close 
 friends. In an appointment she gave him, after two long 
 hours of parley to which devotion had been a perfect 
 stranger, she suddenly blurted out : " Petit Bon, I have 
 something on my heart against you." "What is that, 
 lady?" "You are not devout to the Virgin, and that 
 pains me dreadfully." Madame de Sevigne's piety was 
 not as accommodating. She came to religious matters, 
 as to all the rest, with a great freedom of mind. She 
 was driven out of patience by the theatrical devotion of 
 the people of Provence, and their processions of pilgrims 
 and penitents. She speaks without much respect about 
 the reliquary of the good Saint Marceau and that of 
 Saint Genevieve being carried through Paris streets to 
 bring fine weather or rain, and nodding amiably to one 
 another when they came together. She is prone to make 
 very compromising concessions to the Protestants when 
 she discusses with them. Her friend, La Mousse the 
 Cartesian, having explained to her some opinions of 
 Origen which the Church condemned, she does not 
 shrink from saying they are very reasonable, and writes 
 on the subject: "You will have trouble to insert an eternity
 
 152 Madame de Sdvignt. 
 
 of torments into our heads, unless you get an order from 
 the King and Holy Writ." At the risk of embroiling her- 
 self with all the saints, she had these words written over 
 the master-altar of her chapel : " Soli Dei honor et gloria" 
 Thus there will be none jealous, she comments. Do not 
 conclude that she was a " freethinker," for we have seen 
 that strong-minded people horrified her. In her youth, 
 Port Royal had attracted her by its austere morality and 
 the severities of its doctrines. When she came to con- 
 verse with some of its doctors, or read their works, she 
 was seized with such a spell of piety that her cousin Bussy, 
 to whom she had preached as to others, grew alarmed, 
 and felt the necessity of moderating her zeal. " Do not 
 take matters so to heart," he said ; " it much injures your 
 chance of long life. In my opinion, it is almost being 
 damned to believe too strongly that you are ; but there's 
 reason in everything ; let us live well and we shall rejoice. 
 In matters of conscience, too much nicety makes heretics. 
 I only want to go to Paradise and no higher." But Bussy 
 was alarmed unfoundedly; Madame de Sevigne's devotion 
 was not as disquieting as he supposed ; she had numerous 
 intermittances, and, in her letters, we see them successively 
 die out and flare up. It is mainly when she is alone at 
 Livry or at Les Rochers during the wintry days that she 
 becomes once more sad and serious, and has regulated 
 returns to piety. She reads Nicole and Pascal over again, 
 and recalls the many friends she has lost. " Alas !" she 
 says, "how this death comes running everywhere and 
 snatches on every side ! " and, naturally, the death of
 
 The Works. 153 
 
 lovers makes her think of her own. On her garden sun- 
 dial she had had graven the device : " Unam time." She 
 often pondered over that dread and uncertain hour, and 
 the fear she had of it sometimes inspired eloquent plaints : 
 " I find myself under an engagement which embarrasses 
 me. I was launched upon life without my consent, and 
 I must sail out of it it overwhelms me. How am I to 
 leave it ? which way is out ? by what door ? when will it 
 be? in what state of mind? how will I stand before God? 
 what will I have to offer Him ? what can I hope ? am I 
 worthy of Paradise ? or of hell ? what an alternative what 
 tribulation ! it would have been better had I died in my 
 nurse's arms !" Then she promises to live more seriously, 
 and better prepare herself for the awful moment; she makes 
 good resolutions for the future ; but ere long " a breath 
 a sunbeam carries away all the evening's resolutions." 
 She sees her friends again, and takes part in their lively 
 and slanderous chats. Like the others, she laughs, ay, 
 more than the others, at the spiteful tales she hears, and 
 she cannot resist repeating than with a relish which is 
 admired. She bears herself resentment for this and 
 scolds herself, but is not corrected. " I am neither God's 
 nor the devil's," she says. " This state of things annoys 
 me, although, between ourselves, I find it to be the most 
 natural that can be." It was so natural to her that, in 
 truth, she never stepped out of it. Spite of all her good 
 resolves, she lived in this perpetual alternation of piety 
 and relapse until the malady which carried her off. But 
 then she was firm and determined ; her son-in-law, wit- 
 
 L
 
 154 Madame de S&ngnt. 
 
 ness of her last moments, tells us that "she culled the fruit 
 of the good reading for which she had so much craving, and 
 faced death with astonishing steadiness and submission." 
 So they generally met it at this period. Many persons 
 of intellect agreed with Madame de Rambures, that " it 
 was irksome to live in the grace of God," but all wished 
 to die in it. 
 
 When Madame de Sevigne departed this life at the age 
 of seventy, she had not overmuch felt the strokes of old 
 age. Bussy's friend, Madame de Scude'ry, who saw her 
 a few years before, was startled to find she was still lovely ; 
 she seemed always young to her friends. We have her 
 latest letters ; nothing betrays her years ; they are as 
 graceful, witty, piquant and lively as the others. In the 
 one written a fortnight before dying, she deplores the 
 death of the young Marquis de Blanchefort, son of the 
 Marshal de Crequy, with a touching tenderness proving 
 that her heart had not, for all her years, taken a wrinkle. 
 This is rare good fortune, and she must have appreciated 
 it better than anyone. Never assuredly had her persistent 
 optimism been better justified, and it was then that she 
 might say with reason that " she was contented with her 
 fate." To last without aging, to feel whole and alive to 
 the end, to preserve into maturity what is best in youth 
 its vivacity and freshness of feelings ; and then, when 
 cometh the end, to find anew in the soul the belief of 
 early years and sink softly into sleep with a firm hope 
 is not this for those who dwell, like us, amid uncertainty 
 and obscurity, a fate worthy of envy ? 
 
 THE END.
 
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