II-

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

SANTA BARBARA

COLLEGE

PRESENTED BY

Mrs. H. C. Chatfield-Taylor

Classks f0r

. EDITED BY

MRS OLIPHA^T

The Volumes published of this Series contain

/ DANTE, . By the EDITOR.

' VOLTAIRE, By Major-General Sir E. B. HAMLEY, K.C.M.G.

PASCAL, By Principal TULLOCH.

PETRARCH, By HENRY REEVE, C.B.

GOETHE, By A. HAYWARD, Q.C.

MOLIERE, ... By Mrs OLIPHANT and F. TARVER, M.A.

MONTAIGNE, ... By Rev. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.

RABELAIS, By WALTER BESANT.

CALDERON, By E. J. HASELL.

SAINT SIMON, ... By CLIFTON W. COLLINS, M.A.
- CERVANTES By the EDITOR.

CORNEILLE AND RACINE, . . By HENRY M. TROLLOPE.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE, . By Miss THACKERAY

(Mrs RICHMOND RITCHIE).
LA FONTAINE, AND OTHER )
FRENCH FABUIJSTS, / B ^ Rev " W " LuCAS COLLINS ' M " A -

SCHFLLER I ^ J AMES SIME, M.A., Author of 'Lessing:

I his Life and Writings.'

In preparation
ROUSSEAU, By HENRY GRAHAM.

MADAME DE ISETIGNE

BY

MISS THACKERAY

(MRS RICHMOND RITCHIE)

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON
1881 REPRINT, 1882

All Rights reserved

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
I 9 Z ~ 8ANTA BARBARA COLLEG

72145

TO

EESTEK AND WILLIAM DENIS KITCHIE

THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY THEIR MOTHER

KENSINGTON, March 18, 1881.

NOTE.

THERE are several well-known editions of Madame de
Se'vigne's Letters. Chief among them are M. de Mon-
merque's comprehensive and admirably edited volumes.
Besides, there are selections for the use of schools, of
which Madame Tastu's is, I believe, the standard. An
excellent edition, published by Messrs Firmin Didot,
has been chiefly used in the compilation of this little
handbook. It is preceded by a short memoir by M.
Jacquinet, in which it is stated that Madame de
Sevigne's Letters had always been admired, and were
constantly handed about and copied by her friends, but
that it was not till 1726 that the first edition was
printed by the Abbe de Bussy, to whom " Pauline "
Madame de Simiane had given transcripts of many
of the originals. The Abbe must also have inherited
from his father, Bussy de Eabutin, papers containing the
original correspondence between the two cousins.

In 1754 Madame de Simiane commissioned the

Vlll NOTE.

Chevalier Perrin, an intimate friend, to bring out an
edition authorised by the family, on condition that he
omitted any passages reflecting on Madame de Grignan.
He was also to leave out any private names and details
likely to wound any of the survivors of those people
mentioned in the original correspondence. M. de Perrin,
in accordance with these directions, snipped and changed,
and interpolated to his own fancy, and not a little
to the indignation of subsequent critics (Sainte-Beuve
being not the least among them). M. de Monmerque
has, by great labour and patience, been able to restore
the original text, and much of the matter which
Madame de Simiane (with a feeling which cannot be
blamed) is supposed to have done her best to suppress.
Of the letters here quoted, the Vatel letter and the
story of Picard are translated by Miss Ritchie; and
some other translations are by Mrs Cracroft. I have
also to acknowledge Mr Cracroft's kind help in giving
me the notes and books he collected for his own inter-
esting account of Madame de Sevigne", and that of Mon-
sieur Jules Andrieu, whose great knowledge and famili-
arity with French literature are well known. I have
put his initials to some notes which he has given me.
Among the best commentaries upon Madame de Sevigne"'s
text are the pictures which naturally belong to it.
Petitot's portraits give a whole gallery of her historic
characters. Madame de Sevigne herself is there in
mid-age, as well as young and brightly beautiful; Ma-

NOTE. IX

dame de Grignan, with regular features, prim and coldly
chiselled ; Maintenon in her youth, more lovely than
the lovely Marie de Sevigne herself ; Ninon, with her
strongly marked countenance. There, too, is the stately
Grignan; La Eochefoucauld, magnificent and portly;
the majesty of the King in its periwigged apotheosis ; the
romantic Mademoiselle, with her big features ; and poor
young Madame, with a likeness to her father, Charles
I. Of all the pictures I have ever seen of Madame
de Sevigne, the most interesting is one at Wykehurst
belonging to my friend Mrs Huth. The grandmother
is painted smiling and debonnaire, and holding up an
oval portrait of her daughter, who looks white and red,
and brown-haired, and conscious; while little Pauline,
of the square nose, is staring up with her dark eyes.
The celebrated pearl necklace is there, which is so often
mentioned in the Letters.

Mr Hamilton Aide tells me of two charming minia-
tures. He has also, by the kindness of Lady "Waterford,
the possessor of the original picture at Beckett, given
me a photograph of a portrait of Madame de Sevigne
holding her baby-daughter on her knee : the child half
turns with a childlike action, glancing as she turns
aside. The mother sits bright, beautiful, and stately,
with an air of lovely youthful domination and hap-
piness.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION, ..... 1

II. GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER, . . 5

III. THE GUARDIAN AT LIVRY, . . . 13

IV. M. LE MARQUIS AND MADAME LA MARQUISE, 20

V. MADAME DE SEVIGNE's COUSIN, . . 26

VI. WIDOWS* WEEDS, ..... 34

VII. LIBATIONS, . . . . . . 38

VIII. PEN AND INK, ..... 42

IX. RABUTINAGE, ...... 51

X. THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN FRANCE, . . 57
XI. A ROMANTIC PRINCESS, .... 68

XII. THE TRAGEDY OF VATEL, . . . . " 77

XIII. FROM THE ROCHERS, .... 84

XIV. SYLLABUBS, DUCHESSES, AND HAYMAKERS, 91
XV. TORCHES AND BEACONS, .... 99

Xll CONTENTS.

XVI. LB REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE, . . . 106

XVII. AN UNCOMFORTABLE CHAPTER, . . 114

XVIII. THE GREAT GENERAL, .... 118

XIX. BASSETTE AND HOCA, .... 124

XX FIDELE AND OTHER FRIENDS, . . .131

XXI. ILLNESS, ...... 135

XXII. AT COURT AND ELSEWHERE, . . .141

xxiii. FAMILY' DISCUSSIONS, . . . .148

XXIV. MADAME DE LA FAYETTE AND OTHERS, . 156

XXV. OLD AND NEW GENERATIONS, . . .163

XXVI. NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY, . . 169

XXVII. THE LAST, 173

MADAME DE SEVIGNE.

CHAPTEE I.

INTRODUCTION.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE, in a fit of enthusiasm for the
works of one of her favourite moralists, once exclaimed,
" Would that all Nicole's writings could be boiled down
into a broth, and swallowed in one gulp ! " Some such
wish must often occur to the admirers of the incompar-
able Marquise as they read her famous letters, written
from the little darkroom, with its polished floors and
lofty shadows, in the old hotel at Paris, to the two whole
centuries of people who have come after the original
recipient. The Hotel de Carnavalet is still standing,
as white and handsome and young-looking, for its age, as
was its celebrated mistress. It is in a labyrinth of his-
toric streets, of which the very names tell the story of the
people who piled the long walls and gables, who made
the archways, and stabbed each other in the postern-
gates, or worshipped at the little shrines. Their de-
F.C. XIH. A

2 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE*.

scendants have long since pressed beyond the narrow
island which was once Paris, and have crossed the Seine,
and are busy rearing commonplace new palaces in the
place of those they destroy. The Hotel de Sevigne, as
it is now called, has fortunately escaped many revolu-
tions and changes of dynasty, and still encloses its sunny
courtyard in all the dignity and stately inconvenience of
the royal times to which it belongs. Truly the sight of
the old place must conjure up for all of us many ghosts
with familiar names and faces, and among them that
charming figure, graceful and tender, sincere, unreason-
ing and. reasonable, who seems like a friend to us all.
After reading her letters, and living with her in spirit
for a while, we can almost hear her voice sounding in
our ears across the two centuries of turmoil. Madame
de Sevigne's voice rings very true and sweet and playful
amidst the hideous discords of her time ; and her appari-
tion is indeed a gracious vision among the reckless phan-
toms of her age, those subjects of that Grand Monarch,
whose god was his belly, and whose good-breeding was
the admiration of Europe. While his people are starving,
and his mistresses stringing diamonds while his un-
willing armies are invading inoffensive nations, and his
courtiers are conniving at every mad wickedness Saint
Simon dwells, in an ecstasy of contemplation, upon the
extraordinary grace, the irresistible admixture of dignity
and respect, with which the king would half rise from
his seat at table to salute the tardy entrance of some
belated dame of honour, at the same time storing in his
memory a record of the lady's fallibility, to be resented
at the first convenient opportunity.

Madame de Sevigne", in her youth, was no less enthu-

A LAUGHING PHILOSOPHY. 3

siastic about him than the rest ; but, as years went by,
her judgments became more just. Hers was a curious
morality. She laughed where others might have wept ;
she seemed to take the times as she found them ; she
attempted no reform, though she could see wrong plainly
enough where it existed. It was a sweet and happy
temper, a mind that played lightly even with sorrows
and wrong-doing; and yet this bright and apparently
unconcerned existence was a protest in its way against
the insincerity and abject selfishness of the Court. She
at least did her best to make those about her happy.
Her affection for her daughter was a sentimental enthu-
siasm almost passing the bounds of reason ; but her rela-
tions with her family, her friends, her dependants, were
most constant, touching, and human. There is in exist-
ence a legal document the will of some poor retainer,
who was found to have left all her worldly goods to the
well-beloved mistress that says more even than the fare-
well letter of Madame de Lafayette, who, on her death-
bed, wrote to her friend, " I think I have loved you
better than any other human being."

In a Court where lies and intrigues were as daily
bread where modesty was rare, and every standard of
right and wrong overthrown by the brilliant and witty
and well-dressed vices crowding in this beautiful young
woman, surrounded by flattery of every sort, by high
living and low thinking, kept her dignity intact, her
name pure and respected. She did not profess any spe-
cial virtue, nor hold her garments back lest they should
be soiled by contact with the petticoats of her more friv-
olous sisters. She was (to earnest minds perhaps) far too
lenient in her tolerance for others, and especially where

4 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE*.

those she loved were concerned. But the whole tenor of
her life was just and self-respecting. She was not en-
tirely free from the prejudices of her caste and times;
she naively considered that to .be of good family must
needs have some influence on the decisions of Providence :
yet in her daily practice she Avas certainly far in advance
of her age in her consideration for those who were de-
pendent upon her, hi her love of order, in her readiness
to fulfil the duties and obligations of her position.

It has seemed the best and simplest plan to endeavour
in this little book to tell her story in her own words, so
far as may be possible ; but how impossible it is to trans-
late her words ! One might as well try to translate into
English the pleasant murmur of a brook on a summer
day, or the song of a bird in the air.

I have attempted no elaborate criticism of her style 1
and manner of saying the ever - new, ever - delightful
things which occur to her day by day; the tender, witty,
laughable (rather than humorous) things and fancies ;
or again, of the vivid and great suggestions that fill her
heart and mind, and ours, as we read. Her art is too
complete for criticism, too simple for analysis ; she has
almost everything to say, and she says it.

1 "La Fontaine wrote as she did intuitively, irresistibly; La
Bruyere is as picturesque, but more laboured; Saint Simon was
vivid, but more matter of fact, less flowery and harmonious." J. A.

CHAPTEE II.

GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER.

MARIE DE EABUTIN-CHANTAL was born in 1626, and was
the daughter of an ancient and somewhat moss-grown
Burgundian family, owning ruined castles, feudal rights,
coats-of-arms without number, all of which had been
upheld from time immemorial by fierce fire-eating Barons,
whose portraits once hung so we are told in the old
gallery at Bourbilly, Guys, and Ames, and Christo-
phers, with their ladies ; some of them contributing royal
blood from Denmark to the glory of the Eabutins, be-
sides other kingly arms in their quarterings. So long
as thirty years ago, their pictures were already dropping
from the canvasses in the old gallery at Bourbilly, with
one notable exception, which may be still extant for all
I know. Among other distinctions, the family may
count that of possessing a canonised saint, and it seems
that her portrait (which was also one of the latest
painted) was miraculously found to survive the others.
The saint was the widow of one fierce Baron killed
out hunting, the mother of another who died fighting
the English (put to death, as one chronicler relates, by
the hand of Oliver Cromwell himself). Madame de

6 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.

Chantal, the saint, passionately loved her son and hus-
band, and their tragic end was a titter anguish to her.
After her husband's death she had determined never to
marry again ; the religious ideas in which she had been
brought up took entire possession of her mind; she dis-
tributed her rich wardrobe among the poor, and made a
pious resolve to wear nothing but coarse woollen clothes.
She dismissed the greater number of her servants, only
retaining a moderate retinue to wait upon herself and
her four children, for she was the mother of this one
son and three daughters, all of tender age. 1

She then retired, it does not appear for what reason,
to the chateau of Monthelon, near Autun, where she
dwelt for some tune with a very violent, ill-conducted,
and arbitrary old gentleman, the father of her late hus-
band, who seems to have treated her with intolerable
insults and humiliations, all of which she bore Avith the
greatest patience and humility, devoting herself to the
care of her young children, of the neighbouring poor,
and of some illegitimate children of the wicked old
Baron also living in the castle.

In 1604, no less a person than Saint Francis de Sales,
Bishop of Geneva, came to preach at Dijon, where
Madame de Chantal's own father, President Fremyot,
was living ; and she obtained leave from her father-in-
law (not without difficulty) to go home for a short visit,
in order to attend these ministrations. Her biographer
relates that at her very first meeting with the saintly

1 ' Les deux filles de Ste Chantal, Aymee Marie de Rabutin-
Chantal, Baronne de Thorens, et Fran9oise de Eabutin-Chantal, Com-
tesse de Toulonjon,' by Madame la Comtesse de Menthon. These
were Madame de Sevigne's aunts.

ST FRANCIS AND HIS DISCIPLE. 7

prelate she recognised him at once as a holy personage
who had been revealed to her in a dream not long before.
Saint Francis also immediately remembered a vision which
he had seen of Madame de Chantal at his OAVTI home,
the Chateau de Sales in Savoy. After several interviews,
during which the lady declared he did not seem to her
to be a man, but an angel, Saint Francis hirdself was
quite overcome by the faith, the ardour, and the charity
of his new disciple, in whose mind all this time the idea
of leaving her home and giving herself up entirely to a
religious life seems to have been steadily gaining ground.
Saint Francis did not entirely discourage the scheme when
Madame de Chantal first opened her heart to him on
the subject, but he imposed upon her a probation of
six years, during which she was to live by rule, and
meditate upon her vocation. So fervently did she obey
his commands, so ascetic was her daily life, that she
became the admiration of all her neighbours, and even
her disreputable old father-in-law yielded at last to so
much virtue and austerity.

After many and forced delays, Saint Francis, in order
to try his disciple's faith still further, proposed that she
should enter into one of the severest of the Orders which
then existed for women, and to this she enthusiastically
agreed. Then the Bishop of Geneva disclosed to her his
full mind, and announced that, if she entered into reli-
gion, it should be not as a neophyte, but as the foundress
of an entirely new Order for the relief of the poor and
the sick. At the same time he was not blind to the
many sacred ties which bound her to the world. " I
see a great chaos in all this," said her director, "but
Providence will disentangle it."

8 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.

President Fremyot seems to have had some presenti-
ment of what was impending, for about this time he
anxiously furthered the suit of a very rich Burgundian
nobleman, a widower with a family, who was desirous
to contract an alliance with the saintly Baroness. Need-
less to say that all persuasions were unavailing : to defend
herself against her own possible weakness, she took an
iron point, heated it in the fire, and with it wrote the
name of Christ upon her breast. " I clung to the tree
of the cross," she afterwards said, " for fear so many
charming voices should lull my heart to compliance."

A marriage which she was far more disposed to look
upon favourably than her own was that of her daughter,
Aymee Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, with the Baron de
Thorens, a younger brother of Saint Francis, an officer
in the army. Marriages took place earlier in those days
than they do now the bride was only twelve years
old. A letter of conciliation is still extant, written
by Saint Francis de Sales to the old Baron de Chantal.
It is addressed to " M. de Chantal, captain of fifty men-
at-arms, Knight of the Order of his Majesty," and does
credit to the saint's human as well as his superhuman
qualities. It was not without difficulty that the old
man's consent was obtained, for the young bride was a
rich heiress, and the bridegroom was only the youngest
of five brothers.

And now Madame de Chantal found at last courage to
declare her resolve to her family, and to announce her
definitive intention of quitting them all. Her father is
said to have burst into tears, exclaiming, "Let me die
before you leave me." But although the daughter wept,
the saint was not shaken in her resolution. The day

A FAREWELL. 9

after the marriage, when the family was assembled at
the chateau of Monthelon, where the wedding had taken
place, Madame de Chantal had another conference with
her father, and her brother, the Archbishop of Bourges.
She expressed herself with so much decision and clear-
ness of purpose, and was so well upheld by Saint
Francis, who persuaded her relations that hers was a
divine inspiration, and any resistance on their part would
be culpable, that they reluctantly yielded to her wish.
The two unmarried daughters were to remain under her
care in the convent, from whence she was also to super-
intend the young Baroness in her domestic affairs, her
son was to be confided to his two grandfathers, and in
three months the final separation was to take place.

Jeanne de Chantal took a touching leave of the old
Baron at Bourbilly, who was then eighty-six years of age;
but the real parting heartbreak was when she bade
farewell for ever to her young son and to her aged father.
There is an affecting story told of the young Baron de
Chantal, her son, who, when the hour of her departure
came, flung himself across the doorway, saying, " I am not
strong enough, Madame, to hold you back, but if you
leave us, it must be by stepping over the body of your
only son." The mother burst into an agony of tears,
but nevertheless forced her way across the threshold ; and
then, fearing lest they should think she regretted the step
she had taken, she turned, smiling and radiant, announc-
ing that though she left them God would not abandon
her.

So she went her way, left her young son and her aged
parents, founded many religious houses, made friends,
converts, disciples, led a life of wide benevolence. Her

10 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE".

story is well worth following. Not only Saint Francis
de Sales but Saint Vincent de Paul it seems to have
been a golden age for saints were her advisers and com-
panions. Her life was a curious mixture of the hearth
and the cloister. She seems to have kept up her influ-
ence over her daughters, and to have advised them under
every circumstance. The youngest died, the two elder
were married by the saint, who seems to have provided
the trousseaux, with frilled collars and silken bodices,
among other details. The story of the Baronne de
Thorens, who died at nineteen of grief for her young
husband's premature death, is one of the most pathetic
imaginable.

Meanwhile the young Baron, who had remained under
the care of the old grandfather on the Chantal side, grew
up handsome, reckless, accomplished, devout, fearing
nothing, fighting as many duels as his father had done
before him. In 1624 he married Marie de Coulanges,
a pious and gentle heiress belonging to a respectable
famille de role, as the French express it, and in 1626
was born their second and only surviving child, Marie
de Eabut in -Chantal, better known by her after-name
of Marquise de Sevigne.

It gives one a curious impression of the manners and
customs of the times to read how this, the last Baron de
Chantal, after taking the sacrament with his wife within
a year of his marriage, left the altar and went straight
away in undress and in velvet slippers to act as second
to his friend Boutteville, the most desperate duellist of
the time, who had sent a messenger post-haste into the
church to summon him to the Porte Saint Martin. It
was then usual not only for principals but for seconds to

IN THE PLACE ROYALE. 11

join in the fray. Boutteville and Rabutin de Chantal
were obliged to fly for their lives after the encounter, for
the Court, exasperated by the frequency of these mur-
derous amusements, had passed stringent laws against
duellists. The offence seems to have been condoned on
this occasion; but in 1627 De Boutteville was taken and
executed for a series of subsequent encounters. Chantal,
who had been so intimately mixed up with his friend's
imbroglios, fled to the island of Re, where the Marquis de
Toiras was beset by the English under Buckingham, and
where the Baron de Chantal fell bravely in the combat,
pierced by twenty-seven wounds. He was only thirty-
one years of age, and his little daughter was scarcely
more than one year old. His widow, who seems to
have been much loved by him and by the saint, his
mother, in her convent, caused his heart to be buried in
the church of the Minimes at Paris, in the Place Royale,
took her child, and returned to her father's, M. de
Coulanges', house, which was in that same quiet
quarter. The beautiful old place is still extant; the
trees in its garden are green ; the children play there as
perhaps little Marie de Rabutin herself may have done
with her young cousin, Emmanuel de Coulanges. It is
said that the Marquis de Toiras, the former companion-
in-arms of the Baron, tried in vain to win the widow's
hand, but she had no thought of remarriage ; her heart
was buried with her husband's in the old church of the
Minimes : and indeed, from all one hears of him, there
must have been something singularly attractive in this
hot-headed, handsome, gallant soldier. Sainte Chantal
felt his death very deeply, and wrote many really beautiful
things to her daughter-in-law ; but when poor Marie de

12 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".

Coulanges followed her husband to the grave, so absorbed
was the holy lady in founding fresh convents, that, except
for one or two more letters, all admirably expressed, she
does not seem, to have taken much interest in the fate
of her little granddaughter. She requested her brother
Fremyot, Archbishop of Bourges, to see after the child,
who was by him given over to the care of her mother's
relations.

Sainte Chantal entirely approved of the arrangement.
Writing to the President Coulanges, she says :

" The child will be happy, if God preserves you to her,
you and my suffering very dear sister, to continue your
pious and wise tuition. It is the truth that I love that child
as I loved her father in all for Kighteousness. I rejoice in
the grace which will enable her to be confirmed at Easter. "

"When we remember how Sainte Chantal, in her enthu-
siasm for Eighteousness, abandoned her young son, we
cannot suppose that, from an earthly point of view ; she
can have been of much use to the little granddaughter.
The child's early life was fated to be a sad one, for time
after time death seems to have swept away the tender
guardians who came about her. Our little Marie was
orphaned a second time when her grandmother and
grandfather died, and were carried in their turn to the
church of the Minimes, where her mother was already
lying, and her father's heart was buried.

13

CHAPTEE III.

THE GUARDIAN AT LIVRT.

WHEN the little orphan's fate had to be decided, a family
council was called, at which, for the first time, we hear
of Bussy de Rabutin, who afterwards played such an
important part in Madame de Sevigne"'s history. The
child was an heiress ; several relations came forward to
claim her ; and among them Madame de Toulonjon, her
father's sister, who proposed to place her in a convent
forthwith. Bussy gave his vote for this lady ; but hap-
pily for the world, which might have sustained a loss, and
for the child herself, who was well fitted for the world, a
different decision was come to. A guardian was formally
appointed. This was the Abb6 de Coulanges, Marie de
Eabutin's maternal uncle, in whom she found, indeed, a
lifelong friend, adviser, and protector. He was at that
tune but twenty-nine years of age, and she was some-
where about ten ; but for half a century to come, these
two lives were destined to run side by side in peaceful,
tender "affection. " Le Bienbon," she calls him ; and if
he was devoted to her, she, too, never failed in her
faithful gratitude and affection towards the good man.
She loved him ; she loved Livry, the home to which he

14 MADAME DE SOIGNE".

took her, and where her early girlhood -was passed. It
was a place she returned to all her life, and always with
pleasure. Livry was within a drive from Paris, all but
enclosed "by the forest of Bondy, and haunted by night-
ingales. Round about the abbey were pretty shaded
gardens perfumed with honeysuckle. " I came here yes-
terday," she writes some forty years later, to her daughter,
" and found the place in all the triumph of the month
of May. The nightingale, the cuckoo, the thrush, have
opened the spring-time in our forest. In the evening
I walked there alone, and found all my sad thoiights, of
which I will not speak to you. I have destined a por-
tion of this afternoon to write to you from the garden,
although I am bewildered by the three or four nightin-
gales singing overhead."

Very little is known of Mademoiselle de Chantal's
girlhood, but we get a pleasant glimpse in the Memoirs
of Madame de la Guette, as quoted by M. Mesnard " of
a beauty to win all hearts, coming with Madame de Cou-
langes, and two other ladies of quality, to Livry every
summer to breathe the fresh air."

Mademoiselle de Chantal's education was not entirely
confined to the song of nightingales and the scent of
honeysuckle. The Bienbon was rather a practical than a
literary man, but he seems to have taken pains to select
the very best and most highly esteemed masters for his
young ward. 1 Menage and Chapelain were her tutors.

1 One of them was the well-known character Vadiua, out of the
' Femmes Savantes,' the hero of the sonnet, otherwise Menage, the
learned man with the wonderful memory, about whom so many
curious stories are told. Latin and philosophy he imbibed
with his mother's milk ; but, notwithstanding all the efforts of his
teachers, he was not able to master music and dancing. He

THE GREAT VADIUS. 15

They taught her literature, Italian, Spanish, and she was
also made to read Virgil in the original "in all the
majesty of the text," as she herself says.

In the very first of all the many letters contained in
M. de Monmerque's big volumes, Mademoiselle de
Sevigne, then " Chantal," as she signs herself without
any other preamble, shows something of the thoughtless-
ness of youth in a reproach which she addresses to
Menage. He will not come and see her. . . . She
entreats him to change his determination ; if he will not
come to-day, let it be to-morrow. Is he angry because
she is going away 1 It is difficult to her to understand
that, loving her as a friend, and regretting her, he should
for that very reason treat her with coldness at the mo-
ment of parting. "What a most extraordinary manner
of behaving ! says the young lady. Poor Menage ! if
what biographers tell us is true, he was behaving in
no very extraordinary manner. He adored his pupil,
who, in those days, seems to have indulged in some

most have been of a sentimental disposition; and we read in the
* Biographic Generate ' that when he attained the age of fifty he went
to call on all the ladies he had been in the habit of visiting, and bade
them farewell " His works," says M. Fournel, " show a prodigious
amount of reading ; an ingenions mind ; a vast if somewhat confused
erudition. They are full of curious details of his contemporaries, and
also of his own life, for he is personal in all he writes. He was a
protegt of Gondi, the coadjutor, afterwards the Cardinal de Retz,
and, like many protSges, he seems to have been in a constant state of
discontent and grumbling. When his patron joined the Fronde he
was most indignant. It cost him, he declared, 3000 livres a-year in
perquisites. Chapelain, a very different sort of man moderate, and
more used to the ways of the world tried again and again to make
the peace between them. One of the complaints against Menage was,
that notwithstanding the remonstrances of Condi's intendant, he sent
a servant every day for five months to dine in the coadjutor's kitchen,
and regularly borrowed a candle every evening for his own use.

16 MADAME DE SE"VIGXE".

girlish coquetry. In vain poor Menage would get
angry and go his way ; his pupil used to call him back
to her " the friend of all friends," she writes to him.
There is a cruel little story of a kiss she once gave him
in company, " according to the fashion of the primitive
church," she is said to have explained to the assembled
guests. But this was when she was very young, before
the pangs and disappointments of life had any meaning
for her. If the young can inflict thoughtless wounds,
they can bind them up as the old cannot do, who know
the meaning of pain, and who shrink from approach-
ing it.

Menage was not the lovely Chantal's only adorer; there
are many names still extant. Among others was Saint
Pavin, a witty humpback, and lord of the manor at
Livry. Bussy, both at this time and during her subse-
quent widowhood, was spoken of as a pretender to her
hand. She is described later on as having an art which
Bussy himself acknowledges, that of turning her lover
into a faithful friend. " It was a mixture of innocent
coquetry, of goodness without prudery, and real kind-
ness of heart, that at once maddened the poor lovers
and disarmed their anger." Menage, notwithstanding
his romantic passion, always remained the confidant of
Madame de Sevigne. " I have been your martyr," he
said ; "I am now your confessor."

Many years later, Madame de SeVigne, speaking
of these early days, and of her granddaughter, little
Pauline, whose square-tipped nose was, she declared,
inherited from herself, modestly says, " Have I ever been
as pretty as she is now? People tell me so." It is true
that this beauty was not altogether regular; but those

THE ABBAYE AT LTVEY. 17

yeux bigarres, whose inequalities seemed to heighten their
fascination, were blue and full of fire. She had fair
hair, soft and abundant, and a dazzling complexion.
Madame de la layette, who never flattered, writes to
her : " The brilliancy of your mind so radiates through
your features and your eyes, that not only does it reach
us through our hearing, but dazzles our sight as well.
Pleasures and diversions enhance your beauty when you
are surrounded by them."

Thus we find Marie de Eabutin-Chantal at eighteen
living in a romantic old abbaye, surrounded by woods
all echoing with song, with a gentle elderly priest for her
guardian and protector. She is an accomplished young
lady moreover, an heiress, beautiful, the mistress of
several languages ; and being une demoiselle a marier,
her establishment in life is now seriously discussed. As
we have said, Bussy was one of the possible husbands
thought of for her. No memoir of Madame de Sevigne
would be complete without a mention of Bussy de Ra-
butin, her cousin, a few years her senior, her friend,
enemy, playfellow. Their very quarrels tell the story
of their two characters, which seem to complete each
other in some curious fashion. The least lovable traits
in Madame de SeVigne's nature she had in common
with her kinsman, and must have inherited with him.
But what in her was occasional and transient, formed
in him the foundation of a hard and unscrupulous
nature. Her extreme goodness and unselfish sympathy
far more than counterbalanced any passing recklessness
for the feelings of others when they clashed with the in-
terests of those in whose life she was absorbed. With
Bussy, on the contrary, the groundwork of his character

F.C. XIII. B

18 MADAME DE SEVIGNE".

was selfishness, added to immoderate ambition, and a
coarseness of fibre which seemed to prevent him from
realising the unworthy life he was leading. His cousin
was dazzled for a time. She was very proud of him
until she found him out, and then she still cared for
him. " We are nearly allied," she writes to him ; " we
are of the same blood, we please each other, we love each
other." " Un pen rustaudement" he adds; and she also
calls the link which binds them that mixture of com-
mon blood and common wit by the happy name of
Rabutinage.

In these early days it is certain that Marie de Chantal
took an interest in her cousin, whose father was anxious
to see him married to her ; and it is not known for
certain why Bussy was not chosen for her husband.
Perhaps the young man may have been afraid of her
bright wit and clear-eyed judgment. Be that as it may,
the Abbe de Coulanges was strangely at fault when he
advocated the proposals of the Marquis de SeVigne 1 , a
protege of Gondi, the coadjutor.

The Marquis's mother was an old friend. The young
man himself was the inheritor of three centuries of noble
blood, reckoning among his ancestors Montmorencys,
Clissons, and Du Guesclins. He was rich, handsome,
well dressed, witty, deemed agreeable by many. Per-
haps the worthy Abbe" may himself have been dazzled
by so much good looks and fine clothes; or, what is
far more likely, they may have made an impression on
Mademoiselle de Chantal herself, who influenced her
uncle. The Abbe willingly gave his consent to the mar-
riage, which was, however, delayed from early spring
to late summer by an encounter in the Bois de Boulogne,

MARRIAGE. 19

where the Marquis, who had insulted a fellow-Breton,
was badly wounded by a sword -thrust from his op-
ponent.

The young couple were married finally on the 4th
August 1644, at two o'clock in the morning, at the church
of St Gervais and St Protais in Paris ; and notwithstand-
ing the inconvenient hour, there is a long list of the
company present on this occasion, including Gondi
himself.

20

CHAPTER IV.

M. LE MARQUIS AXD MADAME LA MARQUISE.

FEW facts are known (except some indeed not very edify-
ing) concerning the early married life of the young couple.
Of Madame de Sevigne's tender admiration and affec-
tion for her husband there is no doubt. They seem
to have led a gay and brilliant existence between Paris
and their country-house in Brittany made much of,
feasted, entertained, in their turn liberally entertaining
their friends.

The world made them welcome, and the world of
those days was a brilliant, dazzling, and, to young and
prosperous people, most delightful and enjoyable place,
revolving smoothly, varied, polished, well fed, well
dressed, well amused. The SeVignes used to frequent
the neighbouring hotel of the Incomparable Arthenice
so Madame de Eambouillet's respectful adorers used to
translate the name of Catherine, which they considered
too commonplace for the mistress of such a Parnassus.

In those stately polished rooms Madame de Sevigne
must have met all the names that we are accustomed to
place in rows upon our book -shelves. Bossuet, Corneille,
Voiture, Balzac, Menage, and many more appear, alive,

THE HOTEL RAMBOUILLET. 21

smiling, tapping their snuff-boxes, complimenting, .dis-
coursing agreeably, in the presence of a lovely and en-
thusiastic audience.

Madame de Sevigne herself is said to have made some
stand against the exaggerations of that agreeable but
highly wrought company, which, nevertheless, she seems
to have enjoyed and frequented. She had too much
natural humour to be entirely carried away by the literary
fervours of the beautiful ladies, although, long after-
wards, she writes from the Eochers, her Breton home,
" J'ai encore un petit reste de bel air qui me rend prc-
cieuse." l All the same, she detested what she called
"tortillonage," and the " delicat des mauvaises ruelles,"
neither of which expressions is to be rendered by
" elaborate circumlocution " or " the false delicacy of
vulgar coteries."

There is a celebrated and delightful chapter in Walck-
enaer's Life of Sevigne', describing one of those well-
known meetings at the Hotel Rambouillet. All the
company are assembled in Madame de Eambouillet's
bedroom, to hear the reading of a new piece by Corneille.
A large screen partitions off a portion of the great room,
and partially encloses a group, which is compared to a
bed of flowers. It is a parterre of young and lovely
women, of ribbons, plumes, bright colours, suave voices,
and perfumes ; while abbes, courtiers, and poets stand
around in attendance. The Princess de Conde, the
Duchesses d'Aquillon, de Longueville, and de Chevreuse,
the Marchionesses of Sable and Sevigne, are present; so
are Madame de la Vergne and her young daughter, our
heroine's lifelong faithful friend, afterwards Countess
1 "Some little remains of fine manners render me still a prhieuse."

22 MADAME DE SEVIGXE.

de la Fayette. There was also Madame de Fiesque, the
wild companion of the Grande Mademoiselle. Near the
bed sits Madame de Rambouillet herself; beside her
a young abbess and a nun, both daughters of the house,
who, from tune to time, leave then- holy retreats to
revisit their mother and their home. Madame de Se-
vigne is examining some miniatures ; by his bright-
coloured cheeks and gay countenance it is easy to
recognise her husband the Marquis, who is sitting at the
feet of Mademoiselle du Vigean : "he speaks of Saint
Evremond, and makes her laugh; he speaks of the
Due d'Enghien, and makes her blush."

The Due d'Enghien was devotedly attached to Ma-
demoiselle du Vigean. He was, however, married off bv
his family to some one else whom he could not love,
and she ended her days as a Carmelite nun. In the
crowd all about the room, a whole host of wits,
writers, orators, are to be recognised : young Bossuet,
1'Abbe Godeau the whole book-shelf is there, bound in
velvet and silk and gold-thread, glittering, conversing,
waiting for M. Corneille, and for M. de Voiture, who
arrives first, dandling on his silken legs.

Not very far from the Hotel de Eambouillet stands
another great house, which still opens its doors to the
public, to the wits and beaiix espriti of our own time, who
may, if they so choose, commune there with the voices
of the past, gathering in sound and volume from the
vaguest incoherence of early Merovingian times, to the
bitter emphasis of those terrible days which followed
the glorious reigns of the great Louis and his well-beloved
grandson. This hotel, which in Madame de Sevigne's
day belonged to a respectable family, is now converted

M. LE MARQUIS. 23

into the Public Eecord Office of Paris, where he who
runs may read ; and it is impossible not to be struck by
those writings on the wall, following so soon upon the
noisy feast of wit and banter. There is Marie Antoin-
ette's farewell to her children, interrupted by Sanson
coming to carry her to her death; there is Charlotte
Corday's firm writing and devoted confession to her
Father. Literary rhymes, compliments, and criticisms
sink into a whisper before such solemn voices as these.

But all these tragic times are yet unborn ; and it is
not with them that we are concerned, but with a hum-
bler race, more resembling our own women of the world,
busy with trifles, with fancies, and finery, some utterly
frivolous, others with warm hearts for their own home
treasures, though somewhat forgetful of the troubles
outside. A truer heart never beat than that of the hand-
some, fair -haired young lady, with the dazzling com-
plexion and laughing mouth, and the sparkling eyes of
different hue : had she lived in later times, she might
perhaps have shown what generous constancy was also
hers.

The young couple had not been very long .married
before a secret became known, which the poor young
lady had done her best to keep to herself. This was
the serious subject for complaint which she had against
her husband his neglect and his infidelity. Knowing
what her nature was, one may guess at the sorrow of
her early life, although she rarely speaks of it. Once
indeed she writes of " 1'abime " from which her uncle
rescued her an abyss indeed, into which at one time
she must have seemed sinking deeper day by day ; in-
difference, extravagance, infidelity to her tender, faithful,

24 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\

and responsible mind, all this must have been a heavy
load to bear in silence. Sevigne did not try to conceal
his indifference for his wife. He is said to have told
her that perhaps others might find her agreeable, but
that she could never charm him. He said this openly
too ; and many of the unscrupulous people by whom she
was surrounded now attempted to pay court to her them-
selves, thinking that natural resentment must needs make
her an easy prey. Her free, open humour, her natural
coquetry, blinded them to her good sense, and her clear
perception of right and wrong. Her husband's conduct
was too flagrant for her to be able to esteem him, but
she never ceased to love him ; while he, on the contrary,
esteemed her without love.

" He loved everywhere," said Bussy-Rabutin, speaking
of him, "but never anything so amiable as his own wife."
Bussy, among the rest, did not hesitate to do his utmost
to ingratiate himself with the young Marquise, who
daily fascinated him more and more ever since she had
been beyond his reach. He himself had been mar-
ried off by his anxious parents to another cousin a
daughter of that aunt, Madame de Toulonjon, Sainte
Chantal's youngest, and now only surviving, child ; but
his marriage does not seem to have interfered with his
assiduities.

It was in the autumn of 1646 that Madame de
Sevigne's own daughter, " the prettiest girl in France,"
was born ; and we read of the christening : " Fransoise
Marguerite de Sevigne, daughter of Messire Henri de
Sevigne, Lord of the Manor of the Eochers, of Bodegat,
of Buron, &c., and of Marie de Eabutin, living in the
Rue des Lions ; the godfather was the Bishop of Chalons,

HER FIRST-BORN CHILD. 25

Jacques de Neucheze, who had married the couple some
two years before; the godmother, Dame Claude Mar-
guerite de Gondi." This motherhood, this new deep
interest, dawning at a time when all other natural hopes
and trusts had so cruelly failed her, must indeed have
flooded the young mother's aching empty heart with
strange new happiness and hope ; and this may in part
account for the passionate tenderness which, all her life
long, Marie de Sevigne gave to this her first-born child.

26

CHAPTER V.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE's COUSIN.

THE parents seem to have spent the winter after the'
little daughter's birth in Paris; and in March 1648 a
second child, a son, was horn to Madame de Sevigne.
The latter event took place in Brittany, at the Rochers, the
paternal home. A letter to Bussy, already a widower,
" the father of daughters only," is dated from here. It
playfully reproaches him for his long silence and indif-
ference, and threatens him with the coming vengeance
of the little new-born boy. In the autumn of this same
year, we find the Sevigne family comfortably estab-
lished at the Abbaye of Ferrieres, where Bussy is also
staying, and celebrating the merits of a certain Mattre
Crochet, the cook of the hospitable Jacques de Neu-
cheze, who is entertaining them all. The flavour of
Mattre Crochet's soup steams appetisingly still at this dis-
tance of time : Bussy declares no other broth is possible
after it. Bussy himself must have been glad of a little
country air and quiet retirement at this particular season,
for he had been burning his fingers, and behaving in a
way which was greatly reprobated, even in those days
Avhen so much was tolerated. The incident is perhaps

MADAME DE MIRAMION. 27

not one of the least curious of all the many curious
incidents which were regarded as commonplace events
in those very uncommonplace times. Bussy's Avife,
Gabrielle de Toulonjon, having only left him daughters,
he wished for a son to perpetuate his name, and deter-
mined to marry again. The modest cousin desired youth,
beauty, and, above all, a very large portion to satisfy
his expensive habits, and to enable him to keep up
his position at Court. Through a certain Le Bocage,
whom he had met at dinner at the Grand Prior,- his
uncle's, house, he chanced to hear of a lovely young
widow, angelic both in disposition and fortune (for she
was a millionaire), who seemed to Bussy the very person
he should wish to promote to the dignity of Comtesse de
Bussy-Rabutin. Le Bocage did not know her personally,
but he introduced Bussy to a certain priest called Father
Clement, who, for a consideration, enabled them to see
the lady at her devotions one day. The Count was
charmed by her appearance, her youth, her piety, and
her equipage, which was waiting at the church door, and
which showed her to be a person of consequence.

Father Clement, for a further consideration, seems to
have informed Bussy that his lovely penitent was less
absorbed in her pious mourning than she appeared to be;
and the Count, who thought it could only be an honoiir
to a lady of the middle classes to be connected with so
noble a house as his, summarily determined to carry the
lovely widow off and marry her without more ado.
Hearing that she was to drive on a certain day from
Issy to the Mount Valerien, he made his arrangements,
placed relays of horses at certain places along the road,
secured the co-operation of several friends, who assembled

28 MADAME DE SE>IGNE".

a small company of cavaliers, followed by their servants,
all armed and mounted.

Madame de Miramion (this was the lady's name, she
became afterwards celebrated for her many good deeds
and charities) was not alone : she was accompanied by
her mother-in-law, and, according to the custom of the
day, by two waiting-women and an old valet. They
had reached St Cloud, when suddenly their carriage is
stopped, two cavaliers appear at either window, tearing
down the leather curtains. The poor lady, dreadfully
alarmed, tries in vain to drive them away, beating with
her bag, and screaming for help ; there is no one to
interfere. The armed men force the coachman to retrace
his steps, and to bring the carriage into the Bois de
Boulogne, which is not far off. The poor lady defends
herself in vain, her screams, her tears, her prayers, have
no effect ; Bussy, indeed, primed by Father Clement and
his own vanity, can scarcely believe in them, and con-
siders it all a pretence, a comedy acted for the mother-
in-law's benefit. We are told that once, in her despair,
Madame de Miramion suddenly flung herself through
the doorway into the brushwood by the roadside ; but
she was immediately picked up and replaced in her
seat, all covered with scratches and blood, her mother-
in-law and the elder waiting-woman having been mean-
while forcibly expelled from the coach. The poor lady's
wild cries and appeals after they leave the wood are
explained to the bystanders as those of a mad woman,
conveyed by order of the Court to be shut up; and,
indeed, the poor thing's appearance, her torn dress,
dishevelled hair, her scratched and bleeding face, and
wild looks, only serve too well to bear out this assertion.

MADAME DE MIRAMION. 29

"When they arrive at their destination, Madame de
Miramion refuses to eat or rest, and only threatens to
kill herself. Bussy, much surprised, complains that he
had been assured she was a lamb, but he finds her a
raging lion. Although he approached her with every
respect, and in his most fascinating manner, she only
replied to his advances, by a solemn oath before heaven,
that under no circumstances whatever would she con-
sent to marry him. He was in some perplexity, and
his friends were urging him to let the lady go, when
their advice was suddenly confirmed by the news that
600 men from Sens were on their way to besiege the
castle and set Madame de Miramion free. The mother-
in-law had not been inactive, and had raised the
country.

Thirty-six years afterwards, some important lawsuit of
Bussy's depended upon the decision of a near relation of
Madame de Miramion's. The suitor actually went on
the strength of this first introduction to bespeak her
good word on his behalf; and the beautiful and most
forgiving lady, now very fat, very placid, and renowned
for her good deeds, agreed to his wishes, and exerted
herself warmly in his favour.

We now come to troubled and complicated times.
Madame de Sevigne" was in Paris in the December of
1648, and D'Onnesson, her kinsman (who was after-
wards so good an advocate when Fouquet was tried
for his life), was with her in the "lantern" of the
Courts of Justice listening to a trial, when the deputies
burst into the great hall demanding a General Assembly.
This was the beginning of the Fronde, that first rising
of the people against the Ministry and the Crown.

30 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.

When Paris was no longer deemed a safe residence
for the young king, the Court left in the night and
retired to St Germains. The Prince de Conde followed
its fortunes ; and Bussy, who had heen more occupied all
this time in trying to make love to Madame de Sevigne
than with politics, now followed ' his chief, although
grumbling loudly, and greatly discontented at the way
in which he had been used by him.

Chance thus threw him into the opposite camp to
the Sevignes, whose near relationship to Gondi and
other Liberals made them partisans of the disaffected
cause. Sevigne himself followed the Due de Longue-
ville into Normandy, where a rising against Mazarin
was attempted, and the principal feat recorded of
him on this occasion is, that he had the honour of
making the duke laugh. Longueville seems to have
made Mazarin laugh, if we are to believe contem-
poraneous records, so small were the' results of his
many preparations and fanfaronnades. Madame de
Sevigne" remained in Paris with her young children,
writing letters to Bussy, who was keeping a sulky
guard at St Denis, and who passed the time in this
sentimental correspondence with the enemy.

A sort of peace between the rival parties was made
in 1649. It was rather a cautious neutrality than a
permanent peace. Not long afterwards everybody was
taken by surprise when the great Conde himself, whose
haughty and domineering character had incurred the
Queen Regent's bitter displeasure, was arrested, together
with his brother Conti, and by the help of Gondi
the coadjutor, the princes were shut up in Vincennes.
Bussy, who always found himself on the wrong side,

FRONDISTS. 31

remained in Paris, in order to gain time, and pre-
tended to be entirely absorbed in the details of his
second marriage with Louise de Rouville, another cousin,
to whom he was united in the month of May.

Meanwhile Conde's partisans were not idle. His
wife had assembled a force at Montrond, and raised
Bordeaux with the help of Bouillon and La Rochefou-
cauld ; and she now wrote an urgent summons to Bussy
to join her, which summons he reluctantly obeyed. There
were now no less than five different parties in France all
fighting, intriguing, and combining love, war, self-interest
in their curious diversities. The Old Fronde declared
itself for the Queen Regent, for the King, and the Court,
but maintained its hatred to Mazarin : to this cause the
Sevignes belonged. The partisans of the princes were
called the New Fronde.

Mazarin, says Walckenaer, founded his ambition on the
re-establishment of the royal power and the greatness of
France. Conde's dream, on the contrary, was the over-
throw of Mazarin, and his own consequent ascendancy.
But notwithstanding all opposition and the many plots
against his life and liberty, the Minister, backed by the
Queen, went on his way undaunted until he thought the
time had come for Louis to assert his own authority,
We all know the pictures of the young king in full
hunting costume, with his felt hat on his head, entering
the hall of deliberation, followed by his suite, and
haughtily commanding that in future his parliament
should abstain from all comment upon the administra-
tion of his kingdom. It is for the historian, not for
the compiler of a hand-book, to evolve a moral out of
all these complications. Poor Bussy gained nothing in

32 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\

this struggle, and one is really sorry for his disappoint-
ment.

He writes to Madame de Se"vigne from Montrond in
July 1650 : "I have at last declared myself for M. le
Prince, ma belle cousine, not without great reluctance,
for I am serving against my king in the interests of
a prince who does not care for me. But it is true that
his condition fills me with pity : I shall therefore serve
him as if he loved me while he is a prisoner; and if
ever he is set free I will give him back my commission,
and leave him at once to return to my duty. What
do you say to these sentiments ? Tell me at once if
you do not find them noble and worthy? "When I
think that last year we were both on opposite sides,
and that we are still opposed, although we have both
changed places, I think we are playing at the game
of prisoner's base" Then he goes on to say that it is
a fine thing for a woman of twenty to be mixed up
with politics : the celebrated Madame de Chevreuse had
not begun earlier. " However, your side is always the
best," he concludes, "for you do not leave Paris, and
I am despatched from Paris to Montrond, and not a
little afraid that at last I may be sent from Montrond
to the devil !"

The celebrated Duchesse de Chevreuse was no longer
twenty, but she still had extraordinary influence, and
was not yet tired of intriguing. She seemed to have
interests in every faction. With the princes, to one of
which she wished to marry her daughter : with Mazarin,
whom she humoured, hoping for help in the repayment
of certain sums owing to her by the state, she kept a
firm influence over the Queen, from the habit of long

SAD DATES. 33

years. She also intrigued secretly with Gondi, with
whom she had still more complicated relations.

The Sevigne's, the coadjutor's kinsfolk and firm allies,
we read, entertained her at a banquet, described by Loret,
the chronicler of those days. It seems to have been a
brilliant and noisy feast. Many candles are recorded as
having shone, as well as beautiful ladies. There was
noise and music ; there were ortolans ; soup was spilled,
and a silver dish was stolen on the occasion.

It cannot have been very long after this that Sevigne,
finding his wife's presence a constant reproach and re-
straint, carried her off to Brittany, and left her with her
children at his old chateau of the Eochers, returning
himself to Paris, where he resumed his foolish and dis-
sipated ways. She did not see Paris again for many
months.

Everything was changed for her when she returned
thither once more. One of the saddest dates of her life
was approaching. Years afterwards, as an old woman,
she writes : "I have only retained in my memory two
dates those of the year of my birth and of my marriage ;
but, without augmenting their number, I shall in future
forget the year in which I was born, which now saddens
and overwhelms me, and I will put in its place the date
of my widowhood, and the commencement of an exist-
ence which has been tolerably peaceful and happy, with-
out brilliance, without distinction, but which may end
in a more Christian spirit than if it had been stirred
by great events, and that, in truth, is what matters most
of all."

F.C. XIIL C

34

CHAPTEE VI.

WIDOWS' WEEDS.

THERE is something very tragi-grotesque in the death
of the husband of Madame de Sevigne. He was, as we
have seen, handsome, well-born, faithless, rude, dissipated,
and alone seemed insensible to the sweetness of the
young wife who loved him. Among others Sevigne
chose his wife's cousin, Bussy de Eabutin, as his con-
fidant; and Bussy used to lose no time in repeating
these confidences to Madame de Sevigne herself, who
sometimes reproached her husband, but without effect.
We have heard him complain of his wife, that she did
not charm him. The well-known Ninon de 1'Enclos
charmed him, alas ! and some whose influence was even
more fatal to the foolish young man ; for Ninon, with all
her faults, was a generous woman, and scorned to fleece
those whom she had first bewitched. Others were less
scrupulous, and among these last was a certain wicked
little Madame de Gondran, married, so M. Paul Mesnard
tells us in his excellent biography of Madame de Sevigne',
to a sort of Georges Dandin of a husband. " La belle
Lolo," as her acquaintance called her, was as interested
as she was beautiful, only caring for finery, flattery, and

MADAME DE GONDRAN. 35

fashion. Among her many caprices, we hear of her in-
sisting upon wearing a certain pair of diamond ear-rings
at a ball, which ear-rings happened to be heirlooms be-
longing to Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The Marquis,
who could refuse no request of Madame de Gondran's,
was reduced to lying to obtain them, and pretended
that he wanted to borrow the jewels for Mademoiselle
de la Yergne, his wife's great friend, the most respect-
able and well-conducted of women. People were not a
little surprised when they recognised the celebrated
brilliants dancing at the ball in the fair Lolo's ears.
To help her friend's husband out of a most unpleasant
dilemma, Mademoiselle de la Vergne consented to take
the transaction on herself, and went to thank Made-
moiselle de Chevreuse for the loan of the precious orna-
ments. Sevigne's attentions were unfortunately not
only confined to borrowing, for the benefit of Madame de
Gondran. He bestowed most royal sums out of his own
and his wife's fortunes to gratify her endless fancies.
Madame de Sevigne, against the advice of her faithful
uncle De Coulanges (who had some short time before
insisted upon a legal division of goods between the
married couple), had advanced to her husband, not with-
out difficulty, the sum of 50,000 pieces, which were all
rapidly running through the fair Lolo's grasping fingers,
when an unforeseen incident brought about a tragedy,
and put an end to the Marquis's ill-starred generosity.
A certain Lager, a Gascon, had happened to make some
insolent jokes about Madame de Gondran and her doings,
which came to the knowledge of the Marquis, who
immediately proposed to chastise Lager with a stick,
according to the simple custom of the time. Lager

36 MADAME DE SEVIGNE\

prudently ran away from a not undeserved beating, but
nevertheless determined to revenge the affront when he
could do so without inconvenience to his bones. Chance
threw him into the company of a certain Chevalier
d'Albret, a brother of the better-known Marshal d'Albret,
a high-spirited young man " qui tuait tres bien son
monde," says the French chronicler. Albret had him-
self once been a victim of the fair Lolo's, but of late,
not a little to his indignation, had found her door con-
stantly shut when he called. Lager maliciously assured
Albret that this insult had been instigated by Sevigne,
who had not only persuaded Madame de Gondran to
desire her servants to forbid Albret the house, but had
also openly spoken of him in the most contemptuous
manner. A meeting was immediately demanded by the
indignant Chevalier ; and although Sevigne", brought face
to face with Albret, emphatically denied what Lager had
laid to his charge, he added that he was only accustomed
to justify himself sword in hand, and that the duel must
therefore take place. D'Albret replied that he had not
come all this long distance to waste his time. We are
told that the two then embraced and fell to.

At first the advantage seemed to be with SeVigne*, but
presently becoming excited, he pressed his adversary too
hotly. Albret parried the stroke. As S6vigne precipi-
tated himself forward, his opponent's sword ran right
through his body, and he fell. He was brought back
to Paris, the surgeons pronounced his wound mortal,
and he died the next day, very loath to go. He was but
twenty-seven years of age.

The wife he had used so badly and the unconscious
husband of Madame de Gondran seem to have been the

WIDOWHOOD. 37

only two people who sincerely mourned for him. The
poor young widow came up hurriedly from her distant
liochers when the sad news reached her. Gondran
came in tears to the funeral. It is said that Madame de
Sevigne" went to Madame de Gondran and fetched away
her husband's picture and a lock of his hair, in re-
turn for some letters which Madame de Gondran had
written, and which she had only to blush for. So died
the poor young Marquis, a man of honour, agreeable,
handsome, and witty in conversation ; but he was
egotistical, for ever occupied with his own concerns,
unable to respond to the calls and interests of others
and so it happened that, young as he was, his companions
had already wearied of him, and that he was left with
so few real friends. His widow went back to her home,
where she mourned him and hid herself away tending
her children, and, in her turn, was watched and cared for,
both spiritually and temporally, by her faithful guardian
and uncle, the Abbe de Coulanges.

It was some time before she could again meet her
friends. She lived quietly, paying off the debts her hus-
band had incurred. Two years afterwards, when she
had begun once more to go into the world, she suddenly
fainted dead away in some company where she had been
spending an evening. She had seen D'Albret, the slayer
of her husband, coming in at a doorway.

38

CHAPTEE VII.

LIBATIONS.

of her own contemporaries ever paid Madame de
Sevigne a prettier compliment than Sainte Beuve, in the
preface to his celebrated volume of celebrated women.
" It is impossible to speak of women," he says. " without
first putting one's self into good humour by the thought
of Madame de Sevigne. With us moderns this process
takes the place of one of those invocations or libations
which the ancients were used to offer up to the pure
source of grace."

In Madame de Sevign^'s own day such compliments
and libations were so abundant, that we are told it was
almost considered in the light of an insult if a young
and charming lady was not addressed in language of
exaggerated devotion, amounting almost to love-making,
otherwise, says one of her biographers, we might almost
wonder at her patience with Menage and his love-poems,
with gouty Costar's gallant declarations, and the long-
winded protestations which she had to encounter on
every side. We hear of other more brilliant aspirants
to her favour. There is a quarrel recorded which took
place in the ruelle of her own bedroom between a Eohan

LATONA AND HER CHILDREN. 39

and a Tonquedec, each wishing to be preferred ; and be-
sides these, we read of the Count du Lude, of Conti, of
Fouquet, and even of the great Turenne himself, all
admiring her and courting her smiles. Bussy, the un-
scrupulous, did not hesitate to encourage the more power-
ful of these aspirants, and reproached his cousin with
her coldness and insensibility.

Here is a charming description of Madame de Sevigne
written about this time, which is quoted by all her bio-
graphers. It is the Abbe Arnauld, 1 the brother of the
well-known Mere Angelique of Port Eoyal, who is writ-
ing, in 1657, six years after the Marquis de Sevigne's death.

" It seems to me," he says, " that I still see her before
my eyes as she appeared to me the first tune I ever had
the honour of beholding her, when she arrived, sitting
in the depths of her great chariot, that was thrown open
wide. On either side of her sat the young gentleman
her son, and the young lady her daughter, all three such
as those whom the poets have described. They recalled
to me Latona with the young Apollo and the young
Diana, so indescribable a charm radiated from all of
them from the mother and the children."

Pomponne, who was also present on this occasion,
admired the beauty of the two children. " M. de Pom-
ponne remembers you as a little girl," the mother writes
long after. " You were peeping behind a pane in my
uncle De Sevigne's house, as lovely as an angel. Your
brother was there too, as beautiful as yourself. You
said you were a prisoner, a princess driven from your
father's Court."

1 The Abbe" was the youngest and twentieth child of his parents.
He was uncle to Pomponne, Louis the Fourteenth's Minister.

40 MADAME DE

Here is also Mademoiselle de Scudery's description
of Madame de SeVigne, under the name of " Clelie," in
one of those mysterious romances which created so great
an excitement at the time. People were new to novels
and novel- writing, and thrilled more easily than we do
over the loves and sorrows of imaginary princes and
princesses. Princess Clarinte shall speak for herself.

" Princess Clarinte has blue eyes, full of life and expression.
She dances with marvellous grace, and charms all hearts.
Her voice is sweet and melodious, and she sings in a pas-
sionate manner. She reads a great deal, although she has
few pretensions to being learned. She has learnt the Italian
language, and she prefers certain little Italian songs, which
please her better than those of her own country. She has
found means (without either being severe or misanthropical)
to keep a good reputation in a great Court, where she receives
all the honest people, and inspires affection in all hearts
that are capable of feeling it. This same pleasant temper,
which becomes her so well, and diverts others as well as her-
self, enables her to make friends with many who, if they
dared, would be glad to pass for her lovers. She says,
laughing, that she has never been in love with anything but
her own good name, and that she watches it with jealousy.
When it is necessary, she can leave the world and the Court,
and enjoy country life with the same tranquillity as if she
had been born and bred in the woods. She returns to us
gay and beautiful, as if she had never left Paris. She wins
the hearts of all women, as well as those of men. She writes
as she speaks that is to say, in the most courteous and
agreeable manner. I have never seen so much charm united
with so much light of intellect, such innocence and virtue.
Nobody else has ever better known the art of being graceful
without affectation, witty without malice, gay without folly,
modest without constraint, and virtuous without severity."

Madame de Sevigne only laughed when she read one

BLINDMAN'S-BUFF. 41

of these descriptions, and said that to be so perfect was
not in human nature. One of her correspondents the
courteous Costar assures her that those who had never
understood the beauty of her mind its grace, its depth,
its gentleness might perhaps think so, and that she
herself wore a certain bandage of modesty across the
eyes which prevented her from seeing clearly.

Here is one more sketch of our Marquise from the pen
of the Abb6 de Montreuil, which a friend has rendered
into English. It will be seen that the original has not
lost by its change. 1

To the Marquise de Sevigne playing at blindman's-buff.
Translated from Abbe de Montreuil.

" Your right is to enthrall,
You charm in every way ;
But surely, most of all,
You charm us all to-day.
Your blindfold eyes we see,
And deem you ' Love ' none other :
Your blindfold eyes we free,
And lo ! you are ' Love's mother.' "

Hallam Tennyson.

" De toutes les fa^ons vous avez droit de plaire,
Mais surtout vous savez nous charmer en ce jour :
Voyant vos yeux bandes, on vous prend pour 1'Amour ;
Les voyant de'couverts, on vous prend pour sa mere."

CHAPTEE VIII.

PEN AND INK.

FOR many years Madame de Sevigne's letters do not
seem to have teen preserved with any care by her
friends, whatever compliments they may have paid her,
and however glad they may have been to hear from her.
With the exception of a few to her cousin Bussy, one
or two to Menage, and the well-known and affecting
letters to Pomponne describing the trial of Fouquet,
there is little of her correspondence still extant outside
the great tide of written love, advice, maternal anxieties,
which began to flow from Paris in the autumn of 1671
to the south, where her daughter, Madame de Grignan's
married lot was cast.

One packet, indeed, of Madame de Sevigne's letters
(which has since disappeared), concerning her cousin
La Trousse's interests, was unfortunately preserved for
a time, and cost her no small anxiety and annoyance.
The papers had been put away by Fouquet, the great
surintendant, in a casket containing many other far less
creditable epistles, love - letters, bargains, requests,
promises, from the various Court beauties in his pay.
When the crash came, and the king's long-smothered

FOUQUET'S CASKET. 43

indignation burst forth when Fouquet himself was
suddenly arrested and taken to the Bastille when his
wonder - palace and art -treasures were seized and scat-
tered to the winds, this packet was carried off among
the rest of his papers to the king's own cabinet. Louis
was able to read for himself new proof of the surintend-
ant's long - suspected duplicity. The chapters in the
second volume of Walckenaer's history of Madame de
Sevigne", describing the great Minister's rise and fall, are
well worth the attention of those who are interested in
the history of those days, when life and emotion were so
vivid, so rapid and impetuous.

As one reads Walckenaer's pages, it seems as if there
must have been more sound in the people's voices
then than now, brighter colours in the air, eyes more
brilliant, the interests more noisy and unaffected, the
characters and features more marked. This splendid
surintendant rises and sets, a dazzling figure. There is
something which strikes one's imagination in the story
of the dying Mazarin with his last breath desiring the
young king to send for Fouquet, to respect his advice,
to utilise his wonderful powers, at the same time warn-
ing him not to trust him entirely, to keep a scruti-
nising watch upon his schemes and accounts. Then we
read of Colbert secretly at work, apparently a subordin-
ate, but in reality a powerful enemy, tracking Fouquet's
splendid steps, disentangling the intentional confusion of
his lavish accounts, and silently laying before the king,
day by day, the key to Fouquet's complicated schemes.
Unconscious, Fouquet meanwhile pursued his aims, buy-
ing the goodwill of courtiers, seizing on every vacant post,
extending his power. He had grand ideas. The glory of

44 MADAME DE

France was dear to him ; his policy abroad was worthy
of a great kingdom ; he was unscrupulous, but generous
and honourable at the same tune. How he was loved by
his friends, how true they remained to him at the hour
of his most desperate straits, is a matter of history.
Every school-girl has learnt La Fontaine's touching ode
to his fallen patron ; and Madame de Sevigne's letters
(those outside, not inside the casket) also tell us, in most
unmistakable language, how true and sincere was the
feeling of affection he inspired.

Madame de Sevigne's distress at the scandal which
had got abroad concerning her letters to the surinten-
dant was great. She writes to Menage to beg that he
will take every opportunity to contradict any reports
that may have been spread, when it was known that
among this venial correspondence some of her writing
had been discovered.

And then again, in answer to her old tutor, who
replied that he had already taken up arms in her
cause, she says :

" I do not forgive myself that, instead of writing to you as
I did, I did not send you straight away a letter of thanks. I
now pay my debt, and beg you to believe that I am as grate-
ful as I ought to be for your goodness. I send a compliment
to Mademoiselle de Scudery for the same reason."

She thus writes to M. de Pomponne :

" Could you have ever imagined that my poor letters, all
full of M. de la Trousse's marriage, should have been put
away so mysteriously ? I am very much concerned by the
necessity in which I am placed of trying, perhaps in vain,
to justify myself to a thousand persons who will never be-
lieve the truth. You, I think, will understand the suffering

FIDELITY. 45

this causes a heart such as mine. I conjure you to explain
to every one all that you know to be true. I cannot have
too many friends on this occasion."

Three years later, Madame de SeVigne^ exonerated by
the king himself, was again writing to M. de Pomponne,
who was then in a sort of honourable exile, on account
of his friendship for Fouquet. Perhaps none of her
letters is more graphic and interesting than these
which tell of Fouquet's trial, and describe his cour-
ageous bearing in adversity with all the eloquent
admiration and generous partisanship of a sincere
friend. No quality is more admirable in Madame de
Sevigne than this fidelity of heart. She is true through
good report and ill report, uninfluenced by ebbing for-
tunes, unshaken by changing opinions ; and this, in a
person of such vivid imagination, is no small tribute to
the loyal affections which kept her steady through all
the chances of life to those upon whom she had once be-
stowed her friendship.

"To-day, Monday, Nov. 17th, 1664, M. Fouquet was
examined for the second time. He sat down without cere-
mony, as he did on the first occasion, and the chancellor
again desired him to put up his hand and to take his oath.
He replied that he had already given the reasons which
must prevent his taking the oath. Thereupon the chan-
cellor rushed at once into a great discourse to prove the
legitimate powers of the Chamber that the king had estab-
lished it, &c.

" M. Fouquet answered that often things were done by
authority which afterwards, upon reflection, did not appear
to be quite advisable.

"The chancellor interrupted him. 'What ! you then say
that the king abuses his power?'

46 MADAME DE SE>IGNE.

" M. Fouquet replied, ' You say so, sir, not I. That is not
what I think ; and I wonder that, in the condition in which
I am, you should wish to oppose me to the king.' "

All her letters were nominally addressed to Pomponne,
but she knew that he passed them on to his father, to his
brother, to the Chateau de Guenegaud, which was not
far distant from his own home, and that her bulletin
carried news to the little coterie of faithful friends and
well-wishers. Her frankness, her courage, her fidelity,
give a heart to the story of reckless licence and pro-
fusion, of vindictive persecution and revenge.

On the 20th of the same month she writes :

" M. Fouquet was questioned upon the affair of the gold
pieces this morning. He answered very well : several of the
judges bowed to him. The chancellor made this a subject of
reproach, and said it was not the custom. As he was return-
ing by the arsenal on foot for exercise, M. Fouquet asked
who were those workmen he perceived. He was told that
they were people altering the basin of a fountain. He went
up to them and gave his advice ; and then turning to
D'Artagnan (the Hedzoff of those days), 'Do you wonder
that I should interfere 1 I was formerly considered clever
at these sort of things.' "

21si. " . . . M. Fouquet was rendered very impa-
tient by certain objections made, which seemed to him
ridiculous. He showed his impatience too much, and
answered with a haughtiness which gave displeasure. He
will correct himself, for this manner is not good ; but in the
truth, patience fails one at times, and it seems to me I
should do as he does."

Some days after she writes :

" M. Fouquet entered the Chamber this morning, and was
interrogated about the city rates. He was very badly

FOUQUET. 47

attacked, and defended himself very well, although this is
one of the most dangerous places of the whole affair.

" I know not what good angel warned him that he had
been too proud. He corrected himself of his pride to-day, as
the others corrected themselves of their bows to him."

2d December. " Our dear and unfortunate friend spoke
for two hours this morning, so well that several could not
help openly admiring him. M. Eenard, among the rest,
said, ' This man is incomparable ; he never spoke so well
in Parliament, he never was more collected.' It was again
on the subject of the 24,000. . . . God grant that my last
letter may tell you that which I ardently desire. Farewell,
dear sir. Ask our solitary [Arnauld] to pray to God for
our poor friend."

She describes a little incident which is slight enough
in itself, but which enlists the reader's sympathy.

" L'Abbd d'Effiat bowed to Fouquet in court. Fouquet
said, ' Sir, I am your very humble servant,' as he returned
the bow with that fixed and smiling expression we all know
so well."

Meanwhile the queen-mother is dying, and the trial is
postponed. Madame de Serigne breaks off her account
of Fouquet, and describes the administration of the
viaticum.

" It was the most magnificent and the saddest thing in the
world to see the king and all the Court with tapers, and a
thousand torches, going to fetch and to carry back the holy
sacrament. It was received with an infinity of lights. The
queen made an effort to raise herself, and took it with a devo-
tion which melted all the bystanders to tears. It was not
without difficulty that she had been brought to this : only the
king could make her hear reason ; to every one else she said
she would communicate, but not for death."

48 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE".

Madame de Sevigne returns to her prisoner :

9th December. " I assure you these days are very long,
and uncertainty is an overwhelming thing. ... In the depths
of my heart I have a little shred of hope, I know not whence
it comes or whither it goes : it is not enough to let me sleep
in peace. I was speaking yesterday to Madame du Plessis of
all this business. I can only meet those with whom I can
speak of it, and who are with me in feeling. She hopes as I
do, without knowing the reason why."

17th December. "You are weary, my poor friend; we
also are weary. I was sorry to have told you that judg-
ment was to be given on Tuesday, for, not hearing any news,
you must have imagined all was lost, notwithstanding
which, we still retain all our hopes. Every one is interested
in this great affair speaking of little else, reasoning, draw-
ing conclusions ; people count chances on their fingers, melt
with pity, with apprehension, hoping, hating, admiring ;
some of us are sad, some of us are overwhelmed. In short,
my dear sir, the state in which we live is an extraordinary
one, but the resignation and courage of our dear sufferer are
almost more than human."

One of Madame de SeVigne's biographers says, that in
the interest a woman takes in a man who has loved her,
there is always something of love. It may he so ; but
a love which does not shrink from comforting the dis-
grace of an old friend is not one to be ashamed of.
Here is the outburst of warm-hearted sympathy :

Saturday. "Thank God, sir, and praise Him, our poor
friend is safe. Thirteen votes were on M. d'Ormesson's side,
and nine on that of St Hilaire. I am so happy, I am be-
side myself."

On the following Sunday she writes again :

" I was dying for fear another than I should have given

SENTENCE. 49

you the pleasure of hearing the good news. My courier
does not seem to have hurried, although he told me when he
started that he should not rest before reaching Livry. How-
ever, he assures me he was first to reach you. How coir,
forting this news must have been to you ! What inconceiv-
able pleasure do the moments bring, in which our hearts
and minds are relieved from such terrible suffering !

" It will be long before I recover from the happiness I
felt all yesterday. In truth, it was too complete, I could
hardly contain myself."

It would be easy to go on multiplying extracts from
this vivid and lifelike description ; but this is the story of
Madame de Sevigne, and not of Fouquet, the great surin-
tendant. The end of the trial is well known. Sainte
Beuve quotes Pelisson's l noble outburst in his chief's
defence, and La Fontaine's touching line, " Et c'est etre
innocent que d'etre malheureux ; " but in the eyes of
Louis XIV., to be unfortunate was to be guilty. As
we read in our letters, the first joy of Fouquet's friends
over his supposed safety was great. Banishment for
life and confiscation of property seemed scarcely a pun-
ishment after their many apprehensions. But they had
not sufficiently taken into consideration the royal pre-
rogative, by which Louis was able to add lifelong soli-
tary imprisonment to disgrace, confiscation, and exile;
and Fouquet, at fifty years of age, separated from his wife
and children and aged mother, was carried off by the
king's command to the castle of Pignerolles, on the con-
fines of Piedmont. Just before his death, after a cap-
tivity of sixteen years, he was allowed to see his wife
once more, and it was even hoped that his broken health

1 Pelisson was also sent to the Bastille, and also remembered by a
faithful friend, Mademoiselle de Scudery.

F.C. XIII. D

50 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.

might somewhat relax the severity of his treatment ; but
he died before any change had been made. Time had
passed, and the keenness of his friends' sympathy had
been blunted, but he was still remembered with warm
affection and regard. "Whatever his faults may have
been, says Sainte Beuve, Fouquet had in him the true
fibre of humanity : he could touch its spring in others,
and they would answer to him.

Fouquet being disposed of, his nymphs dispersed in
tears (pleurez Nymphes de Vaux\ his music silenced,
his splendours forgotten, it seems time that other festiv-
ities should distract us. While the cheerless years pass
wearily for the prisoner, we may read dazzling accounts
of the splendours of the Court, of masks, of triumphal
receptions, of varied entertainments, of marriages and
pageants ; of a young and brilliant Court brimful of life,
of high spirits and amusements and self-indulgence. The
Queen Eegent was dead, after horrible torture heroically
endured : only young people were left to make merry.

51

CHAPTEE IX.

RABUTINAGE.

DURING all this time, while Fouquet's letters carried so
much talk and scandal, in which Madame de S6vigne
herself was not spared, no one took her part more warmly
than her second cousin, Bussy de Rabutin, whose tes-
timony in her favour is the more to be relied upon
because, for some years past, a coldness had existed be-
tween them. They had been warm friends. It was
Madame de Sevignd herself who, as we have said, in-
vented the word Rabutinage, to express the family ties
and the sympathy which bound them together. " I have
been touched by your letters" (to the king), she says,
writing to Bussy. " It seems to me that they should
have the same effect upon our master as upon me ; and
yet he is not called Eabutin, as I am." In this same
letter, written in 1668, she recapitulates the causes of
their bitter quarrel. It was an old one, which had
begun ten years before, when Madame de SeVigne* was a
young widow, and her children children still. The
quarrel was about money. Bussy had asked his cousin
for a loan, which was delayed ; and in his irritation he
had published a satirical portrait of her, not only ridicul-

52 MADAME DE SEVIGNE".

ing her virtues, but accusing her of vice under a prudish
exterior. This calumny was printed, not by Bussy him-
self, but by a woman to whom he had given it. Madame
de Sevigne felt it keenly. Ten years passed before the
coiisins were really reconciled.

" I see," she writes, in a retrospective letter of expostula-
tion and forgiveness, " that you are ill informed of the news
from these parts, my cousin. Learn then from me that it is
not the custom here to accuse me of faithlessness to my
friends. I have many other faults, as Madame de Bouillon
says, but not that one, and you may erase this count from
the list of my failings."

Then she reverts to the original quarrel :

" We are near to each other," she says, " and of the same
blood ; we suit each other, we like each other ; we are inter-
ested in one another's fortunes. You spoke to me of advanc-
ing money to you upon the ten thousand pieces you were to
receive from M. de Chalon's succession. You say that I re-
fused you ; I say I lent you the money : for you well know,
and our friend Corbinelli is my witness, that in my heart I
only wished to comply with your request ; and while we
were seeking the consent of Neucheze to allow our names to
be inserted in the deeds, in order to be eventually repaid,
impatience seized you."

It is easy to imagine that the Bienbon, a methodical
and orderly man, might insist upon such due formal-
ities, for Bussy's character was in itself no guarantee for
repayment. Bussy the suspicious declared, however,
that it was all a pretext for refusing. He could not wait,
moreover ; the money was wanted for his equipment be-
fore starting on a campaign. He turned to another
woman, Madame de Montglas, who had apparently no
Abbe to restrain her, and who pawned her diamonds and

BUSSY. 53

raised the necessary sum. Then Bussy joined his com-
pany, full of his resentment against Madame de Sevigne
" amie jusqu'a la bourse" he calls her ; and when, a
year afterwards, to amuse Madame de Montglas, he
wrote his history of the ' Loves of the Gaules,' contain-
ing satirical portraits of all the chief persons of the day,
the cruel attack upon Madame de Serigne appeared.

" At last the day came," says the lady, " the unhappy day
when I read for myself, with my own ' ill-matched eyes,' that
which I had refused to believe in. If horns had started from
my head I should have been less amazed. I read and re-
read that cruel portrait. I might have been amused with it
had it been written of another person than me, by another
than you. . . . To be in every one's hands ; to find one's
self in print, the laughing-stock of the Provinces, where such
things do irreparable injury ; to be on every book-shelf to
receive this cruel pain, and from whom ? I will not dwell
longer upon all my reasons for suffering : you have good
sense, and I am sure a quarter of an hour's reflection will
make you see it all, and feel as I do. . . .

" This is what I wanted to say to you once in my life, and
I entreat you to erase from your mind all idea that it is I
who am to blame. Keep this letter and read it, if ever the
fancy takes you to disbelieve me, and be just to us both, as
you would be were you judging of something happening
between two other persons, own that you have cruelly
offended the friendship between us, and I am disarmed."

Madame de SeVigne* may well have been disarmed by
Bussy's repentance, which was generous and complete.
It will be as well to give his own words :

" I was in the wrong, but the resentment I afterwards felt
towards her was the height of my injustice. I shall never
blame myself enough for having offended the prettiest woman
in France my near relation, whom I had always loved, and

54 MADAME DE SEYtGNE".

whose friendship I never had reason to doubt. It is a stain
on my life that I tried indeed to obliterate, when the surin-
tendant was arrested, by loudly taking the part of the Mar-
quise against those who would have confounded her with the
mistresses of that Minister. Not only generosity but truth
impelled me to act in this way. Before embarking on the
Marquise's defence, I consulted Le Tellier, who, except the
king, alone had seen the letters in Fouquet's casket. He
told me that those written by the Marquise were the letters
of a friend with no little wit, and that they had delighted
the king far more than all the sentimental nullities of the
rest. The surintendant had been greatly to blame when he
mixed up friendship with so much love-making. The Mar-
quise was well pleased by my defence. Her kind heart and
her near relationship both caused her to forgive me, and
since that time (which also was that of my disgrace) her
affection for me rekindled ; and except for some explana-
tions, and some little reproaches which a painful remem-
brance drew from her, there are no marks of friendship
which I have not received from her since then, nor of grati-
tude that I have not tried to show, and that I shall not owe
her for the rest of my life. We resumed our friendship in
the first year of my exile."

This is quoted from a printed note to his memoirs.
"Writing to his cousin in private, he dwells and not
without some justice on the displeasure it caused him
when the only person of his blood whom he loved in
all the world abandoned him in an affair of honour in
which she ran no risk :

"I own," he says, "that I had then as much hatred for
you as I had felt affection before. It is ever so ; and if I
had gone no further, you would never have washed yourself
free from the stain of abandoning your friend and kinsman
in his need ; but my after-conduct effaced your fault."

DUPLIQUE AND TRIPLIQUE. 55

She sends him, in return, what she terms a duplique
to his replique an answer to his reply, which is con-
clusive, but not easy to translate :

" Oil diantre," says the lady. " Would you have had me
find twelve or fifteen thousand francs 1 Do you think I
kept them in a money-hox ? Unless the Abbe de Coulanges
had been my surety, I could not have raised the quarter of
a crown, and he would do nothing without this Burgundian
security, whether necessary or not."

" The day after receiving this letter from the Marquise,"
says the Count, " I answered as follows : ' No one can be less
capable of triplique than I am, my fair cousin. Why, then,
do you oblige me to it ? T gave myself up from the first. I
asked for life ; you wish to slay me helpless on the ground,
is not this somewhat inhuman ? Dare then, petite brutale,
to strike a man who throws himself at your feet, who con-
fesses his fault, and who prays for forgiveness.' "

Then comes a pleasant epistle from the lady :

" Rise, Count ! I do not wish to kill you on the spot. If
you wish it, take up your sword to resume the combat. But
it seems better still that I should grant you your life, and
that we should live in peace. Only own to the truth that
is all I ask. This is a friendly enough condition. You can
no longer call me, with any justice, 'petite brutale.'' "

Then she gaily concludes her letter :

" Farewell, Count ! Now that I have vanquished you, I
shall tell every one that you are the bravest man in France,
and describe our encounter on the day when I speak of single-
handed fights. My daughter sends you her compliments.
The good opinion you have of her fortunes consoles us a
little."

This is the end almost the end of the quarrel.
Bussy's answers seem to have delayed. The lady pun-

56 MADAME DE

ishes him with a couple of delightful fanciful scoldings.
She fears that, with all the best intentions in the world,
she may have killed him outright (not being accustomed
to handle a weapon). This is the only reason which she
can accept for his not having answered ; and then again,
has he not received her letter granting him quarter?
She was far from wishing to slay him on the ground ;
she was expecting to hear from him after this noble
action. " You never thought of an answer," she says,
reproachfully ; " you were content to rise, take up your
sword, and walk away, never intending, I hope, to use it
against me any more." And so the two make friends,
perhaps, as Mesnard says, " with a more tender and
serious feeling on Bussy's side than he had ever ex-
perienced in his life before." He was alone now
deserted by many, embittered by disappointment and
broken hopes a man of boundless ambition and vanity,
doomed to failure and inaction. In his loneliness her
friendship and the warmth of her generous heart must
have endeared her to him far more than the sprightly
charm of her wit.

57

CHAPTER X.

THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN FRANCE.

ONE of Madame de Sevigne's letters to Eabutin con-
tains the compliments of the prettiest girl in France.
"The name pleases me well enough," says the mother, "but
I confess that I am somewhat tired of doing its honours."

Madlle. de Sevigne was born in 1646, and was con-
sequently about 22 years of age at the time. There is
no mention of her in her mother's early letters, and all
that we know of her childhood consists of some few
allusions to it in the Marquise's later correspondence.
In one letter Madame de Sevigne wonders at her own
courage in having had the " barbarity " to send her little
girl to a convent. " They told me it was necessary for
your education," she says pathetically, in her own ex-
cuse, and also at the same time pleading the cause of
Madame de Grignan's own children against their mother.

There is also an allusion to a story of a slap on the
cheek, given by little Marguerite de Sevigne" to a youth-
ful companion, who ventured to approach an ugly face
too near her own. " It is to be feared," says her bio-
grapher, " that the not over-judicious parent only laughed
instead of reproving this ebullition." The friend of the

58 MADAME DE SE>IGNE\

family, the Abbe la Mousse (no doubt the Abbe de
Coulanges brought a good deal of clerical society to the
house), used to instruct the young lady, and teach her to
read Descartes ; and he seems to have occasionally re-
monstrated with his pupil on account of her vanity.
" Eemember that all your beauty will turn to dust and
ashes," says the Abb& " Yes," cries the young lady ;
" but I am not yet dust and ashes."

Two centuries ago Mdlle. de Sevigne was a very
beautiful creature as fair as her mother, we are told,
more brilliant, less winning, with more regular features,
with a colder nature. The poets of the time sang the
charms of the two each looking more beautiful for the
reflection of the other's beauty. We hear of Mdlle. de
Sevigne at Court, where she is much praised for an
accomplishment she inherits from her mother. She
danced admirably, and was chosen to figure in the king's
royal ballet with the charming young Madame (whose sad
fate is so touchingly recorded by Madame de Motteville) ;
with Mdlle. de Saint Simon, described by her brother as
"perfectly good and perfectly beautiful" (Madame de
Sevigne takes a less complimentary view of the lady) ;
with Mdlle. de Mortemar, who soon after became Madame
de Montespan ; and with Louise de la Valliere, that pathetic
figure in history. Certain characters in fiction, certain
men and women who have lived, and whose stories have re-
mained to us, will never cease to appeal to our sympathy.

We owe something more than dancing masks to
these years, 1667-68. It was a great epoch in politics
and in literature. Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine, 1 were

1 "A year before Mademoiselle de Sevigne's marriage, La Fontaine
dedicated to her his fable of the Lion amoureux, proving thereby his

MADEMOISELLE DE SEVlGNE". 59

bringing out their greatest works ; critics and poets and
preachers, saints and sinners, were all alike full of life
and energetic interest in this life and the next. The
learned Jansenists were holding their own at Port Eoyal ;
Madame de Sevigne's strong sympathy for them was well
known. Conde and Turenne, those two great rivals, were
leading the king's armies from victory to victory. Even
Louis took his own mysterious part in the march of
events : he did not forget Mazarin's early training, and
played his game, setting one great man against another,
one country's disaster against another, ever keeping in
view the supremacy of the King of France.

Notwithstanding her dancing and her beauty, Mdlle.
de Sevigne's marriage was still a matter of anxiety to her
mother. Once or twice everything had seemed on the
point of being settled, but each time Madame la Marquise
had interfered to break off engagements which did not
appear to her to promise well for the girl's happiness.
Suitors seem to have kept somewhat aloof, and those who
presented themselves were scarcely what the fond mother
could have expected. One young man was stupid and
rich ; another bore a doubtful character, although a Duke.
Other suggestions were made which concerned Mdlle. de
Sevigne's future. The scheming Bussy spoke out quite
openly at the time of La Valliere's decline : the mother
and daughter were happily unconscious of these horrible
suggestions. They went their ways, welcomed by their
friends, enjoying life and its interests. Sometimes they

interest in all that concerned his friends. Le CurS et le mart is a
version in verse of one of Madame de Sevigne's letters, and Madame
de Sevigne's celebrated account of the death of Louvois is a version
in prose of one of La Fontaine's fables, La mart et le mourant."
-J. A.

60 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE".

retired to Livry with the good Abbe ; sometimes they
travelled into Brittany to superintend their domains and
to read their books. The Hotel de Severs was one of
their favourite haunts in Paris : it seems to have been a
second Hotel de Rambouillet. Boileau and Eacine were its
poets ; its mistress was that faithful friend of Fouquet's,
Madame du Plessis Gue"negaud. Here wits and fine
ladies met, and indulged in all sorts of sports and jeux de
societe. Madame de Se'vigne herself took part in some
of the little plays that were performed to amuse the
companies assembled.

One whole autumn she seems to have spent with her
daughter at Fresnes, the country-house of Madame de
Guenegaud. There is a pleasant letter describing the
party assembled there. It is written to Pomponne, then
ambassador at the Court of Stockholm. He would like
to be there, she tells him, and she goes on to write the
moment down.

" M. d'Andilly on my left hand that is to say, on the side
of my heart ; Madame de la Fayette on my right ; Madame
du Plessis is just before me (she is amusing herself by daub-
ing little figures) ; Madame de Motteville a little further on,
meditating profoundly. There are also present our Comte
de Cessac, whom I fear because I hardly know him ; Ma-
dame de Caderousse, and her sister, a newly culled fruit that
you are not acquainted with ; and, above all, Mademoiselle
de Sevigne, coming and going by the dressing-room, flutter-
ing like a firefly. I am assured, sir, that this company would
greatly please you, most of all if you could see in what man-
ner you are remembered here."

In the same way that Mr Huxley, or some other great
physiologist, might reconstruct the whole of an extinct
existence from one or two bones still remaining, "Walck-

A COUNTRY-HOUSE PARTY. 61

enaer, 1 the historian of Madame de Sevigne, goes on to
reconstruct the whole society of her day, and to tell the
history of all those by whom she was surrounded. He
gives a comprehensive sketch of each person mentioned,
Madame de la Fayette, the faithful friend of La
Rochefoucauld and of Sevigne'; De Motteville, the up-
right Court lady, the touching historian of Anne of
Austria, and of poor, pathetic, charming Madame, whose
tragedy was yet to come. He gives us the fortunes of
the " newly culled fruit " the young unmarried daugh-
ters of the house ; of the eldest, who was married to the
Due de Caderousse, whose suit Madame de SeVigne" had
repelled ; of De Cessac, who is Madame de Gu^negaud's
relation, not Madame de Sevigne's. Her dislike to him
is apparently well founded, for De Cessac was afterwards
dismissed from Court for cheating at cards. Then OUT
biographer goes on to tell us much more that is not writ-
ten down, how the ladies returned to Paris for the
latter part of the autumn ; how they saw the " Misan-
thrope" played, and witnessed the success of "Andro-
maque," that lovely tragedy, even then more popular
than the history of the great Cid himself. He de-
scribes a letter of Mdlle. de Sevigne's, and its fastening
of rose-coloured ribbon, sealed with a device, Hpiu grato
nasconde. He even tells us who presented this device
to the fair Marguerite ; and so goes on patiently and
almost marvellously, exhausting the facts which are to
be deduced from the faint, quaint, fast -fading signs
which remain after two hundred years are past.

Meanwhile the glorious conquests of Louis XIV. were
echoing far and wide ; their echoes were drowning the

1 The work of Hypolite Babon should also be mentioned here.

62 MADAME DE siVIGNE".

tinkling of the guitars, and their victories were bringing
the usual epilogues of pain, and tears, and parting.

" Almost every one," says Madame de Sevigne, in one of
these letters to Pomponne, " is in misery ahout brother or
husband ; for, notwithstanding all our success, there is always
somebody being killed or wounded. For me who am ever
hoping that I have some future son-in-law engaged with the
rest, I wish for the general safety of all the chevaliers."

This son-in-law is her chief preoccupation and interest.
Then at last conies the personage so long expected,
discussed, and dwelt upon ; perhaps to English ears the
news is somewhat crudely expressed. She writes to
Bussy, to whom she is in the act of being reconciled :

"I must tell you something which, without doubt, will
give you pleasure. It is, that the prettiest girl in France is
to marry, not the best-looking youth, but one of the most
honest men in the kingdom M. de Grignan, whom you
have long known. All his wives are dead, so as to make
room for your cousin ; and by extraordinary good fortune,
his father and his son as well. So that being richer than
he ever was before, and moreover, by birth and standing,
and by his good qualities, all that we could wish for, we
make no such bargains as are customary, but trust to the
two families that have passed before us. M. de Grignan
himself seems well pleased with our alliance."

Marriage must have been an everyday affair to
Grignan, after his several experiences. Mdlle. de
Sevigne" was somewhat perturbed, and would, it is
said, have gladly put off the wedding. De Retz was
also of her mind, and greatly troubled by the confi-
dence which Madame de SeVigne showed in her son-
in-law's solvency. It is true he had land and high
lineage, and both his first wives had brought him

MOTHER-IN-LAW. 63

ample dowries ; but he was a man of expensive habits
and involved estates. "We are told that he had to raise
money even to pay the expenses of his second marriage
with Mdlle. du Puy du Fou et de Champagne. His
first wife had been also an heiress Angelique Clarisse
d'Angennes. She was a daughter of the incomparable
Arthenice; but this lady's fortune seems to have been
secured to her two daughters ; and so it came to pass
that of Mdlle. de Sevigne's ample dot, 180,000 livres
were to go at once to pay the bridegroom's debts. In vain
did the Cardinal utter his warnings. Madame de SeVigne
is not the first mother-in-law whose enthusiasm for her
son-in-law has known no delays or precautions, and they
evidently liked each other's society. She used to laugh
gaily at his jokes and his irregular features. She called
him Le grand Matou, because of his tuft of hair ; but, at
the same tune, she declared that he was " the most desir-
able of husbands, and of divine society." He was an
honourable man, though inclined to extravagance ; brave,
accomplished, and of easy temper. At the time of his
marriage he was Lieutenant-General in Languedoc ; later
he was appointed to a still higher post. De Grignan
was near forty, and very plain, as has been said, but of
good figure and excellent understanding, an honest
man, noble, polite, " knowing what was due to himself,"
says Saint Simon.

The contract was signed on the 27th of January 1669,
and on the 29th the marriage took place. Madame de
Sevigne" notes that it is the day of Saint Francis de Sales.
The wedding seems to have been a very brilliant affair,
and the names of the guests echo with the clang of ances-
tral dignities. Monteils, Adhemars, Grignans in differ-

64 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".

ent combinations, or all three in one; Kochefoucaulds,
Polignacs, Simianes, Harcourts, De Brancas on the
side of the bridegroom. The ladies' roll is less impos-
ing ; for the Sevigne"s, noble as they were, and of ancient
race, had lost many of their chiefs, and belonged to the
losing side in politics. They had little interest, and had
formed no great alliances of late. De Retz, their most
powerful ally, was in disgrace ; Bussy, the head of the
Chantals, was exiled from Paris; the young Baron de
Sevigne never attained to the dignities which should
have been his by right of descent.

He was not present at his sister's wedding, but left
La Mousse as his representative. The young man was
away on a chivalrous adventure. He had joined the ill-
fated crusade headed by La Feuillade, which started to
fight the Turks in Candia. The expedition was entirely
composed of volunteers, of the noblest families, who
took arms as privates in this sacred cause. De Sevigne
belonged to the company commanded by Saint Paul,
who was afterwards killed at the passage of the Ehine.
Young Sevigne had consulted the bellicose Bussy, the
Cardinal de Retz, and La Rochefoucauld, who had each
their own reasons for advising him to go. When all
was settled he told his mother, and the poor soul had to
accept his determination. His word was given ; it was
too late to retract.

Saint Simon is undoubtedly hard upon the young
Baron, whom he describes as not so much a man of wit
as a man modelled upon a wit ; and who says that of the
charm and abundance of his mother, and the frigid polish
of his sister, he had made an awkward mixture. Saint
Simon, however, allows that he was a good and honest

CHARLES DE SE"VIGNl 65

luan; it would seem impossible not to feel a genuine
todmiration for Charles de Sevigne's warm-hearted gener-
osity and nobleness of nature. His love for his mother
"was of that pure and unselfish quality, seeking not its
own, not envious. His own rights never seem to trouble
him ; his second place he accepts with a generous sweet-
ness. I confess that, with all my admiration for that
charming mother, I cannot forgive her entirely for doing
such scant justice to her son's tender and honourable na-
ture. The young Baron's early follies must have recalled
his father's lamentable career to her mind, and blinded
her to the son's nobler qualities. One episode in the
young man's life must indeed have given a sickening
pang to his mother's heart, and may partly account for
the strange difference in her feeling for her children.
In early life Charles de Sevigne fell under that same
fatal spell of Ninon de 1'Enclos's influence which had
first ruined Madame de Sevigne's home happiness. But
Charles de Sevigne was a different man from his father.
He had heart and reality of feeling. Charles had all
the heart, all the depth of feeling in which his father
had been wanting. His letter to his sister, written soon
after their mother's death, is one of the most touching
and generous ever penned.

" If it should be true," he says, " that there was some more
tender feeling in our mother's heart for you than for me, can
you believe in good faith, my dearest sister, that I should
deem it a fault in her that you should be more lovable than
I ? And as to her fortune, be it want of luck or of merit,
mine has not been such as to call for an extra portion.
Enjoy quietly and in peace that which you owe to my
mother's affection and goodwill. Even if it were in my
power to interfere (and the mere thought of it fills me with

F.C. XIII. E

66 MADAME DE SE'VIGXE'.

horror), I should look upon myself as a monster if I had the
slightest intention of so doing. Three parts of my life are
run ; I have no children of my own, and you have given me
some I tenderly love. If I could wish to be more rich, it
would only be so far as your children are concerned."

All this was long, long after the times of which we are
treating.

The Grignan marriage was in 1669, and did not go
off without some contretemps. As usual, there is an
episode with Bussy, who seems to have been justly
offended by the coldness and incivility of the Conite de
Grignan on the occasion, and refuses to sign the contract
or to write his congratulations. Madame de Sevigne is
determined to keep everybody good friends. She per-
suades, entreats, and explains difficulties away. " With
what good grace," says M. Mesnard, " does she abuse
every privilege of a woman ! " " You are right in that in
which anybody else would be wrong," says Bussy, yielding
as usual to her entreaties. M. de Grignan also had to
yield to her wishes, when, less than a year after his mar-
riage, his governorship was transferred from Languedoc to
Provence, and it became necessary for him at once to as-
sume his position. He left his wife in Paris under her
mother's care. Madame de SeVigne was determined to
keep her daughter, and her earliest letters to Grignan
concern Madame de Grignan and her health, and the baby
born some months after his departure. The grandmother
is triumphant, and the mother-in-law still more so.

" Have I not given you the most charming wife in the
world 1 " she cries. " Is it possible to be more well behaved,
more notable ? can you be more tenderly loved, could any-
body have more Christian sentiments ? . . . Your wife
still complains bitterly of all the days that we have detained

GOOD ADVICE. 67

her here, and says seriously that it is cruel to have separ-
ated her from you. One would think that it was for our own
pleasure that we had sent you off two hundred leagues."

" Do not let us speak of this woman," she writes again ;
" we love her beyond all reason. She is very well ; and I am
writing to you to-day on my own private account. I want
to speak to you of M. de Marseille, and to entreat you, by all
the confidence you have in me, to follow my advice in your
conduct towards him. I know what the Provinces are, and
the pleasure people take in encouraging divisions there. I
assure you that time or other reasons have changed his feel-
ing. These few days past he is greatly softened ; and if only
you would not treat him as an enemy, you would not find
one in him. Let us take him at his word until he has done
something against it. Nothing is more likely to change good
feeling than to show doubt ; it is often enough to be suspect-
ed of being an enemy to become one in fact. Confidence, on
the contrary, leads to right doing ; we are touched by the
good opinion of others, nor does one easily resolve to lose it.
Open your heart, and you will perhaps be surprised by the
result."

These letters are full of good sense, of interest and
solicitude, as well as of tender absurdity where her
daughter is concerned : few people are more clear-sighted
than Madame de Sevigne when she is not rapturously
gazing at Madame de Grignan's perfections. Her ad-
miration for her daughter may have been excessive,
her love for her is far more touching, and must come
home to all who have ever loved any one else, or been
loved themselves. Compliments in which we are ex-
pected to agree may easily jar upon us, but sucli tender,
unselfish affection and devotion can only touch our
truest and most natural sympathy.

68

CHAPTEE XI.

A ROMANTIC PRINCESS.

THE mother and daughter were still together, when an
event took place which might be deemed less surprising
now than at a time when caste was worshipped with that
fervour which still exists among oriental nations, where
it forms part of a religious creed. In Madame de Se-
vigne's day, precedence in this world and in the next
were not disentangled ; and even in our own enlightened
times the two things do not seem set quite apart in peo-
ple's minds. Madame de Grignan, being still at home,
is not yet a correspondent : M. de Coulanges, the little
fat cousin, is the person upon whom she pours out
her delightful abundance of interest, and emotion, and
excitement.

" PARIS, Monday, December 15, 1670.

" I am going to tell you of the most astonishing thing,
the most surprising the most marvellous the most mirac-
ulous the most triumphant the most bewildering, unheard-
of the most singular, extraordinary, unbelievable, unfore-
seen event ; the greatest, the smallest, the rarest, the com-
monest, the most vibrating, until this day the most secret ;
the most brilliant and enviable; in short, a thing of which

MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENS1ER. 69

one finds but one example in past ages, a thing which ice
in Paris cannot believe ; how, then, will you credit it at
Lyons ? . . . a thing which may happen on Sunday, and
which perhaps, on Monday, will not have been done. I can-
not make up my mind to tell you, try to find it out for
yourself. I give you three chances. Do you give it up ?
"Well, then, I must tell you : M. de Lauzun is to be married
at the Louvre on Sunday guess to whom. I give you
four, I give you ten, I give you a hundred to one that you
do not guess. I hear Madame de Coulanges saying, ' Here
is a pretty mystification ! It is Madame de la Valliere.' No,
madame ; you are wrong. ' Then, I suppose it is Mademoi-
selle de Retz.' Nothing of the sort, you country lady. ' Oh,
indeed ! do you think us so very dense ? It must be Ma-
demoiselle Colbert.' Still less. ' Then, surely Mademoi-
selle de Cre"qui.' You are quite out of it. I see I shall have
to tell you at last. He is to be married on Sunday, at the
Louvre, with the sanction of the king, to Mademoiselle

Mademoiselle de Mademoiselle Guess again. He

marries Mademoiselle, 011 my word, my sacred word,
Mademoiselle the great Mademoiselle Mademoiselle, the
daughter of the late Monsieur the granddaughter of Henry
IV. Mademoiselle d'Eu ! Mademoiselle de Dombes ! Ma-
demoiselle de Montpensier ! Mademoiselle d'Orleans ! Ma-
demoiselle, first cousin to the king ! Mademoiselle destined
for a throne ! "

Madame de SeVigne" scarcely did justice at first to the
true-hearted, grotesque, one-idea'd princess, who was
ready to sacrifice her throne, her fortune, her high posi-
tion, for the sake of a selfish schemer, 1 who had been
able for a time to conceal his interested and sordid
motives. She attributed every high quality to Lauzun

1 " Lauzun, in order to fascinate, chose the strange method of inso-
lence and scorn. His nephew afterwards used the same successful
means to charm the daughter of the Regent." J. A.

70 MA.DAME DE SE'VTGNE'.

every delicate scruple; adored him; nearly broke her
heart when the king retracted his sanction ; was faithful
to him for years and years ; and finally, poor soul, having
attained her dream, woke up from it as from a nightmare.
Madame de Sevigne, who began by laughing, ended in
sympathy with the poor princess.

" December 19, 1670.

" That which is described as dropping from the clouds is
what happened yesterday at the Tuileries ; hut I must go
farther back than yesterday. You are still in all the joyful
transports and raptures of the princess and her happy lover.
On Monday the thing was declared, as I told you. All Tues-
day went by in talk, in Avonder, in compliments. On Wed-
nesday Mademoiselle made a formal donation to M. de Lau-
zun, in order that he should have the necessary titles, names,
and adornments with which to figure in the marriage-con-
tract, which was drawn up that same day. She gave him
(just to begin with) four duchies : the county of Eu, which is
the first peerage in France, and which confers the first rank ;
the Duchy of Montpensier, of which he bore the name all
day; the Duchy of St Fargeau ; the Duchy of Chatellerault,
all of which are computed at twenty-two millions. Thurs-
day morning that is to say, yesterday Mademoiselle hoped
that the king would have signed the contract, as he had pro-
mised to do ; but about seven o'clock in the evening, the
queen, Monsieur, and several barbons persuaded his Majesty
that this affair was doing harm to his reputation ; so that,
having sent for Mademoiselle and M. de Lauzun, the king
declared to them, in the presence of Monsieur le Prince, that
he positively forbade their thinking any more of this marriage.
M. de Lauzun received this order with all the respect, the
submission all the courage and the despair which so great
a catastrophe deserved. As for Mademoiselle, following her
humour, she burst into tears, into cries, with violent distress
end excessive complainings : all day she has kept her bed,

TOOK MADEMOISELLE. 71

and would take nothing but broth. . . . What a subject for
romance or for tragedy ! above all, what a fine subject for us
to discuss, and to speak of, without ceasing ! That is what
we all do, day and night, evening and morning, unendingly,
unceasingly, and we hope that you will do the same."

So Madame de Sevigne tells the story at first. Later
on, having again seen the Princess, who sent for her,
and poured out her full heart, the not hard-hearted
confidante is melted and touched by the poor lady's
unfeigned misery.

" She called me to her, embraced me, bathed me in her
tears," writes Madame de Sevigne. " She said, ' Alas ! do you
remember all that you said to me yesterday ? Ah, cruel
prudence ! Ah, prudence ! prudence ! ' She made me weep,
so bitterly did she weep herself. I have returned to see
her twice : she is in great affliction, and has treated me all
along as a person who Avould sympathise with her sufferings.
Nor has she been mistaken. I have felt on this occasion
what people rarely feel for persons of so exalted a rank.
This is between us two and Madame de Coulanges ; for, as
you may imagine, such a confidence would be ridiculous
with others. Adieu."

Tragedies, comedies, farces, elegies, and marriage -epi-
thalamiums quickly follow each other, as we read in our
volume. Of poor Mademoiselle's long fidelity ; of Mon-
tespan's enmity to Lauzun, and his many years' incar-
ceration ; of the sacrifices made by the romantic lady,
and the king's consent to accept the enormous bribes
she offered for her lover's release, Mademoiselle has
herself given the history in her memoirs. It is a story
at once pathetic, laughable, and genuinely truthful.

Madame de Grignan had been married for many
months, and had not yet visited her own home. Mon-

72 MADAME DE sviGX&

sieur de Grignan was still absent in his province, nor able
to leave his post. Even Madame de Sevigne" could find
no further excuse for detaining her daughter. Madame
de Grignan had recovered from her confinement : her
baby was now some months old. In those days it
seemed the natural thing for mothers to separate from
their infants, however reluctant they might be to part
from their married daughters. The letters written after
Madame de Grignan's first departure are full of all the
anguish of parting. The poor desolate mother is alone
for the first time. The home is empty, except for the
little nursling baby left to keep her company.

" My trouble would not be what it is if I could describe
it to you," she says ; "but I shall not try to write it down.
In vain I look for my dear child. I do not find her, and
every step she takes divides us farther and farther asunder.
. . . I went to Ste Marie crying, dying : it seemed to
me that my heart and my soul were being torn from me.
Indeed it was so in truth. I asked to be alone, and they
led me into a room belonging to Madame de Housset, where
they lit a fire. Agnes kept looking at me without a word.
There I remained five hours without ceasing to weep ; my
thoughts seemed to kill me. I wrote to Monsieur de Grignan.
You may imagine how I wrote. Then I went to Madame
de la Fayette, who renewed my pain by the sympathy she
showed for it. She was alone, sick saddened by the death
of a sister, a nun. She was as I could have wished to find
her. Then came Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld. They only
spoke to me concerning you. ... At eight o'clock I
came back from Madame de la Fayette ; but as I returned
to this place ah ! do you understand what I felt when I
climbed the steps ? There was the room where I always
entered. I found the doors open wide, but everything un-
furnished, disarranged, and your little daughter in the place
of my own. Do you understand all that I suffered ? The

PREOCCUPATION. 73

awakenings of the night were dark indeed, and in the morn-
ing my spirits were no calmer. You make me again feel
all that it is possible to feel of tenderness ; and if you think
of me, be assured that I also continually am thinking of you.
It is what the devout call an habitual preoccupation ; it is
what one should feel for God : nothing distracts me, for ever
I see that carriage progressing always, which will never come
nearer. 1 I am always on the highroads. Sometimes I fear
lest the carriage may upset : the heavy rains of the last three
days have put me to despair ; the Rhone frightens me
strangely. I have a map before my eyes. I know the places
where you stop : you are at Nevers to-night, on Sunday you
will be at Lyons. Ah, my child ! what would I not give
to see you, to hear you, to enfold you to see you pass by, if
all the rest is too much to ask ! "

Here is a touch of which we must all recognise the
truth :

" I have seen that poor Madame Amelot. She weeps
bitterly. Je m'y connais."

The poor lady is experienced in tears. In this same
letter there is also a tender reproach which hints at
passing difficulties :

" Mechante ! " says the mother, " why do you sometimes
hide from me such precious treasures [of affection] ? You are
afraid I should die of joy ; but do you not fear lest I should
die of displeasure when I imagine the contrary? D'Haque-
ville will bear me witness to the state in which he has
formerly seen me; . . . but let us quit these miserable
remembrances. 5 '

So the letters flow on, full of love and preoccupation,
with a vividness of detail, a tender absorption, which
bears irresistible witness to their genuineness of feeling.

1 " Ce char toujours fuyant," says Ph&dre to her confidante.

74 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".

People have accused Madame de Sevigne of playing a
role, of occasionally posing as the adoring mother ; but
any one who has ever felt, even in part, what is here
described, will recognise the truth and the simplicity
of the many anxieties, preoccupations, quick-changing
emotions, absurd susceptibilities, of a hungry heart.
There seems to have been love enough in this woman
to .make half-a-dozen daughters happy ; perhaps, poor
lady, there was too much for the happiness of one.
Such affection, such absorption, could not be returned
by a cold-blooded person with an irritable temper and
expensive habits, a husband, a huge household, a whole
province to preoccupy her. That Madame de Grignan
should have written so constantly, and preserved her
mother's letters so carefully, gives more assurance of her
merit than all the enthusiastic praises in the correspon-
dence itself, and indeed it seems almost disloyal to the
tender parent pouring out her whole heart to doubt of
her child's merit.

" I am all by myself to-day in my room, where my ill-
humour has brought me. I am weary of everything. It
was a pleasure to me to dine alone, as it is now a pleasure to
write to you without any reason ; but you, alas ! have not
such relief as this. I write on quietly ; but I cannot imagine
that you can read in the same way I cannot see a moment
which you may claim for yourself. I see a husband who
adores you, who is never weary of your company, and who
can scarce believe in his own happiness. There are orations,
infinities of compliments, of civilities, of visits, excessive
honours, which are paid to you ; and to all of this you have
to answer, you are overwhelmed. What does your laziness
do with all this confusion? does it suffer, does it hide away
in some inner closet, and die for fear lest it should not find

YOUE LAZINESS. 75

its proper place ? It waits for you, for some chance moment
in which to remind you, at least, of its existence, and to say
a passing word. ' Alas !' says Laziness, 'have you quite for-
gotten me ? Remember I am your oldest friend that one
which has never abandoned you the faithful companion of
your brightest days, I who consoled you for lost pleasures,
and who sometimes taught you to hate them I who have
prevented you from dying of weariness, and in Brittany, and
when you were laid up. Sometimes your mother disturbed
our pleasures ; but I knew where to find you again. Now I
know not how to behave. These honours, these representa-
tions, will be the death of me if you do not take care.' And
it seems as if you said a little friendly passing word, and
gave some hopes of being more free at Grignan ; but you go
by quickly, and have no time to say much. Duty and reason
surround you, and do not give you one moment's peace. I
myself, who have always respected them, am against them,
as they are against me. ... I assure you, my dear
child, I am continually thinking of you, and every day
I feel what you once said to me, that there are certain
thoughts upon which we dare not dwell we must slide
across them."

She then goes on to recapitulate the parting :

" The closet where I embraced you without knowing what
I did, the church of the Capucins where I went to hear the
Mass, the tears which fell from my eyes to the ground as if
water had been spilt, the convent, Madame de la Fayette,
my return to this house, your room, the night, the morning,
your first letter, and all the others, and all the days, and all
the meetings with those who could enter into my sentiments.
Poor D'Haqueville was the first. I shall never forget the
pity he showed for me. ... I am taking an unfair
advantage of you, my dearest," she says, in conclusion. " I
have allowed myself this letter to-day ; my heart needed it
but I will not make a custom of writing them."

All this is in the first burst of separation. " How

76 MADAME DE SE>IGNE.

much I wish to get a letter from you ! It is nearly
half an hour since I received the last," she writes. Then
she begins to give news again; encloses a letter from
Bossuet M. de Condom, as he was called; goes into
enthusiasm over Bourdaloue's sermon on death ; describes
with interest a thrilling crisis as to who is to present
Mademoiselle with a table-napkin. She can be enter-
taining even though she is in tears.

77

CHAPTER XII.

THK TRAGEDY OF VATEL.

THERE is much truth in a remark of Michelet, who
points out how curiously the pleasant, sprightly mind of
one country lady, writing down second-hand gossip, influ-
ences our impression of an age, of a Court, of which
she knew comparatively little ; whereas the real actors of
those days, who have told their own stories in far less
vivid language, are comparatively forgotten and ignored.
Madame de Sevigne^s glimpses, even though they be but
reflected by her own imagination, are so vivid, that
we are immediately convinced by her account ; and her
ta