II-
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA BARBARA
COLLEGE
PRESENTED BY
Mrs. H. C. Chatfield-Taylor
Classks f0r
. EDITED BY
MRS OLIPHA^T
The Volumes published of this Series contain
/ DANTE, . By the EDITOR.
' VOLTAIRE, By Major-General Sir E. B. HAMLEY, K.C.M.G.
PASCAL, By Principal TULLOCH.
PETRARCH, By HENRY REEVE, C.B.
GOETHE, By A. HAYWARD, Q.C.
MOLIERE, ... By Mrs OLIPHANT and F. TARVER, M.A.
MONTAIGNE, ... By Rev. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.
RABELAIS, By WALTER BESANT.
CALDERON, By E. J. HASELL.
SAINT SIMON, ... By CLIFTON W. COLLINS, M.A.
- CERVANTES By the EDITOR.
CORNEILLE AND RACINE, . . By HENRY M. TROLLOPE.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE, . By Miss THACKERAY
(Mrs RICHMOND RITCHIE).
LA FONTAINE, AND OTHER )
FRENCH FABUIJSTS, / B ^ Rev " W " LuCAS COLLINS ' M " A -
SCHFLLER I ^ J AMES SIME, M.A., Author of 'Lessing:
I his Life and Writings.'
In preparation
ROUSSEAU, By HENRY GRAHAM.
MADAME DE ISETIGNE
BY
MISS THACKERAY
(MRS RICHMOND RITCHIE)
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
1881 REPRINT, 1882
All Rights reserved
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
I 9 Z ~ 8ANTA BARBARA COLLEG
72145
TO
EESTEK AND WILLIAM DENIS KITCHIE
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY THEIR MOTHER
KENSINGTON, March 18, 1881.
NOTE.
THERE are several well-known editions of Madame de
Se'vigne's Letters. Chief among them are M. de Mon-
merque's comprehensive and admirably edited volumes.
Besides, there are selections for the use of schools, of
which Madame Tastu's is, I believe, the standard. An
excellent edition, published by Messrs Firmin Didot,
has been chiefly used in the compilation of this little
handbook. It is preceded by a short memoir by M.
Jacquinet, in which it is stated that Madame de
Sevigne's Letters had always been admired, and were
constantly handed about and copied by her friends, but
that it was not till 1726 that the first edition was
printed by the Abbe de Bussy, to whom " Pauline "
Madame de Simiane had given transcripts of many
of the originals. The Abbe must also have inherited
from his father, Bussy de Eabutin, papers containing the
original correspondence between the two cousins.
In 1754 Madame de Simiane commissioned the
Vlll NOTE.
Chevalier Perrin, an intimate friend, to bring out an
edition authorised by the family, on condition that he
omitted any passages reflecting on Madame de Grignan.
He was also to leave out any private names and details
likely to wound any of the survivors of those people
mentioned in the original correspondence. M. de Perrin,
in accordance with these directions, snipped and changed,
and interpolated to his own fancy, and not a little
to the indignation of subsequent critics (Sainte-Beuve
being not the least among them). M. de Monmerque
has, by great labour and patience, been able to restore
the original text, and much of the matter which
Madame de Simiane (with a feeling which cannot be
blamed) is supposed to have done her best to suppress.
Of the letters here quoted, the Vatel letter and the
story of Picard are translated by Miss Ritchie; and
some other translations are by Mrs Cracroft. I have
also to acknowledge Mr Cracroft's kind help in giving
me the notes and books he collected for his own inter-
esting account of Madame de Sevigne", and that of Mon-
sieur Jules Andrieu, whose great knowledge and famili-
arity with French literature are well known. I have
put his initials to some notes which he has given me.
Among the best commentaries upon Madame de Sevigne"'s
text are the pictures which naturally belong to it.
Petitot's portraits give a whole gallery of her historic
characters. Madame de Sevigne herself is there in
mid-age, as well as young and brightly beautiful; Ma-
NOTE. IX
dame de Grignan, with regular features, prim and coldly
chiselled ; Maintenon in her youth, more lovely than
the lovely Marie de Sevigne herself ; Ninon, with her
strongly marked countenance. There, too, is the stately
Grignan; La Eochefoucauld, magnificent and portly;
the majesty of the King in its periwigged apotheosis ; the
romantic Mademoiselle, with her big features ; and poor
young Madame, with a likeness to her father, Charles
I. Of all the pictures I have ever seen of Madame
de Sevigne, the most interesting is one at Wykehurst
belonging to my friend Mrs Huth. The grandmother
is painted smiling and debonnaire, and holding up an
oval portrait of her daughter, who looks white and red,
and brown-haired, and conscious; while little Pauline,
of the square nose, is staring up with her dark eyes.
The celebrated pearl necklace is there, which is so often
mentioned in the Letters.
Mr Hamilton Aide tells me of two charming minia-
tures. He has also, by the kindness of Lady "Waterford,
the possessor of the original picture at Beckett, given
me a photograph of a portrait of Madame de Sevigne
holding her baby-daughter on her knee : the child half
turns with a childlike action, glancing as she turns
aside. The mother sits bright, beautiful, and stately,
with an air of lovely youthful domination and hap-
piness.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION, ..... 1
II. GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER, . . 5
III. THE GUARDIAN AT LIVRY, . . . 13
IV. M. LE MARQUIS AND MADAME LA MARQUISE, 20
V. MADAME DE SEVIGNE's COUSIN, . . 26
VI. WIDOWS* WEEDS, ..... 34
VII. LIBATIONS, . . . . . . 38
VIII. PEN AND INK, ..... 42
IX. RABUTINAGE, ...... 51
X. THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN FRANCE, . . 57
XI. A ROMANTIC PRINCESS, .... 68
XII. THE TRAGEDY OF VATEL, . . . . " 77
XIII. FROM THE ROCHERS, .... 84
XIV. SYLLABUBS, DUCHESSES, AND HAYMAKERS, 91
XV. TORCHES AND BEACONS, .... 99
Xll CONTENTS.
XVI. LB REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE, . . . 106
XVII. AN UNCOMFORTABLE CHAPTER, . . 114
XVIII. THE GREAT GENERAL, .... 118
XIX. BASSETTE AND HOCA, .... 124
XX FIDELE AND OTHER FRIENDS, . . .131
XXI. ILLNESS, ...... 135
XXII. AT COURT AND ELSEWHERE, . . .141
xxiii. FAMILY' DISCUSSIONS, . . . .148
XXIV. MADAME DE LA FAYETTE AND OTHERS, . 156
XXV. OLD AND NEW GENERATIONS, . . .163
XXVI. NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY, . . 169
XXVII. THE LAST, 173
MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
CHAPTEE I.
INTRODUCTION.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE, in a fit of enthusiasm for the
works of one of her favourite moralists, once exclaimed,
" Would that all Nicole's writings could be boiled down
into a broth, and swallowed in one gulp ! " Some such
wish must often occur to the admirers of the incompar-
able Marquise as they read her famous letters, written
from the little darkroom, with its polished floors and
lofty shadows, in the old hotel at Paris, to the two whole
centuries of people who have come after the original
recipient. The Hotel de Carnavalet is still standing,
as white and handsome and young-looking, for its age, as
was its celebrated mistress. It is in a labyrinth of his-
toric streets, of which the very names tell the story of the
people who piled the long walls and gables, who made
the archways, and stabbed each other in the postern-
gates, or worshipped at the little shrines. Their de-
F.C. XIH. A
2 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE*.
scendants have long since pressed beyond the narrow
island which was once Paris, and have crossed the Seine,
and are busy rearing commonplace new palaces in the
place of those they destroy. The Hotel de Sevigne, as
it is now called, has fortunately escaped many revolu-
tions and changes of dynasty, and still encloses its sunny
courtyard in all the dignity and stately inconvenience of
the royal times to which it belongs. Truly the sight of
the old place must conjure up for all of us many ghosts
with familiar names and faces, and among them that
charming figure, graceful and tender, sincere, unreason-
ing and. reasonable, who seems like a friend to us all.
After reading her letters, and living with her in spirit
for a while, we can almost hear her voice sounding in
our ears across the two centuries of turmoil. Madame
de Sevigne's voice rings very true and sweet and playful
amidst the hideous discords of her time ; and her appari-
tion is indeed a gracious vision among the reckless phan-
toms of her age, those subjects of that Grand Monarch,
whose god was his belly, and whose good-breeding was
the admiration of Europe. While his people are starving,
and his mistresses stringing diamonds while his un-
willing armies are invading inoffensive nations, and his
courtiers are conniving at every mad wickedness Saint
Simon dwells, in an ecstasy of contemplation, upon the
extraordinary grace, the irresistible admixture of dignity
and respect, with which the king would half rise from
his seat at table to salute the tardy entrance of some
belated dame of honour, at the same time storing in his
memory a record of the lady's fallibility, to be resented
at the first convenient opportunity.
Madame de Sevigne", in her youth, was no less enthu-
A LAUGHING PHILOSOPHY. 3
siastic about him than the rest ; but, as years went by,
her judgments became more just. Hers was a curious
morality. She laughed where others might have wept ;
she seemed to take the times as she found them ; she
attempted no reform, though she could see wrong plainly
enough where it existed. It was a sweet and happy
temper, a mind that played lightly even with sorrows
and wrong-doing; and yet this bright and apparently
unconcerned existence was a protest in its way against
the insincerity and abject selfishness of the Court. She
at least did her best to make those about her happy.
Her affection for her daughter was a sentimental enthu-
siasm almost passing the bounds of reason ; but her rela-
tions with her family, her friends, her dependants, were
most constant, touching, and human. There is in exist-
ence a legal document the will of some poor retainer,
who was found to have left all her worldly goods to the
well-beloved mistress that says more even than the fare-
well letter of Madame de Lafayette, who, on her death-
bed, wrote to her friend, " I think I have loved you
better than any other human being."
In a Court where lies and intrigues were as daily
bread where modesty was rare, and every standard of
right and wrong overthrown by the brilliant and witty
and well-dressed vices crowding in this beautiful young
woman, surrounded by flattery of every sort, by high
living and low thinking, kept her dignity intact, her
name pure and respected. She did not profess any spe-
cial virtue, nor hold her garments back lest they should
be soiled by contact with the petticoats of her more friv-
olous sisters. She was (to earnest minds perhaps) far too
lenient in her tolerance for others, and especially where
4 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE*.
those she loved were concerned. But the whole tenor of
her life was just and self-respecting. She was not en-
tirely free from the prejudices of her caste and times;
she naively considered that to .be of good family must
needs have some influence on the decisions of Providence :
yet in her daily practice she Avas certainly far in advance
of her age in her consideration for those who were de-
pendent upon her, hi her love of order, in her readiness
to fulfil the duties and obligations of her position.
It has seemed the best and simplest plan to endeavour
in this little book to tell her story in her own words, so
far as may be possible ; but how impossible it is to trans-
late her words ! One might as well try to translate into
English the pleasant murmur of a brook on a summer
day, or the song of a bird in the air.
I have attempted no elaborate criticism of her style 1
and manner of saying the ever - new, ever - delightful
things which occur to her day by day; the tender, witty,
laughable (rather than humorous) things and fancies ;
or again, of the vivid and great suggestions that fill her
heart and mind, and ours, as we read. Her art is too
complete for criticism, too simple for analysis ; she has
almost everything to say, and she says it.
1 "La Fontaine wrote as she did intuitively, irresistibly; La
Bruyere is as picturesque, but more laboured; Saint Simon was
vivid, but more matter of fact, less flowery and harmonious." J. A.
CHAPTEE II.
GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER.
MARIE DE EABUTIN-CHANTAL was born in 1626, and was
the daughter of an ancient and somewhat moss-grown
Burgundian family, owning ruined castles, feudal rights,
coats-of-arms without number, all of which had been
upheld from time immemorial by fierce fire-eating Barons,
whose portraits once hung so we are told in the old
gallery at Bourbilly, Guys, and Ames, and Christo-
phers, with their ladies ; some of them contributing royal
blood from Denmark to the glory of the Eabutins, be-
sides other kingly arms in their quarterings. So long
as thirty years ago, their pictures were already dropping
from the canvasses in the old gallery at Bourbilly, with
one notable exception, which may be still extant for all
I know. Among other distinctions, the family may
count that of possessing a canonised saint, and it seems
that her portrait (which was also one of the latest
painted) was miraculously found to survive the others.
The saint was the widow of one fierce Baron killed
out hunting, the mother of another who died fighting
the English (put to death, as one chronicler relates, by
the hand of Oliver Cromwell himself). Madame de
6 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
Chantal, the saint, passionately loved her son and hus-
band, and their tragic end was a titter anguish to her.
After her husband's death she had determined never to
marry again ; the religious ideas in which she had been
brought up took entire possession of her mind; she dis-
tributed her rich wardrobe among the poor, and made a
pious resolve to wear nothing but coarse woollen clothes.
She dismissed the greater number of her servants, only
retaining a moderate retinue to wait upon herself and
her four children, for she was the mother of this one
son and three daughters, all of tender age. 1
She then retired, it does not appear for what reason,
to the chateau of Monthelon, near Autun, where she
dwelt for some tune with a very violent, ill-conducted,
and arbitrary old gentleman, the father of her late hus-
band, who seems to have treated her with intolerable
insults and humiliations, all of which she bore Avith the
greatest patience and humility, devoting herself to the
care of her young children, of the neighbouring poor,
and of some illegitimate children of the wicked old
Baron also living in the castle.
In 1604, no less a person than Saint Francis de Sales,
Bishop of Geneva, came to preach at Dijon, where
Madame de Chantal's own father, President Fremyot,
was living ; and she obtained leave from her father-in-
law (not without difficulty) to go home for a short visit,
in order to attend these ministrations. Her biographer
relates that at her very first meeting with the saintly
1 ' Les deux filles de Ste Chantal, Aymee Marie de Rabutin-
Chantal, Baronne de Thorens, et Fran9oise de Eabutin-Chantal, Com-
tesse de Toulonjon,' by Madame la Comtesse de Menthon. These
were Madame de Sevigne's aunts.
ST FRANCIS AND HIS DISCIPLE. 7
prelate she recognised him at once as a holy personage
who had been revealed to her in a dream not long before.
Saint Francis also immediately remembered a vision which
he had seen of Madame de Chantal at his OAVTI home,
the Chateau de Sales in Savoy. After several interviews,
during which the lady declared he did not seem to her
to be a man, but an angel, Saint Francis hirdself was
quite overcome by the faith, the ardour, and the charity
of his new disciple, in whose mind all this time the idea
of leaving her home and giving herself up entirely to a
religious life seems to have been steadily gaining ground.
Saint Francis did not entirely discourage the scheme when
Madame de Chantal first opened her heart to him on
the subject, but he imposed upon her a probation of
six years, during which she was to live by rule, and
meditate upon her vocation. So fervently did she obey
his commands, so ascetic was her daily life, that she
became the admiration of all her neighbours, and even
her disreputable old father-in-law yielded at last to so
much virtue and austerity.
After many and forced delays, Saint Francis, in order
to try his disciple's faith still further, proposed that she
should enter into one of the severest of the Orders which
then existed for women, and to this she enthusiastically
agreed. Then the Bishop of Geneva disclosed to her his
full mind, and announced that, if she entered into reli-
gion, it should be not as a neophyte, but as the foundress
of an entirely new Order for the relief of the poor and
the sick. At the same time he was not blind to the
many sacred ties which bound her to the world. " I
see a great chaos in all this," said her director, "but
Providence will disentangle it."
8 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
President Fremyot seems to have had some presenti-
ment of what was impending, for about this time he
anxiously furthered the suit of a very rich Burgundian
nobleman, a widower with a family, who was desirous
to contract an alliance with the saintly Baroness. Need-
less to say that all persuasions were unavailing : to defend
herself against her own possible weakness, she took an
iron point, heated it in the fire, and with it wrote the
name of Christ upon her breast. " I clung to the tree
of the cross," she afterwards said, " for fear so many
charming voices should lull my heart to compliance."
A marriage which she was far more disposed to look
upon favourably than her own was that of her daughter,
Aymee Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, with the Baron de
Thorens, a younger brother of Saint Francis, an officer
in the army. Marriages took place earlier in those days
than they do now the bride was only twelve years
old. A letter of conciliation is still extant, written
by Saint Francis de Sales to the old Baron de Chantal.
It is addressed to " M. de Chantal, captain of fifty men-
at-arms, Knight of the Order of his Majesty," and does
credit to the saint's human as well as his superhuman
qualities. It was not without difficulty that the old
man's consent was obtained, for the young bride was a
rich heiress, and the bridegroom was only the youngest
of five brothers.
And now Madame de Chantal found at last courage to
declare her resolve to her family, and to announce her
definitive intention of quitting them all. Her father is
said to have burst into tears, exclaiming, "Let me die
before you leave me." But although the daughter wept,
the saint was not shaken in her resolution. The day
A FAREWELL. 9
after the marriage, when the family was assembled at
the chateau of Monthelon, where the wedding had taken
place, Madame de Chantal had another conference with
her father, and her brother, the Archbishop of Bourges.
She expressed herself with so much decision and clear-
ness of purpose, and was so well upheld by Saint
Francis, who persuaded her relations that hers was a
divine inspiration, and any resistance on their part would
be culpable, that they reluctantly yielded to her wish.
The two unmarried daughters were to remain under her
care in the convent, from whence she was also to super-
intend the young Baroness in her domestic affairs, her
son was to be confided to his two grandfathers, and in
three months the final separation was to take place.
Jeanne de Chantal took a touching leave of the old
Baron at Bourbilly, who was then eighty-six years of age;
but the real parting heartbreak was when she bade
farewell for ever to her young son and to her aged father.
There is an affecting story told of the young Baron de
Chantal, her son, who, when the hour of her departure
came, flung himself across the doorway, saying, " I am not
strong enough, Madame, to hold you back, but if you
leave us, it must be by stepping over the body of your
only son." The mother burst into an agony of tears,
but nevertheless forced her way across the threshold ; and
then, fearing lest they should think she regretted the step
she had taken, she turned, smiling and radiant, announc-
ing that though she left them God would not abandon
her.
So she went her way, left her young son and her aged
parents, founded many religious houses, made friends,
converts, disciples, led a life of wide benevolence. Her
10 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE".
story is well worth following. Not only Saint Francis
de Sales but Saint Vincent de Paul it seems to have
been a golden age for saints were her advisers and com-
panions. Her life was a curious mixture of the hearth
and the cloister. She seems to have kept up her influ-
ence over her daughters, and to have advised them under
every circumstance. The youngest died, the two elder
were married by the saint, who seems to have provided
the trousseaux, with frilled collars and silken bodices,
among other details. The story of the Baronne de
Thorens, who died at nineteen of grief for her young
husband's premature death, is one of the most pathetic
imaginable.
Meanwhile the young Baron, who had remained under
the care of the old grandfather on the Chantal side, grew
up handsome, reckless, accomplished, devout, fearing
nothing, fighting as many duels as his father had done
before him. In 1624 he married Marie de Coulanges,
a pious and gentle heiress belonging to a respectable
famille de role, as the French express it, and in 1626
was born their second and only surviving child, Marie
de Eabut in -Chantal, better known by her after-name
of Marquise de Sevigne.
It gives one a curious impression of the manners and
customs of the times to read how this, the last Baron de
Chantal, after taking the sacrament with his wife within
a year of his marriage, left the altar and went straight
away in undress and in velvet slippers to act as second
to his friend Boutteville, the most desperate duellist of
the time, who had sent a messenger post-haste into the
church to summon him to the Porte Saint Martin. It
was then usual not only for principals but for seconds to
IN THE PLACE ROYALE. 11
join in the fray. Boutteville and Rabutin de Chantal
were obliged to fly for their lives after the encounter, for
the Court, exasperated by the frequency of these mur-
derous amusements, had passed stringent laws against
duellists. The offence seems to have been condoned on
this occasion; but in 1627 De Boutteville was taken and
executed for a series of subsequent encounters. Chantal,
who had been so intimately mixed up with his friend's
imbroglios, fled to the island of Re, where the Marquis de
Toiras was beset by the English under Buckingham, and
where the Baron de Chantal fell bravely in the combat,
pierced by twenty-seven wounds. He was only thirty-
one years of age, and his little daughter was scarcely
more than one year old. His widow, who seems to
have been much loved by him and by the saint, his
mother, in her convent, caused his heart to be buried in
the church of the Minimes at Paris, in the Place Royale,
took her child, and returned to her father's, M. de
Coulanges', house, which was in that same quiet
quarter. The beautiful old place is still extant; the
trees in its garden are green ; the children play there as
perhaps little Marie de Rabutin herself may have done
with her young cousin, Emmanuel de Coulanges. It is
said that the Marquis de Toiras, the former companion-
in-arms of the Baron, tried in vain to win the widow's
hand, but she had no thought of remarriage ; her heart
was buried with her husband's in the old church of the
Minimes : and indeed, from all one hears of him, there
must have been something singularly attractive in this
hot-headed, handsome, gallant soldier. Sainte Chantal
felt his death very deeply, and wrote many really beautiful
things to her daughter-in-law ; but when poor Marie de
12 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".
Coulanges followed her husband to the grave, so absorbed
was the holy lady in founding fresh convents, that, except
for one or two more letters, all admirably expressed, she
does not seem, to have taken much interest in the fate
of her little granddaughter. She requested her brother
Fremyot, Archbishop of Bourges, to see after the child,
who was by him given over to the care of her mother's
relations.
Sainte Chantal entirely approved of the arrangement.
Writing to the President Coulanges, she says :
" The child will be happy, if God preserves you to her,
you and my suffering very dear sister, to continue your
pious and wise tuition. It is the truth that I love that child
as I loved her father in all for Kighteousness. I rejoice in
the grace which will enable her to be confirmed at Easter. "
"When we remember how Sainte Chantal, in her enthu-
siasm for Eighteousness, abandoned her young son, we
cannot suppose that, from an earthly point of view ; she
can have been of much use to the little granddaughter.
The child's early life was fated to be a sad one, for time
after time death seems to have swept away the tender
guardians who came about her. Our little Marie was
orphaned a second time when her grandmother and
grandfather died, and were carried in their turn to the
church of the Minimes, where her mother was already
lying, and her father's heart was buried.
13
CHAPTEE III.
THE GUARDIAN AT LIVRT.
WHEN the little orphan's fate had to be decided, a family
council was called, at which, for the first time, we hear
of Bussy de Rabutin, who afterwards played such an
important part in Madame de Sevigne"'s history. The
child was an heiress ; several relations came forward to
claim her ; and among them Madame de Toulonjon, her
father's sister, who proposed to place her in a convent
forthwith. Bussy gave his vote for this lady ; but hap-
pily for the world, which might have sustained a loss, and
for the child herself, who was well fitted for the world, a
different decision was come to. A guardian was formally
appointed. This was the Abb6 de Coulanges, Marie de
Eabutin's maternal uncle, in whom she found, indeed, a
lifelong friend, adviser, and protector. He was at that
tune but twenty-nine years of age, and she was some-
where about ten ; but for half a century to come, these
two lives were destined to run side by side in peaceful,
tender "affection. " Le Bienbon," she calls him ; and if
he was devoted to her, she, too, never failed in her
faithful gratitude and affection towards the good man.
She loved him ; she loved Livry, the home to which he
14 MADAME DE SOIGNE".
took her, and where her early girlhood -was passed. It
was a place she returned to all her life, and always with
pleasure. Livry was within a drive from Paris, all but
enclosed "by the forest of Bondy, and haunted by night-
ingales. Round about the abbey were pretty shaded
gardens perfumed with honeysuckle. " I came here yes-
terday," she writes some forty years later, to her daughter,
" and found the place in all the triumph of the month
of May. The nightingale, the cuckoo, the thrush, have
opened the spring-time in our forest. In the evening
I walked there alone, and found all my sad thoiights, of
which I will not speak to you. I have destined a por-
tion of this afternoon to write to you from the garden,
although I am bewildered by the three or four nightin-
gales singing overhead."
Very little is known of Mademoiselle de Chantal's
girlhood, but we get a pleasant glimpse in the Memoirs
of Madame de la Guette, as quoted by M. Mesnard " of
a beauty to win all hearts, coming with Madame de Cou-
langes, and two other ladies of quality, to Livry every
summer to breathe the fresh air."
Mademoiselle de Chantal's education was not entirely
confined to the song of nightingales and the scent of
honeysuckle. The Bienbon was rather a practical than a
literary man, but he seems to have taken pains to select
the very best and most highly esteemed masters for his
young ward. 1 Menage and Chapelain were her tutors.
1 One of them was the well-known character Vadiua, out of the
' Femmes Savantes,' the hero of the sonnet, otherwise Menage, the
learned man with the wonderful memory, about whom so many
curious stories are told. Latin and philosophy he imbibed
with his mother's milk ; but, notwithstanding all the efforts of his
teachers, he was not able to master music and dancing. He
THE GREAT VADIUS. 15
They taught her literature, Italian, Spanish, and she was
also made to read Virgil in the original "in all the
majesty of the text," as she herself says.
In the very first of all the many letters contained in
M. de Monmerque's big volumes, Mademoiselle de
Sevigne, then " Chantal," as she signs herself without
any other preamble, shows something of the thoughtless-
ness of youth in a reproach which she addresses to
Menage. He will not come and see her. . . . She
entreats him to change his determination ; if he will not
come to-day, let it be to-morrow. Is he angry because
she is going away 1 It is difficult to her to understand
that, loving her as a friend, and regretting her, he should
for that very reason treat her with coldness at the mo-
ment of parting. "What a most extraordinary manner
of behaving ! says the young lady. Poor Menage ! if
what biographers tell us is true, he was behaving in
no very extraordinary manner. He adored his pupil,
who, in those days, seems to have indulged in some
most have been of a sentimental disposition; and we read in the
* Biographic Generate ' that when he attained the age of fifty he went
to call on all the ladies he had been in the habit of visiting, and bade
them farewell " His works," says M. Fournel, " show a prodigious
amount of reading ; an ingenions mind ; a vast if somewhat confused
erudition. They are full of curious details of his contemporaries, and
also of his own life, for he is personal in all he writes. He was a
protegt of Gondi, the coadjutor, afterwards the Cardinal de Retz,
and, like many protSges, he seems to have been in a constant state of
discontent and grumbling. When his patron joined the Fronde he
was most indignant. It cost him, he declared, 3000 livres a-year in
perquisites. Chapelain, a very different sort of man moderate, and
more used to the ways of the world tried again and again to make
the peace between them. One of the complaints against Menage was,
that notwithstanding the remonstrances of Condi's intendant, he sent
a servant every day for five months to dine in the coadjutor's kitchen,
and regularly borrowed a candle every evening for his own use.
16 MADAME DE SE"VIGXE".
girlish coquetry. In vain poor Menage would get
angry and go his way ; his pupil used to call him back
to her " the friend of all friends," she writes to him.
There is a cruel little story of a kiss she once gave him
in company, " according to the fashion of the primitive
church," she is said to have explained to the assembled
guests. But this was when she was very young, before
the pangs and disappointments of life had any meaning
for her. If the young can inflict thoughtless wounds,
they can bind them up as the old cannot do, who know
the meaning of pain, and who shrink from approach-
ing it.
Menage was not the lovely Chantal's only adorer; there
are many names still extant. Among others was Saint
Pavin, a witty humpback, and lord of the manor at
Livry. Bussy, both at this time and during her subse-
quent widowhood, was spoken of as a pretender to her
hand. She is described later on as having an art which
Bussy himself acknowledges, that of turning her lover
into a faithful friend. " It was a mixture of innocent
coquetry, of goodness without prudery, and real kind-
ness of heart, that at once maddened the poor lovers
and disarmed their anger." Menage, notwithstanding
his romantic passion, always remained the confidant of
Madame de Sevigne. " I have been your martyr," he
said ; "I am now your confessor."
Many years later, Madame de SeVigne, speaking
of these early days, and of her granddaughter, little
Pauline, whose square-tipped nose was, she declared,
inherited from herself, modestly says, " Have I ever been
as pretty as she is now? People tell me so." It is true
that this beauty was not altogether regular; but those
THE ABBAYE AT LTVEY. 17
yeux bigarres, whose inequalities seemed to heighten their
fascination, were blue and full of fire. She had fair
hair, soft and abundant, and a dazzling complexion.
Madame de la layette, who never flattered, writes to
her : " The brilliancy of your mind so radiates through
your features and your eyes, that not only does it reach
us through our hearing, but dazzles our sight as well.
Pleasures and diversions enhance your beauty when you
are surrounded by them."
Thus we find Marie de Eabutin-Chantal at eighteen
living in a romantic old abbaye, surrounded by woods
all echoing with song, with a gentle elderly priest for her
guardian and protector. She is an accomplished young
lady moreover, an heiress, beautiful, the mistress of
several languages ; and being une demoiselle a marier,
her establishment in life is now seriously discussed. As
we have said, Bussy was one of the possible husbands
thought of for her. No memoir of Madame de Sevigne
would be complete without a mention of Bussy de Ra-
butin, her cousin, a few years her senior, her friend,
enemy, playfellow. Their very quarrels tell the story
of their two characters, which seem to complete each
other in some curious fashion. The least lovable traits
in Madame de SeVigne's nature she had in common
with her kinsman, and must have inherited with him.
But what in her was occasional and transient, formed
in him the foundation of a hard and unscrupulous
nature. Her extreme goodness and unselfish sympathy
far more than counterbalanced any passing recklessness
for the feelings of others when they clashed with the in-
terests of those in whose life she was absorbed. With
Bussy, on the contrary, the groundwork of his character
F.C. XIII. B
18 MADAME DE SEVIGNE".
was selfishness, added to immoderate ambition, and a
coarseness of fibre which seemed to prevent him from
realising the unworthy life he was leading. His cousin
was dazzled for a time. She was very proud of him
until she found him out, and then she still cared for
him. " We are nearly allied," she writes to him ; " we
are of the same blood, we please each other, we love each
other." " Un pen rustaudement" he adds; and she also
calls the link which binds them that mixture of com-
mon blood and common wit by the happy name of
Rabutinage.
In these early days it is certain that Marie de Chantal
took an interest in her cousin, whose father was anxious
to see him married to her ; and it is not known for
certain why Bussy was not chosen for her husband.
Perhaps the young man may have been afraid of her
bright wit and clear-eyed judgment. Be that as it may,
the Abbe de Coulanges was strangely at fault when he
advocated the proposals of the Marquis de SeVigne 1 , a
protege of Gondi, the coadjutor.
The Marquis's mother was an old friend. The young
man himself was the inheritor of three centuries of noble
blood, reckoning among his ancestors Montmorencys,
Clissons, and Du Guesclins. He was rich, handsome,
well dressed, witty, deemed agreeable by many. Per-
haps the worthy Abbe" may himself have been dazzled
by so much good looks and fine clothes; or, what is
far more likely, they may have made an impression on
Mademoiselle de Chantal herself, who influenced her
uncle. The Abbe willingly gave his consent to the mar-
riage, which was, however, delayed from early spring
to late summer by an encounter in the Bois de Boulogne,
MARRIAGE. 19
where the Marquis, who had insulted a fellow-Breton,
was badly wounded by a sword -thrust from his op-
ponent.
The young couple were married finally on the 4th
August 1644, at two o'clock in the morning, at the church
of St Gervais and St Protais in Paris ; and notwithstand-
ing the inconvenient hour, there is a long list of the
company present on this occasion, including Gondi
himself.
20
CHAPTER IV.
M. LE MARQUIS AXD MADAME LA MARQUISE.
FEW facts are known (except some indeed not very edify-
ing) concerning the early married life of the young couple.
Of Madame de Sevigne's tender admiration and affec-
tion for her husband there is no doubt. They seem
to have led a gay and brilliant existence between Paris
and their country-house in Brittany made much of,
feasted, entertained, in their turn liberally entertaining
their friends.
The world made them welcome, and the world of
those days was a brilliant, dazzling, and, to young and
prosperous people, most delightful and enjoyable place,
revolving smoothly, varied, polished, well fed, well
dressed, well amused. The SeVignes used to frequent
the neighbouring hotel of the Incomparable Arthenice
so Madame de Eambouillet's respectful adorers used to
translate the name of Catherine, which they considered
too commonplace for the mistress of such a Parnassus.
In those stately polished rooms Madame de Sevigne
must have met all the names that we are accustomed to
place in rows upon our book -shelves. Bossuet, Corneille,
Voiture, Balzac, Menage, and many more appear, alive,
THE HOTEL RAMBOUILLET. 21
smiling, tapping their snuff-boxes, complimenting, .dis-
coursing agreeably, in the presence of a lovely and en-
thusiastic audience.
Madame de Sevigne herself is said to have made some
stand against the exaggerations of that agreeable but
highly wrought company, which, nevertheless, she seems
to have enjoyed and frequented. She had too much
natural humour to be entirely carried away by the literary
fervours of the beautiful ladies, although, long after-
wards, she writes from the Eochers, her Breton home,
" J'ai encore un petit reste de bel air qui me rend prc-
cieuse." l All the same, she detested what she called
"tortillonage," and the " delicat des mauvaises ruelles,"
neither of which expressions is to be rendered by
" elaborate circumlocution " or " the false delicacy of
vulgar coteries."
There is a celebrated and delightful chapter in Walck-
enaer's Life of Sevigne', describing one of those well-
known meetings at the Hotel Rambouillet. All the
company are assembled in Madame de Eambouillet's
bedroom, to hear the reading of a new piece by Corneille.
A large screen partitions off a portion of the great room,
and partially encloses a group, which is compared to a
bed of flowers. It is a parterre of young and lovely
women, of ribbons, plumes, bright colours, suave voices,
and perfumes ; while abbes, courtiers, and poets stand
around in attendance. The Princess de Conde, the
Duchesses d'Aquillon, de Longueville, and de Chevreuse,
the Marchionesses of Sable and Sevigne, are present; so
are Madame de la Vergne and her young daughter, our
heroine's lifelong faithful friend, afterwards Countess
1 "Some little remains of fine manners render me still a prhieuse."
22 MADAME DE SEVIGXE.
de la Fayette. There was also Madame de Fiesque, the
wild companion of the Grande Mademoiselle. Near the
bed sits Madame de Rambouillet herself; beside her
a young abbess and a nun, both daughters of the house,
who, from tune to time, leave then- holy retreats to
revisit their mother and their home. Madame de Se-
vigne is examining some miniatures ; by his bright-
coloured cheeks and gay countenance it is easy to
recognise her husband the Marquis, who is sitting at the
feet of Mademoiselle du Vigean : "he speaks of Saint
Evremond, and makes her laugh; he speaks of the
Due d'Enghien, and makes her blush."
The Due d'Enghien was devotedly attached to Ma-
demoiselle du Vigean. He was, however, married off bv
his family to some one else whom he could not love,
and she ended her days as a Carmelite nun. In the
crowd all about the room, a whole host of wits,
writers, orators, are to be recognised : young Bossuet,
1'Abbe Godeau the whole book-shelf is there, bound in
velvet and silk and gold-thread, glittering, conversing,
waiting for M. Corneille, and for M. de Voiture, who
arrives first, dandling on his silken legs.
Not very far from the Hotel de Eambouillet stands
another great house, which still opens its doors to the
public, to the wits and beaiix espriti of our own time, who
may, if they so choose, commune there with the voices
of the past, gathering in sound and volume from the
vaguest incoherence of early Merovingian times, to the
bitter emphasis of those terrible days which followed
the glorious reigns of the great Louis and his well-beloved
grandson. This hotel, which in Madame de Sevigne's
day belonged to a respectable family, is now converted
M. LE MARQUIS. 23
into the Public Eecord Office of Paris, where he who
runs may read ; and it is impossible not to be struck by
those writings on the wall, following so soon upon the
noisy feast of wit and banter. There is Marie Antoin-
ette's farewell to her children, interrupted by Sanson
coming to carry her to her death; there is Charlotte
Corday's firm writing and devoted confession to her
Father. Literary rhymes, compliments, and criticisms
sink into a whisper before such solemn voices as these.
But all these tragic times are yet unborn ; and it is
not with them that we are concerned, but with a hum-
bler race, more resembling our own women of the world,
busy with trifles, with fancies, and finery, some utterly
frivolous, others with warm hearts for their own home
treasures, though somewhat forgetful of the troubles
outside. A truer heart never beat than that of the hand-
some, fair -haired young lady, with the dazzling com-
plexion and laughing mouth, and the sparkling eyes of
different hue : had she lived in later times, she might
perhaps have shown what generous constancy was also
hers.
The young couple had not been very long .married
before a secret became known, which the poor young
lady had done her best to keep to herself. This was
the serious subject for complaint which she had against
her husband his neglect and his infidelity. Knowing
what her nature was, one may guess at the sorrow of
her early life, although she rarely speaks of it. Once
indeed she writes of " 1'abime " from which her uncle
rescued her an abyss indeed, into which at one time
she must have seemed sinking deeper day by day ; in-
difference, extravagance, infidelity to her tender, faithful,
24 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\
and responsible mind, all this must have been a heavy
load to bear in silence. Sevigne did not try to conceal
his indifference for his wife. He is said to have told
her that perhaps others might find her agreeable, but
that she could never charm him. He said this openly
too ; and many of the unscrupulous people by whom she
was surrounded now attempted to pay court to her them-
selves, thinking that natural resentment must needs make
her an easy prey. Her free, open humour, her natural
coquetry, blinded them to her good sense, and her clear
perception of right and wrong. Her husband's conduct
was too flagrant for her to be able to esteem him, but
she never ceased to love him ; while he, on the contrary,
esteemed her without love.
" He loved everywhere," said Bussy-Rabutin, speaking
of him, "but never anything so amiable as his own wife."
Bussy, among the rest, did not hesitate to do his utmost
to ingratiate himself with the young Marquise, who
daily fascinated him more and more ever since she had
been beyond his reach. He himself had been mar-
ried off by his anxious parents to another cousin a
daughter of that aunt, Madame de Toulonjon, Sainte
Chantal's youngest, and now only surviving, child ; but
his marriage does not seem to have interfered with his
assiduities.
It was in the autumn of 1646 that Madame de
Sevigne's own daughter, " the prettiest girl in France,"
was born ; and we read of the christening : " Fransoise
Marguerite de Sevigne, daughter of Messire Henri de
Sevigne, Lord of the Manor of the Eochers, of Bodegat,
of Buron, &c., and of Marie de Eabutin, living in the
Rue des Lions ; the godfather was the Bishop of Chalons,
HER FIRST-BORN CHILD. 25
Jacques de Neucheze, who had married the couple some
two years before; the godmother, Dame Claude Mar-
guerite de Gondi." This motherhood, this new deep
interest, dawning at a time when all other natural hopes
and trusts had so cruelly failed her, must indeed have
flooded the young mother's aching empty heart with
strange new happiness and hope ; and this may in part
account for the passionate tenderness which, all her life
long, Marie de Sevigne gave to this her first-born child.
26
CHAPTER V.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE's COUSIN.
THE parents seem to have spent the winter after the'
little daughter's birth in Paris; and in March 1648 a
second child, a son, was horn to Madame de Sevigne.
The latter event took place in Brittany, at the Rochers, the
paternal home. A letter to Bussy, already a widower,
" the father of daughters only," is dated from here. It
playfully reproaches him for his long silence and indif-
ference, and threatens him with the coming vengeance
of the little new-born boy. In the autumn of this same
year, we find the Sevigne family comfortably estab-
lished at the Abbaye of Ferrieres, where Bussy is also
staying, and celebrating the merits of a certain Mattre
Crochet, the cook of the hospitable Jacques de Neu-
cheze, who is entertaining them all. The flavour of
Mattre Crochet's soup steams appetisingly still at this dis-
tance of time : Bussy declares no other broth is possible
after it. Bussy himself must have been glad of a little
country air and quiet retirement at this particular season,
for he had been burning his fingers, and behaving in a
way which was greatly reprobated, even in those days
Avhen so much was tolerated. The incident is perhaps
MADAME DE MIRAMION. 27
not one of the least curious of all the many curious
incidents which were regarded as commonplace events
in those very uncommonplace times. Bussy's Avife,
Gabrielle de Toulonjon, having only left him daughters,
he wished for a son to perpetuate his name, and deter-
mined to marry again. The modest cousin desired youth,
beauty, and, above all, a very large portion to satisfy
his expensive habits, and to enable him to keep up
his position at Court. Through a certain Le Bocage,
whom he had met at dinner at the Grand Prior,- his
uncle's, house, he chanced to hear of a lovely young
widow, angelic both in disposition and fortune (for she
was a millionaire), who seemed to Bussy the very person
he should wish to promote to the dignity of Comtesse de
Bussy-Rabutin. Le Bocage did not know her personally,
but he introduced Bussy to a certain priest called Father
Clement, who, for a consideration, enabled them to see
the lady at her devotions one day. The Count was
charmed by her appearance, her youth, her piety, and
her equipage, which was waiting at the church door, and
which showed her to be a person of consequence.
Father Clement, for a further consideration, seems to
have informed Bussy that his lovely penitent was less
absorbed in her pious mourning than she appeared to be;
and the Count, who thought it could only be an honoiir
to a lady of the middle classes to be connected with so
noble a house as his, summarily determined to carry the
lovely widow off and marry her without more ado.
Hearing that she was to drive on a certain day from
Issy to the Mount Valerien, he made his arrangements,
placed relays of horses at certain places along the road,
secured the co-operation of several friends, who assembled
28 MADAME DE SE>IGNE".
a small company of cavaliers, followed by their servants,
all armed and mounted.
Madame de Miramion (this was the lady's name, she
became afterwards celebrated for her many good deeds
and charities) was not alone : she was accompanied by
her mother-in-law, and, according to the custom of the
day, by two waiting-women and an old valet. They
had reached St Cloud, when suddenly their carriage is
stopped, two cavaliers appear at either window, tearing
down the leather curtains. The poor lady, dreadfully
alarmed, tries in vain to drive them away, beating with
her bag, and screaming for help ; there is no one to
interfere. The armed men force the coachman to retrace
his steps, and to bring the carriage into the Bois de
Boulogne, which is not far off. The poor lady defends
herself in vain, her screams, her tears, her prayers, have
no effect ; Bussy, indeed, primed by Father Clement and
his own vanity, can scarcely believe in them, and con-
siders it all a pretence, a comedy acted for the mother-
in-law's benefit. We are told that once, in her despair,
Madame de Miramion suddenly flung herself through
the doorway into the brushwood by the roadside ; but
she was immediately picked up and replaced in her
seat, all covered with scratches and blood, her mother-
in-law and the elder waiting-woman having been mean-
while forcibly expelled from the coach. The poor lady's
wild cries and appeals after they leave the wood are
explained to the bystanders as those of a mad woman,
conveyed by order of the Court to be shut up; and,
indeed, the poor thing's appearance, her torn dress,
dishevelled hair, her scratched and bleeding face, and
wild looks, only serve too well to bear out this assertion.
MADAME DE MIRAMION. 29
"When they arrive at their destination, Madame de
Miramion refuses to eat or rest, and only threatens to
kill herself. Bussy, much surprised, complains that he
had been assured she was a lamb, but he finds her a
raging lion. Although he approached her with every
respect, and in his most fascinating manner, she only
replied to his advances, by a solemn oath before heaven,
that under no circumstances whatever would she con-
sent to marry him. He was in some perplexity, and
his friends were urging him to let the lady go, when
their advice was suddenly confirmed by the news that
600 men from Sens were on their way to besiege the
castle and set Madame de Miramion free. The mother-
in-law had not been inactive, and had raised the
country.
Thirty-six years afterwards, some important lawsuit of
Bussy's depended upon the decision of a near relation of
Madame de Miramion's. The suitor actually went on
the strength of this first introduction to bespeak her
good word on his behalf; and the beautiful and most
forgiving lady, now very fat, very placid, and renowned
for her good deeds, agreed to his wishes, and exerted
herself warmly in his favour.
We now come to troubled and complicated times.
Madame de Sevigne" was in Paris in the December of
1648, and D'Onnesson, her kinsman (who was after-
wards so good an advocate when Fouquet was tried
for his life), was with her in the "lantern" of the
Courts of Justice listening to a trial, when the deputies
burst into the great hall demanding a General Assembly.
This was the beginning of the Fronde, that first rising
of the people against the Ministry and the Crown.
30 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
When Paris was no longer deemed a safe residence
for the young king, the Court left in the night and
retired to St Germains. The Prince de Conde followed
its fortunes ; and Bussy, who had heen more occupied all
this time in trying to make love to Madame de Sevigne
than with politics, now followed ' his chief, although
grumbling loudly, and greatly discontented at the way
in which he had been used by him.
Chance thus threw him into the opposite camp to
the Sevignes, whose near relationship to Gondi and
other Liberals made them partisans of the disaffected
cause. Sevigne himself followed the Due de Longue-
ville into Normandy, where a rising against Mazarin
was attempted, and the principal feat recorded of
him on this occasion is, that he had the honour of
making the duke laugh. Longueville seems to have
made Mazarin laugh, if we are to believe contem-
poraneous records, so small were the' results of his
many preparations and fanfaronnades. Madame de
Sevigne" remained in Paris with her young children,
writing letters to Bussy, who was keeping a sulky
guard at St Denis, and who passed the time in this
sentimental correspondence with the enemy.
A sort of peace between the rival parties was made
in 1649. It was rather a cautious neutrality than a
permanent peace. Not long afterwards everybody was
taken by surprise when the great Conde himself, whose
haughty and domineering character had incurred the
Queen Regent's bitter displeasure, was arrested, together
with his brother Conti, and by the help of Gondi
the coadjutor, the princes were shut up in Vincennes.
Bussy, who always found himself on the wrong side,
FRONDISTS. 31
remained in Paris, in order to gain time, and pre-
tended to be entirely absorbed in the details of his
second marriage with Louise de Rouville, another cousin,
to whom he was united in the month of May.
Meanwhile Conde's partisans were not idle. His
wife had assembled a force at Montrond, and raised
Bordeaux with the help of Bouillon and La Rochefou-
cauld ; and she now wrote an urgent summons to Bussy
to join her, which summons he reluctantly obeyed. There
were now no less than five different parties in France all
fighting, intriguing, and combining love, war, self-interest
in their curious diversities. The Old Fronde declared
itself for the Queen Regent, for the King, and the Court,
but maintained its hatred to Mazarin : to this cause the
Sevignes belonged. The partisans of the princes were
called the New Fronde.
Mazarin, says Walckenaer, founded his ambition on the
re-establishment of the royal power and the greatness of
France. Conde's dream, on the contrary, was the over-
throw of Mazarin, and his own consequent ascendancy.
But notwithstanding all opposition and the many plots
against his life and liberty, the Minister, backed by the
Queen, went on his way undaunted until he thought the
time had come for Louis to assert his own authority,
We all know the pictures of the young king in full
hunting costume, with his felt hat on his head, entering
the hall of deliberation, followed by his suite, and
haughtily commanding that in future his parliament
should abstain from all comment upon the administra-
tion of his kingdom. It is for the historian, not for
the compiler of a hand-book, to evolve a moral out of
all these complications. Poor Bussy gained nothing in
32 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\
this struggle, and one is really sorry for his disappoint-
ment.
He writes to Madame de Se"vigne from Montrond in
July 1650 : "I have at last declared myself for M. le
Prince, ma belle cousine, not without great reluctance,
for I am serving against my king in the interests of
a prince who does not care for me. But it is true that
his condition fills me with pity : I shall therefore serve
him as if he loved me while he is a prisoner; and if
ever he is set free I will give him back my commission,
and leave him at once to return to my duty. What
do you say to these sentiments ? Tell me at once if
you do not find them noble and worthy? "When I
think that last year we were both on opposite sides,
and that we are still opposed, although we have both
changed places, I think we are playing at the game
of prisoner's base" Then he goes on to say that it is
a fine thing for a woman of twenty to be mixed up
with politics : the celebrated Madame de Chevreuse had
not begun earlier. " However, your side is always the
best," he concludes, "for you do not leave Paris, and
I am despatched from Paris to Montrond, and not a
little afraid that at last I may be sent from Montrond
to the devil !"
The celebrated Duchesse de Chevreuse was no longer
twenty, but she still had extraordinary influence, and
was not yet tired of intriguing. She seemed to have
interests in every faction. With the princes, to one of
which she wished to marry her daughter : with Mazarin,
whom she humoured, hoping for help in the repayment
of certain sums owing to her by the state, she kept a
firm influence over the Queen, from the habit of long
SAD DATES. 33
years. She also intrigued secretly with Gondi, with
whom she had still more complicated relations.
The Sevigne's, the coadjutor's kinsfolk and firm allies,
we read, entertained her at a banquet, described by Loret,
the chronicler of those days. It seems to have been a
brilliant and noisy feast. Many candles are recorded as
having shone, as well as beautiful ladies. There was
noise and music ; there were ortolans ; soup was spilled,
and a silver dish was stolen on the occasion.
It cannot have been very long after this that Sevigne,
finding his wife's presence a constant reproach and re-
straint, carried her off to Brittany, and left her with her
children at his old chateau of the Eochers, returning
himself to Paris, where he resumed his foolish and dis-
sipated ways. She did not see Paris again for many
months.
Everything was changed for her when she returned
thither once more. One of the saddest dates of her life
was approaching. Years afterwards, as an old woman,
she writes : "I have only retained in my memory two
dates those of the year of my birth and of my marriage ;
but, without augmenting their number, I shall in future
forget the year in which I was born, which now saddens
and overwhelms me, and I will put in its place the date
of my widowhood, and the commencement of an exist-
ence which has been tolerably peaceful and happy, with-
out brilliance, without distinction, but which may end
in a more Christian spirit than if it had been stirred
by great events, and that, in truth, is what matters most
of all."
F.C. XIIL C
34
CHAPTEE VI.
WIDOWS' WEEDS.
THERE is something very tragi-grotesque in the death
of the husband of Madame de Sevigne. He was, as we
have seen, handsome, well-born, faithless, rude, dissipated,
and alone seemed insensible to the sweetness of the
young wife who loved him. Among others Sevigne
chose his wife's cousin, Bussy de Eabutin, as his con-
fidant; and Bussy used to lose no time in repeating
these confidences to Madame de Sevigne herself, who
sometimes reproached her husband, but without effect.
We have heard him complain of his wife, that she did
not charm him. The well-known Ninon de 1'Enclos
charmed him, alas ! and some whose influence was even
more fatal to the foolish young man ; for Ninon, with all
her faults, was a generous woman, and scorned to fleece
those whom she had first bewitched. Others were less
scrupulous, and among these last was a certain wicked
little Madame de Gondran, married, so M. Paul Mesnard
tells us in his excellent biography of Madame de Sevigne',
to a sort of Georges Dandin of a husband. " La belle
Lolo," as her acquaintance called her, was as interested
as she was beautiful, only caring for finery, flattery, and
MADAME DE GONDRAN. 35
fashion. Among her many caprices, we hear of her in-
sisting upon wearing a certain pair of diamond ear-rings
at a ball, which ear-rings happened to be heirlooms be-
longing to Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. The Marquis,
who could refuse no request of Madame de Gondran's,
was reduced to lying to obtain them, and pretended
that he wanted to borrow the jewels for Mademoiselle
de la Yergne, his wife's great friend, the most respect-
able and well-conducted of women. People were not a
little surprised when they recognised the celebrated
brilliants dancing at the ball in the fair Lolo's ears.
To help her friend's husband out of a most unpleasant
dilemma, Mademoiselle de la Vergne consented to take
the transaction on herself, and went to thank Made-
moiselle de Chevreuse for the loan of the precious orna-
ments. Sevigne's attentions were unfortunately not
only confined to borrowing, for the benefit of Madame de
Gondran. He bestowed most royal sums out of his own
and his wife's fortunes to gratify her endless fancies.
Madame de Sevigne, against the advice of her faithful
uncle De Coulanges (who had some short time before
insisted upon a legal division of goods between the
married couple), had advanced to her husband, not with-
out difficulty, the sum of 50,000 pieces, which were all
rapidly running through the fair Lolo's grasping fingers,
when an unforeseen incident brought about a tragedy,
and put an end to the Marquis's ill-starred generosity.
A certain Lager, a Gascon, had happened to make some
insolent jokes about Madame de Gondran and her doings,
which came to the knowledge of the Marquis, who
immediately proposed to chastise Lager with a stick,
according to the simple custom of the time. Lager
36 MADAME DE SEVIGNE\
prudently ran away from a not undeserved beating, but
nevertheless determined to revenge the affront when he
could do so without inconvenience to his bones. Chance
threw him into the company of a certain Chevalier
d'Albret, a brother of the better-known Marshal d'Albret,
a high-spirited young man " qui tuait tres bien son
monde," says the French chronicler. Albret had him-
self once been a victim of the fair Lolo's, but of late,
not a little to his indignation, had found her door con-
stantly shut when he called. Lager maliciously assured
Albret that this insult had been instigated by Sevigne,
who had not only persuaded Madame de Gondran to
desire her servants to forbid Albret the house, but had
also openly spoken of him in the most contemptuous
manner. A meeting was immediately demanded by the
indignant Chevalier ; and although Sevigne", brought face
to face with Albret, emphatically denied what Lager had
laid to his charge, he added that he was only accustomed
to justify himself sword in hand, and that the duel must
therefore take place. D'Albret replied that he had not
come all this long distance to waste his time. We are
told that the two then embraced and fell to.
At first the advantage seemed to be with SeVigne*, but
presently becoming excited, he pressed his adversary too
hotly. Albret parried the stroke. As S6vigne precipi-
tated himself forward, his opponent's sword ran right
through his body, and he fell. He was brought back
to Paris, the surgeons pronounced his wound mortal,
and he died the next day, very loath to go. He was but
twenty-seven years of age.
The wife he had used so badly and the unconscious
husband of Madame de Gondran seem to have been the
WIDOWHOOD. 37
only two people who sincerely mourned for him. The
poor young widow came up hurriedly from her distant
liochers when the sad news reached her. Gondran
came in tears to the funeral. It is said that Madame de
Sevigne" went to Madame de Gondran and fetched away
her husband's picture and a lock of his hair, in re-
turn for some letters which Madame de Gondran had
written, and which she had only to blush for. So died
the poor young Marquis, a man of honour, agreeable,
handsome, and witty in conversation ; but he was
egotistical, for ever occupied with his own concerns,
unable to respond to the calls and interests of others
and so it happened that, young as he was, his companions
had already wearied of him, and that he was left with
so few real friends. His widow went back to her home,
where she mourned him and hid herself away tending
her children, and, in her turn, was watched and cared for,
both spiritually and temporally, by her faithful guardian
and uncle, the Abbe de Coulanges.
It was some time before she could again meet her
friends. She lived quietly, paying off the debts her hus-
band had incurred. Two years afterwards, when she
had begun once more to go into the world, she suddenly
fainted dead away in some company where she had been
spending an evening. She had seen D'Albret, the slayer
of her husband, coming in at a doorway.
38
CHAPTEE VII.
LIBATIONS.
of her own contemporaries ever paid Madame de
Sevigne a prettier compliment than Sainte Beuve, in the
preface to his celebrated volume of celebrated women.
" It is impossible to speak of women," he says. " without
first putting one's self into good humour by the thought
of Madame de Sevigne. With us moderns this process
takes the place of one of those invocations or libations
which the ancients were used to offer up to the pure
source of grace."
In Madame de Sevign^'s own day such compliments
and libations were so abundant, that we are told it was
almost considered in the light of an insult if a young
and charming lady was not addressed in language of
exaggerated devotion, amounting almost to love-making,
otherwise, says one of her biographers, we might almost
wonder at her patience with Menage and his love-poems,
with gouty Costar's gallant declarations, and the long-
winded protestations which she had to encounter on
every side. We hear of other more brilliant aspirants
to her favour. There is a quarrel recorded which took
place in the ruelle of her own bedroom between a Eohan
LATONA AND HER CHILDREN. 39
and a Tonquedec, each wishing to be preferred ; and be-
sides these, we read of the Count du Lude, of Conti, of
Fouquet, and even of the great Turenne himself, all
admiring her and courting her smiles. Bussy, the un-
scrupulous, did not hesitate to encourage the more power-
ful of these aspirants, and reproached his cousin with
her coldness and insensibility.
Here is a charming description of Madame de Sevigne
written about this time, which is quoted by all her bio-
graphers. It is the Abbe Arnauld, 1 the brother of the
well-known Mere Angelique of Port Eoyal, who is writ-
ing, in 1657, six years after the Marquis de Sevigne's death.
" It seems to me," he says, " that I still see her before
my eyes as she appeared to me the first tune I ever had
the honour of beholding her, when she arrived, sitting
in the depths of her great chariot, that was thrown open
wide. On either side of her sat the young gentleman
her son, and the young lady her daughter, all three such
as those whom the poets have described. They recalled
to me Latona with the young Apollo and the young
Diana, so indescribable a charm radiated from all of
them from the mother and the children."
Pomponne, who was also present on this occasion,
admired the beauty of the two children. " M. de Pom-
ponne remembers you as a little girl," the mother writes
long after. " You were peeping behind a pane in my
uncle De Sevigne's house, as lovely as an angel. Your
brother was there too, as beautiful as yourself. You
said you were a prisoner, a princess driven from your
father's Court."
1 The Abbe" was the youngest and twentieth child of his parents.
He was uncle to Pomponne, Louis the Fourteenth's Minister.
40 MADAME DE
Here is also Mademoiselle de Scudery's description
of Madame de SeVigne, under the name of " Clelie," in
one of those mysterious romances which created so great
an excitement at the time. People were new to novels
and novel- writing, and thrilled more easily than we do
over the loves and sorrows of imaginary princes and
princesses. Princess Clarinte shall speak for herself.
" Princess Clarinte has blue eyes, full of life and expression.
She dances with marvellous grace, and charms all hearts.
Her voice is sweet and melodious, and she sings in a pas-
sionate manner. She reads a great deal, although she has
few pretensions to being learned. She has learnt the Italian
language, and she prefers certain little Italian songs, which
please her better than those of her own country. She has
found means (without either being severe or misanthropical)
to keep a good reputation in a great Court, where she receives
all the honest people, and inspires affection in all hearts
that are capable of feeling it. This same pleasant temper,
which becomes her so well, and diverts others as well as her-
self, enables her to make friends with many who, if they
dared, would be glad to pass for her lovers. She says,
laughing, that she has never been in love with anything but
her own good name, and that she watches it with jealousy.
When it is necessary, she can leave the world and the Court,
and enjoy country life with the same tranquillity as if she
had been born and bred in the woods. She returns to us
gay and beautiful, as if she had never left Paris. She wins
the hearts of all women, as well as those of men. She writes
as she speaks that is to say, in the most courteous and
agreeable manner. I have never seen so much charm united
with so much light of intellect, such innocence and virtue.
Nobody else has ever better known the art of being graceful
without affectation, witty without malice, gay without folly,
modest without constraint, and virtuous without severity."
Madame de Sevigne only laughed when she read one
BLINDMAN'S-BUFF. 41
of these descriptions, and said that to be so perfect was
not in human nature. One of her correspondents the
courteous Costar assures her that those who had never
understood the beauty of her mind its grace, its depth,
its gentleness might perhaps think so, and that she
herself wore a certain bandage of modesty across the
eyes which prevented her from seeing clearly.
Here is one more sketch of our Marquise from the pen
of the Abb6 de Montreuil, which a friend has rendered
into English. It will be seen that the original has not
lost by its change. 1
To the Marquise de Sevigne playing at blindman's-buff.
Translated from Abbe de Montreuil.
" Your right is to enthrall,
You charm in every way ;
But surely, most of all,
You charm us all to-day.
Your blindfold eyes we see,
And deem you ' Love ' none other :
Your blindfold eyes we free,
And lo ! you are ' Love's mother.' "
Hallam Tennyson.
" De toutes les fa^ons vous avez droit de plaire,
Mais surtout vous savez nous charmer en ce jour :
Voyant vos yeux bandes, on vous prend pour 1'Amour ;
Les voyant de'couverts, on vous prend pour sa mere."
CHAPTEE VIII.
PEN AND INK.
FOR many years Madame de Sevigne's letters do not
seem to have teen preserved with any care by her
friends, whatever compliments they may have paid her,
and however glad they may have been to hear from her.
With the exception of a few to her cousin Bussy, one
or two to Menage, and the well-known and affecting
letters to Pomponne describing the trial of Fouquet,
there is little of her correspondence still extant outside
the great tide of written love, advice, maternal anxieties,
which began to flow from Paris in the autumn of 1671
to the south, where her daughter, Madame de Grignan's
married lot was cast.
One packet, indeed, of Madame de Sevigne's letters
(which has since disappeared), concerning her cousin
La Trousse's interests, was unfortunately preserved for
a time, and cost her no small anxiety and annoyance.
The papers had been put away by Fouquet, the great
surintendant, in a casket containing many other far less
creditable epistles, love - letters, bargains, requests,
promises, from the various Court beauties in his pay.
When the crash came, and the king's long-smothered
FOUQUET'S CASKET. 43
indignation burst forth when Fouquet himself was
suddenly arrested and taken to the Bastille when his
wonder - palace and art -treasures were seized and scat-
tered to the winds, this packet was carried off among
the rest of his papers to the king's own cabinet. Louis
was able to read for himself new proof of the surintend-
ant's long - suspected duplicity. The chapters in the
second volume of Walckenaer's history of Madame de
Sevigne", describing the great Minister's rise and fall, are
well worth the attention of those who are interested in
the history of those days, when life and emotion were so
vivid, so rapid and impetuous.
As one reads Walckenaer's pages, it seems as if there
must have been more sound in the people's voices
then than now, brighter colours in the air, eyes more
brilliant, the interests more noisy and unaffected, the
characters and features more marked. This splendid
surintendant rises and sets, a dazzling figure. There is
something which strikes one's imagination in the story
of the dying Mazarin with his last breath desiring the
young king to send for Fouquet, to respect his advice,
to utilise his wonderful powers, at the same time warn-
ing him not to trust him entirely, to keep a scruti-
nising watch upon his schemes and accounts. Then we
read of Colbert secretly at work, apparently a subordin-
ate, but in reality a powerful enemy, tracking Fouquet's
splendid steps, disentangling the intentional confusion of
his lavish accounts, and silently laying before the king,
day by day, the key to Fouquet's complicated schemes.
Unconscious, Fouquet meanwhile pursued his aims, buy-
ing the goodwill of courtiers, seizing on every vacant post,
extending his power. He had grand ideas. The glory of
44 MADAME DE
France was dear to him ; his policy abroad was worthy
of a great kingdom ; he was unscrupulous, but generous
and honourable at the same tune. How he was loved by
his friends, how true they remained to him at the hour
of his most desperate straits, is a matter of history.
Every school-girl has learnt La Fontaine's touching ode
to his fallen patron ; and Madame de Sevigne's letters
(those outside, not inside the casket) also tell us, in most
unmistakable language, how true and sincere was the
feeling of affection he inspired.
Madame de Sevigne's distress at the scandal which
had got abroad concerning her letters to the surinten-
dant was great. She writes to Menage to beg that he
will take every opportunity to contradict any reports
that may have been spread, when it was known that
among this venial correspondence some of her writing
had been discovered.
And then again, in answer to her old tutor, who
replied that he had already taken up arms in her
cause, she says :
" I do not forgive myself that, instead of writing to you as
I did, I did not send you straight away a letter of thanks. I
now pay my debt, and beg you to believe that I am as grate-
ful as I ought to be for your goodness. I send a compliment
to Mademoiselle de Scudery for the same reason."
She thus writes to M. de Pomponne :
" Could you have ever imagined that my poor letters, all
full of M. de la Trousse's marriage, should have been put
away so mysteriously ? I am very much concerned by the
necessity in which I am placed of trying, perhaps in vain,
to justify myself to a thousand persons who will never be-
lieve the truth. You, I think, will understand the suffering
FIDELITY. 45
this causes a heart such as mine. I conjure you to explain
to every one all that you know to be true. I cannot have
too many friends on this occasion."
Three years later, Madame de SeVigne^ exonerated by
the king himself, was again writing to M. de Pomponne,
who was then in a sort of honourable exile, on account
of his friendship for Fouquet. Perhaps none of her
letters is more graphic and interesting than these
which tell of Fouquet's trial, and describe his cour-
ageous bearing in adversity with all the eloquent
admiration and generous partisanship of a sincere
friend. No quality is more admirable in Madame de
Sevigne than this fidelity of heart. She is true through
good report and ill report, uninfluenced by ebbing for-
tunes, unshaken by changing opinions ; and this, in a
person of such vivid imagination, is no small tribute to
the loyal affections which kept her steady through all
the chances of life to those upon whom she had once be-
stowed her friendship.
"To-day, Monday, Nov. 17th, 1664, M. Fouquet was
examined for the second time. He sat down without cere-
mony, as he did on the first occasion, and the chancellor
again desired him to put up his hand and to take his oath.
He replied that he had already given the reasons which
must prevent his taking the oath. Thereupon the chan-
cellor rushed at once into a great discourse to prove the
legitimate powers of the Chamber that the king had estab-
lished it, &c.
" M. Fouquet answered that often things were done by
authority which afterwards, upon reflection, did not appear
to be quite advisable.
"The chancellor interrupted him. 'What ! you then say
that the king abuses his power?'
46 MADAME DE SE>IGNE.
" M. Fouquet replied, ' You say so, sir, not I. That is not
what I think ; and I wonder that, in the condition in which
I am, you should wish to oppose me to the king.' "
All her letters were nominally addressed to Pomponne,
but she knew that he passed them on to his father, to his
brother, to the Chateau de Guenegaud, which was not
far distant from his own home, and that her bulletin
carried news to the little coterie of faithful friends and
well-wishers. Her frankness, her courage, her fidelity,
give a heart to the story of reckless licence and pro-
fusion, of vindictive persecution and revenge.
On the 20th of the same month she writes :
" M. Fouquet was questioned upon the affair of the gold
pieces this morning. He answered very well : several of the
judges bowed to him. The chancellor made this a subject of
reproach, and said it was not the custom. As he was return-
ing by the arsenal on foot for exercise, M. Fouquet asked
who were those workmen he perceived. He was told that
they were people altering the basin of a fountain. He went
up to them and gave his advice ; and then turning to
D'Artagnan (the Hedzoff of those days), 'Do you wonder
that I should interfere 1 I was formerly considered clever
at these sort of things.' "
21si. " . . . M. Fouquet was rendered very impa-
tient by certain objections made, which seemed to him
ridiculous. He showed his impatience too much, and
answered with a haughtiness which gave displeasure. He
will correct himself, for this manner is not good ; but in the
truth, patience fails one at times, and it seems to me I
should do as he does."
Some days after she writes :
" M. Fouquet entered the Chamber this morning, and was
interrogated about the city rates. He was very badly
FOUQUET. 47
attacked, and defended himself very well, although this is
one of the most dangerous places of the whole affair.
" I know not what good angel warned him that he had
been too proud. He corrected himself of his pride to-day, as
the others corrected themselves of their bows to him."
2d December. " Our dear and unfortunate friend spoke
for two hours this morning, so well that several could not
help openly admiring him. M. Eenard, among the rest,
said, ' This man is incomparable ; he never spoke so well
in Parliament, he never was more collected.' It was again
on the subject of the 24,000. . . . God grant that my last
letter may tell you that which I ardently desire. Farewell,
dear sir. Ask our solitary [Arnauld] to pray to God for
our poor friend."
She describes a little incident which is slight enough
in itself, but which enlists the reader's sympathy.
" L'Abbd d'Effiat bowed to Fouquet in court. Fouquet
said, ' Sir, I am your very humble servant,' as he returned
the bow with that fixed and smiling expression we all know
so well."
Meanwhile the queen-mother is dying, and the trial is
postponed. Madame de Serigne breaks off her account
of Fouquet, and describes the administration of the
viaticum.
" It was the most magnificent and the saddest thing in the
world to see the king and all the Court with tapers, and a
thousand torches, going to fetch and to carry back the holy
sacrament. It was received with an infinity of lights. The
queen made an effort to raise herself, and took it with a devo-
tion which melted all the bystanders to tears. It was not
without difficulty that she had been brought to this : only the
king could make her hear reason ; to every one else she said
she would communicate, but not for death."
48 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE".
Madame de Sevigne returns to her prisoner :
9th December. " I assure you these days are very long,
and uncertainty is an overwhelming thing. ... In the depths
of my heart I have a little shred of hope, I know not whence
it comes or whither it goes : it is not enough to let me sleep
in peace. I was speaking yesterday to Madame du Plessis of
all this business. I can only meet those with whom I can
speak of it, and who are with me in feeling. She hopes as I
do, without knowing the reason why."
17th December. "You are weary, my poor friend; we
also are weary. I was sorry to have told you that judg-
ment was to be given on Tuesday, for, not hearing any news,
you must have imagined all was lost, notwithstanding
which, we still retain all our hopes. Every one is interested
in this great affair speaking of little else, reasoning, draw-
ing conclusions ; people count chances on their fingers, melt
with pity, with apprehension, hoping, hating, admiring ;
some of us are sad, some of us are overwhelmed. In short,
my dear sir, the state in which we live is an extraordinary
one, but the resignation and courage of our dear sufferer are
almost more than human."
One of Madame de SeVigne's biographers says, that in
the interest a woman takes in a man who has loved her,
there is always something of love. It may he so ; but
a love which does not shrink from comforting the dis-
grace of an old friend is not one to be ashamed of.
Here is the outburst of warm-hearted sympathy :
Saturday. "Thank God, sir, and praise Him, our poor
friend is safe. Thirteen votes were on M. d'Ormesson's side,
and nine on that of St Hilaire. I am so happy, I am be-
side myself."
On the following Sunday she writes again :
" I was dying for fear another than I should have given
SENTENCE. 49
you the pleasure of hearing the good news. My courier
does not seem to have hurried, although he told me when he
started that he should not rest before reaching Livry. How-
ever, he assures me he was first to reach you. How coir,
forting this news must have been to you ! What inconceiv-
able pleasure do the moments bring, in which our hearts
and minds are relieved from such terrible suffering !
" It will be long before I recover from the happiness I
felt all yesterday. In truth, it was too complete, I could
hardly contain myself."
It would be easy to go on multiplying extracts from
this vivid and lifelike description ; but this is the story of
Madame de Sevigne, and not of Fouquet, the great surin-
tendant. The end of the trial is well known. Sainte
Beuve quotes Pelisson's l noble outburst in his chief's
defence, and La Fontaine's touching line, " Et c'est etre
innocent que d'etre malheureux ; " but in the eyes of
Louis XIV., to be unfortunate was to be guilty. As
we read in our letters, the first joy of Fouquet's friends
over his supposed safety was great. Banishment for
life and confiscation of property seemed scarcely a pun-
ishment after their many apprehensions. But they had
not sufficiently taken into consideration the royal pre-
rogative, by which Louis was able to add lifelong soli-
tary imprisonment to disgrace, confiscation, and exile;
and Fouquet, at fifty years of age, separated from his wife
and children and aged mother, was carried off by the
king's command to the castle of Pignerolles, on the con-
fines of Piedmont. Just before his death, after a cap-
tivity of sixteen years, he was allowed to see his wife
once more, and it was even hoped that his broken health
1 Pelisson was also sent to the Bastille, and also remembered by a
faithful friend, Mademoiselle de Scudery.
F.C. XIII. D
50 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
might somewhat relax the severity of his treatment ; but
he died before any change had been made. Time had
passed, and the keenness of his friends' sympathy had
been blunted, but he was still remembered with warm
affection and regard. "Whatever his faults may have
been, says Sainte Beuve, Fouquet had in him the true
fibre of humanity : he could touch its spring in others,
and they would answer to him.
Fouquet being disposed of, his nymphs dispersed in
tears (pleurez Nymphes de Vaux\ his music silenced,
his splendours forgotten, it seems time that other festiv-
ities should distract us. While the cheerless years pass
wearily for the prisoner, we may read dazzling accounts
of the splendours of the Court, of masks, of triumphal
receptions, of varied entertainments, of marriages and
pageants ; of a young and brilliant Court brimful of life,
of high spirits and amusements and self-indulgence. The
Queen Eegent was dead, after horrible torture heroically
endured : only young people were left to make merry.
51
CHAPTEE IX.
RABUTINAGE.
DURING all this time, while Fouquet's letters carried so
much talk and scandal, in which Madame de S6vigne
herself was not spared, no one took her part more warmly
than her second cousin, Bussy de Rabutin, whose tes-
timony in her favour is the more to be relied upon
because, for some years past, a coldness had existed be-
tween them. They had been warm friends. It was
Madame de Sevignd herself who, as we have said, in-
vented the word Rabutinage, to express the family ties
and the sympathy which bound them together. " I have
been touched by your letters" (to the king), she says,
writing to Bussy. " It seems to me that they should
have the same effect upon our master as upon me ; and
yet he is not called Eabutin, as I am." In this same
letter, written in 1668, she recapitulates the causes of
their bitter quarrel. It was an old one, which had
begun ten years before, when Madame de SeVigne* was a
young widow, and her children children still. The
quarrel was about money. Bussy had asked his cousin
for a loan, which was delayed ; and in his irritation he
had published a satirical portrait of her, not only ridicul-
52 MADAME DE SEVIGNE".
ing her virtues, but accusing her of vice under a prudish
exterior. This calumny was printed, not by Bussy him-
self, but by a woman to whom he had given it. Madame
de Sevigne felt it keenly. Ten years passed before the
coiisins were really reconciled.
" I see," she writes, in a retrospective letter of expostula-
tion and forgiveness, " that you are ill informed of the news
from these parts, my cousin. Learn then from me that it is
not the custom here to accuse me of faithlessness to my
friends. I have many other faults, as Madame de Bouillon
says, but not that one, and you may erase this count from
the list of my failings."
Then she reverts to the original quarrel :
" We are near to each other," she says, " and of the same
blood ; we suit each other, we like each other ; we are inter-
ested in one another's fortunes. You spoke to me of advanc-
ing money to you upon the ten thousand pieces you were to
receive from M. de Chalon's succession. You say that I re-
fused you ; I say I lent you the money : for you well know,
and our friend Corbinelli is my witness, that in my heart I
only wished to comply with your request ; and while we
were seeking the consent of Neucheze to allow our names to
be inserted in the deeds, in order to be eventually repaid,
impatience seized you."
It is easy to imagine that the Bienbon, a methodical
and orderly man, might insist upon such due formal-
ities, for Bussy's character was in itself no guarantee for
repayment. Bussy the suspicious declared, however,
that it was all a pretext for refusing. He could not wait,
moreover ; the money was wanted for his equipment be-
fore starting on a campaign. He turned to another
woman, Madame de Montglas, who had apparently no
Abbe to restrain her, and who pawned her diamonds and
BUSSY. 53
raised the necessary sum. Then Bussy joined his com-
pany, full of his resentment against Madame de Sevigne
" amie jusqu'a la bourse" he calls her ; and when, a
year afterwards, to amuse Madame de Montglas, he
wrote his history of the ' Loves of the Gaules,' contain-
ing satirical portraits of all the chief persons of the day,
the cruel attack upon Madame de Serigne appeared.
" At last the day came," says the lady, " the unhappy day
when I read for myself, with my own ' ill-matched eyes,' that
which I had refused to believe in. If horns had started from
my head I should have been less amazed. I read and re-
read that cruel portrait. I might have been amused with it
had it been written of another person than me, by another
than you. . . . To be in every one's hands ; to find one's
self in print, the laughing-stock of the Provinces, where such
things do irreparable injury ; to be on every book-shelf to
receive this cruel pain, and from whom ? I will not dwell
longer upon all my reasons for suffering : you have good
sense, and I am sure a quarter of an hour's reflection will
make you see it all, and feel as I do. . . .
" This is what I wanted to say to you once in my life, and
I entreat you to erase from your mind all idea that it is I
who am to blame. Keep this letter and read it, if ever the
fancy takes you to disbelieve me, and be just to us both, as
you would be were you judging of something happening
between two other persons, own that you have cruelly
offended the friendship between us, and I am disarmed."
Madame de SeVigne* may well have been disarmed by
Bussy's repentance, which was generous and complete.
It will be as well to give his own words :
" I was in the wrong, but the resentment I afterwards felt
towards her was the height of my injustice. I shall never
blame myself enough for having offended the prettiest woman
in France my near relation, whom I had always loved, and
54 MADAME DE SEYtGNE".
whose friendship I never had reason to doubt. It is a stain
on my life that I tried indeed to obliterate, when the surin-
tendant was arrested, by loudly taking the part of the Mar-
quise against those who would have confounded her with the
mistresses of that Minister. Not only generosity but truth
impelled me to act in this way. Before embarking on the
Marquise's defence, I consulted Le Tellier, who, except the
king, alone had seen the letters in Fouquet's casket. He
told me that those written by the Marquise were the letters
of a friend with no little wit, and that they had delighted
the king far more than all the sentimental nullities of the
rest. The surintendant had been greatly to blame when he
mixed up friendship with so much love-making. The Mar-
quise was well pleased by my defence. Her kind heart and
her near relationship both caused her to forgive me, and
since that time (which also was that of my disgrace) her
affection for me rekindled ; and except for some explana-
tions, and some little reproaches which a painful remem-
brance drew from her, there are no marks of friendship
which I have not received from her since then, nor of grati-
tude that I have not tried to show, and that I shall not owe
her for the rest of my life. We resumed our friendship in
the first year of my exile."
This is quoted from a printed note to his memoirs.
"Writing to his cousin in private, he dwells and not
without some justice on the displeasure it caused him
when the only person of his blood whom he loved in
all the world abandoned him in an affair of honour in
which she ran no risk :
"I own," he says, "that I had then as much hatred for
you as I had felt affection before. It is ever so ; and if I
had gone no further, you would never have washed yourself
free from the stain of abandoning your friend and kinsman
in his need ; but my after-conduct effaced your fault."
DUPLIQUE AND TRIPLIQUE. 55
She sends him, in return, what she terms a duplique
to his replique an answer to his reply, which is con-
clusive, but not easy to translate :
" Oil diantre," says the lady. " Would you have had me
find twelve or fifteen thousand francs 1 Do you think I
kept them in a money-hox ? Unless the Abbe de Coulanges
had been my surety, I could not have raised the quarter of
a crown, and he would do nothing without this Burgundian
security, whether necessary or not."
" The day after receiving this letter from the Marquise,"
says the Count, " I answered as follows : ' No one can be less
capable of triplique than I am, my fair cousin. Why, then,
do you oblige me to it ? T gave myself up from the first. I
asked for life ; you wish to slay me helpless on the ground,
is not this somewhat inhuman ? Dare then, petite brutale,
to strike a man who throws himself at your feet, who con-
fesses his fault, and who prays for forgiveness.' "
Then comes a pleasant epistle from the lady :
" Rise, Count ! I do not wish to kill you on the spot. If
you wish it, take up your sword to resume the combat. But
it seems better still that I should grant you your life, and
that we should live in peace. Only own to the truth that
is all I ask. This is a friendly enough condition. You can
no longer call me, with any justice, 'petite brutale.'' "
Then she gaily concludes her letter :
" Farewell, Count ! Now that I have vanquished you, I
shall tell every one that you are the bravest man in France,
and describe our encounter on the day when I speak of single-
handed fights. My daughter sends you her compliments.
The good opinion you have of her fortunes consoles us a
little."
This is the end almost the end of the quarrel.
Bussy's answers seem to have delayed. The lady pun-
56 MADAME DE
ishes him with a couple of delightful fanciful scoldings.
She fears that, with all the best intentions in the world,
she may have killed him outright (not being accustomed
to handle a weapon). This is the only reason which she
can accept for his not having answered ; and then again,
has he not received her letter granting him quarter?
She was far from wishing to slay him on the ground ;
she was expecting to hear from him after this noble
action. " You never thought of an answer," she says,
reproachfully ; " you were content to rise, take up your
sword, and walk away, never intending, I hope, to use it
against me any more." And so the two make friends,
perhaps, as Mesnard says, " with a more tender and
serious feeling on Bussy's side than he had ever ex-
perienced in his life before." He was alone now
deserted by many, embittered by disappointment and
broken hopes a man of boundless ambition and vanity,
doomed to failure and inaction. In his loneliness her
friendship and the warmth of her generous heart must
have endeared her to him far more than the sprightly
charm of her wit.
57
CHAPTER X.
THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN FRANCE.
ONE of Madame de Sevigne's letters to Eabutin con-
tains the compliments of the prettiest girl in France.
"The name pleases me well enough," says the mother, "but
I confess that I am somewhat tired of doing its honours."
Madlle. de Sevigne was born in 1646, and was con-
sequently about 22 years of age at the time. There is
no mention of her in her mother's early letters, and all
that we know of her childhood consists of some few
allusions to it in the Marquise's later correspondence.
In one letter Madame de Sevigne wonders at her own
courage in having had the " barbarity " to send her little
girl to a convent. " They told me it was necessary for
your education," she says pathetically, in her own ex-
cuse, and also at the same time pleading the cause of
Madame de Grignan's own children against their mother.
There is also an allusion to a story of a slap on the
cheek, given by little Marguerite de Sevigne" to a youth-
ful companion, who ventured to approach an ugly face
too near her own. " It is to be feared," says her bio-
grapher, " that the not over-judicious parent only laughed
instead of reproving this ebullition." The friend of the
58 MADAME DE SE>IGNE\
family, the Abbe la Mousse (no doubt the Abbe de
Coulanges brought a good deal of clerical society to the
house), used to instruct the young lady, and teach her to
read Descartes ; and he seems to have occasionally re-
monstrated with his pupil on account of her vanity.
" Eemember that all your beauty will turn to dust and
ashes," says the Abb& " Yes," cries the young lady ;
" but I am not yet dust and ashes."
Two centuries ago Mdlle. de Sevigne was a very
beautiful creature as fair as her mother, we are told,
more brilliant, less winning, with more regular features,
with a colder nature. The poets of the time sang the
charms of the two each looking more beautiful for the
reflection of the other's beauty. We hear of Mdlle. de
Sevigne at Court, where she is much praised for an
accomplishment she inherits from her mother. She
danced admirably, and was chosen to figure in the king's
royal ballet with the charming young Madame (whose sad
fate is so touchingly recorded by Madame de Motteville) ;
with Mdlle. de Saint Simon, described by her brother as
"perfectly good and perfectly beautiful" (Madame de
Sevigne takes a less complimentary view of the lady) ;
with Mdlle. de Mortemar, who soon after became Madame
de Montespan ; and with Louise de la Valliere, that pathetic
figure in history. Certain characters in fiction, certain
men and women who have lived, and whose stories have re-
mained to us, will never cease to appeal to our sympathy.
We owe something more than dancing masks to
these years, 1667-68. It was a great epoch in politics
and in literature. Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine, 1 were
1 "A year before Mademoiselle de Sevigne's marriage, La Fontaine
dedicated to her his fable of the Lion amoureux, proving thereby his
MADEMOISELLE DE SEVlGNE". 59
bringing out their greatest works ; critics and poets and
preachers, saints and sinners, were all alike full of life
and energetic interest in this life and the next. The
learned Jansenists were holding their own at Port Eoyal ;
Madame de Sevigne's strong sympathy for them was well
known. Conde and Turenne, those two great rivals, were
leading the king's armies from victory to victory. Even
Louis took his own mysterious part in the march of
events : he did not forget Mazarin's early training, and
played his game, setting one great man against another,
one country's disaster against another, ever keeping in
view the supremacy of the King of France.
Notwithstanding her dancing and her beauty, Mdlle.
de Sevigne's marriage was still a matter of anxiety to her
mother. Once or twice everything had seemed on the
point of being settled, but each time Madame la Marquise
had interfered to break off engagements which did not
appear to her to promise well for the girl's happiness.
Suitors seem to have kept somewhat aloof, and those who
presented themselves were scarcely what the fond mother
could have expected. One young man was stupid and
rich ; another bore a doubtful character, although a Duke.
Other suggestions were made which concerned Mdlle. de
Sevigne's future. The scheming Bussy spoke out quite
openly at the time of La Valliere's decline : the mother
and daughter were happily unconscious of these horrible
suggestions. They went their ways, welcomed by their
friends, enjoying life and its interests. Sometimes they
interest in all that concerned his friends. Le CurS et le mart is a
version in verse of one of Madame de Sevigne's letters, and Madame
de Sevigne's celebrated account of the death of Louvois is a version
in prose of one of La Fontaine's fables, La mart et le mourant."
-J. A.
60 MADAME DE SE*VIGNE".
retired to Livry with the good Abbe ; sometimes they
travelled into Brittany to superintend their domains and
to read their books. The Hotel de Severs was one of
their favourite haunts in Paris : it seems to have been a
second Hotel de Rambouillet. Boileau and Eacine were its
poets ; its mistress was that faithful friend of Fouquet's,
Madame du Plessis Gue"negaud. Here wits and fine
ladies met, and indulged in all sorts of sports and jeux de
societe. Madame de Se'vigne herself took part in some
of the little plays that were performed to amuse the
companies assembled.
One whole autumn she seems to have spent with her
daughter at Fresnes, the country-house of Madame de
Guenegaud. There is a pleasant letter describing the
party assembled there. It is written to Pomponne, then
ambassador at the Court of Stockholm. He would like
to be there, she tells him, and she goes on to write the
moment down.
" M. d'Andilly on my left hand that is to say, on the side
of my heart ; Madame de la Fayette on my right ; Madame
du Plessis is just before me (she is amusing herself by daub-
ing little figures) ; Madame de Motteville a little further on,
meditating profoundly. There are also present our Comte
de Cessac, whom I fear because I hardly know him ; Ma-
dame de Caderousse, and her sister, a newly culled fruit that
you are not acquainted with ; and, above all, Mademoiselle
de Sevigne, coming and going by the dressing-room, flutter-
ing like a firefly. I am assured, sir, that this company would
greatly please you, most of all if you could see in what man-
ner you are remembered here."
In the same way that Mr Huxley, or some other great
physiologist, might reconstruct the whole of an extinct
existence from one or two bones still remaining, "Walck-
A COUNTRY-HOUSE PARTY. 61
enaer, 1 the historian of Madame de Sevigne, goes on to
reconstruct the whole society of her day, and to tell the
history of all those by whom she was surrounded. He
gives a comprehensive sketch of each person mentioned,
Madame de la Fayette, the faithful friend of La
Rochefoucauld and of Sevigne'; De Motteville, the up-
right Court lady, the touching historian of Anne of
Austria, and of poor, pathetic, charming Madame, whose
tragedy was yet to come. He gives us the fortunes of
the " newly culled fruit " the young unmarried daugh-
ters of the house ; of the eldest, who was married to the
Due de Caderousse, whose suit Madame de SeVigne" had
repelled ; of De Cessac, who is Madame de Gu^negaud's
relation, not Madame de Sevigne's. Her dislike to him
is apparently well founded, for De Cessac was afterwards
dismissed from Court for cheating at cards. Then OUT
biographer goes on to tell us much more that is not writ-
ten down, how the ladies returned to Paris for the
latter part of the autumn ; how they saw the " Misan-
thrope" played, and witnessed the success of "Andro-
maque," that lovely tragedy, even then more popular
than the history of the great Cid himself. He de-
scribes a letter of Mdlle. de Sevigne's, and its fastening
of rose-coloured ribbon, sealed with a device, Hpiu grato
nasconde. He even tells us who presented this device
to the fair Marguerite ; and so goes on patiently and
almost marvellously, exhausting the facts which are to
be deduced from the faint, quaint, fast -fading signs
which remain after two hundred years are past.
Meanwhile the glorious conquests of Louis XIV. were
echoing far and wide ; their echoes were drowning the
1 The work of Hypolite Babon should also be mentioned here.
62 MADAME DE siVIGNE".
tinkling of the guitars, and their victories were bringing
the usual epilogues of pain, and tears, and parting.
" Almost every one," says Madame de Sevigne, in one of
these letters to Pomponne, " is in misery ahout brother or
husband ; for, notwithstanding all our success, there is always
somebody being killed or wounded. For me who am ever
hoping that I have some future son-in-law engaged with the
rest, I wish for the general safety of all the chevaliers."
This son-in-law is her chief preoccupation and interest.
Then at last conies the personage so long expected,
discussed, and dwelt upon ; perhaps to English ears the
news is somewhat crudely expressed. She writes to
Bussy, to whom she is in the act of being reconciled :
"I must tell you something which, without doubt, will
give you pleasure. It is, that the prettiest girl in France is
to marry, not the best-looking youth, but one of the most
honest men in the kingdom M. de Grignan, whom you
have long known. All his wives are dead, so as to make
room for your cousin ; and by extraordinary good fortune,
his father and his son as well. So that being richer than
he ever was before, and moreover, by birth and standing,
and by his good qualities, all that we could wish for, we
make no such bargains as are customary, but trust to the
two families that have passed before us. M. de Grignan
himself seems well pleased with our alliance."
Marriage must have been an everyday affair to
Grignan, after his several experiences. Mdlle. de
Sevigne" was somewhat perturbed, and would, it is
said, have gladly put off the wedding. De Retz was
also of her mind, and greatly troubled by the confi-
dence which Madame de SeVigne showed in her son-
in-law's solvency. It is true he had land and high
lineage, and both his first wives had brought him
MOTHER-IN-LAW. 63
ample dowries ; but he was a man of expensive habits
and involved estates. "We are told that he had to raise
money even to pay the expenses of his second marriage
with Mdlle. du Puy du Fou et de Champagne. His
first wife had been also an heiress Angelique Clarisse
d'Angennes. She was a daughter of the incomparable
Arthenice; but this lady's fortune seems to have been
secured to her two daughters ; and so it came to pass
that of Mdlle. de Sevigne's ample dot, 180,000 livres
were to go at once to pay the bridegroom's debts. In vain
did the Cardinal utter his warnings. Madame de SeVigne
is not the first mother-in-law whose enthusiasm for her
son-in-law has known no delays or precautions, and they
evidently liked each other's society. She used to laugh
gaily at his jokes and his irregular features. She called
him Le grand Matou, because of his tuft of hair ; but, at
the same tune, she declared that he was " the most desir-
able of husbands, and of divine society." He was an
honourable man, though inclined to extravagance ; brave,
accomplished, and of easy temper. At the time of his
marriage he was Lieutenant-General in Languedoc ; later
he was appointed to a still higher post. De Grignan
was near forty, and very plain, as has been said, but of
good figure and excellent understanding, an honest
man, noble, polite, " knowing what was due to himself,"
says Saint Simon.
The contract was signed on the 27th of January 1669,
and on the 29th the marriage took place. Madame de
Sevigne" notes that it is the day of Saint Francis de Sales.
The wedding seems to have been a very brilliant affair,
and the names of the guests echo with the clang of ances-
tral dignities. Monteils, Adhemars, Grignans in differ-
64 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".
ent combinations, or all three in one; Kochefoucaulds,
Polignacs, Simianes, Harcourts, De Brancas on the
side of the bridegroom. The ladies' roll is less impos-
ing ; for the Sevigne"s, noble as they were, and of ancient
race, had lost many of their chiefs, and belonged to the
losing side in politics. They had little interest, and had
formed no great alliances of late. De Retz, their most
powerful ally, was in disgrace ; Bussy, the head of the
Chantals, was exiled from Paris; the young Baron de
Sevigne never attained to the dignities which should
have been his by right of descent.
He was not present at his sister's wedding, but left
La Mousse as his representative. The young man was
away on a chivalrous adventure. He had joined the ill-
fated crusade headed by La Feuillade, which started to
fight the Turks in Candia. The expedition was entirely
composed of volunteers, of the noblest families, who
took arms as privates in this sacred cause. De Sevigne
belonged to the company commanded by Saint Paul,
who was afterwards killed at the passage of the Ehine.
Young Sevigne had consulted the bellicose Bussy, the
Cardinal de Retz, and La Rochefoucauld, who had each
their own reasons for advising him to go. When all
was settled he told his mother, and the poor soul had to
accept his determination. His word was given ; it was
too late to retract.
Saint Simon is undoubtedly hard upon the young
Baron, whom he describes as not so much a man of wit
as a man modelled upon a wit ; and who says that of the
charm and abundance of his mother, and the frigid polish
of his sister, he had made an awkward mixture. Saint
Simon, however, allows that he was a good and honest
CHARLES DE SE"VIGNl 65
luan; it would seem impossible not to feel a genuine
todmiration for Charles de Sevigne's warm-hearted gener-
osity and nobleness of nature. His love for his mother
"was of that pure and unselfish quality, seeking not its
own, not envious. His own rights never seem to trouble
him ; his second place he accepts with a generous sweet-
ness. I confess that, with all my admiration for that
charming mother, I cannot forgive her entirely for doing
such scant justice to her son's tender and honourable na-
ture. The young Baron's early follies must have recalled
his father's lamentable career to her mind, and blinded
her to the son's nobler qualities. One episode in the
young man's life must indeed have given a sickening
pang to his mother's heart, and may partly account for
the strange difference in her feeling for her children.
In early life Charles de Sevigne fell under that same
fatal spell of Ninon de 1'Enclos's influence which had
first ruined Madame de Sevigne's home happiness. But
Charles de Sevigne was a different man from his father.
He had heart and reality of feeling. Charles had all
the heart, all the depth of feeling in which his father
had been wanting. His letter to his sister, written soon
after their mother's death, is one of the most touching
and generous ever penned.
" If it should be true," he says, " that there was some more
tender feeling in our mother's heart for you than for me, can
you believe in good faith, my dearest sister, that I should
deem it a fault in her that you should be more lovable than
I ? And as to her fortune, be it want of luck or of merit,
mine has not been such as to call for an extra portion.
Enjoy quietly and in peace that which you owe to my
mother's affection and goodwill. Even if it were in my
power to interfere (and the mere thought of it fills me with
F.C. XIII. E
66 MADAME DE SE'VIGXE'.
horror), I should look upon myself as a monster if I had the
slightest intention of so doing. Three parts of my life are
run ; I have no children of my own, and you have given me
some I tenderly love. If I could wish to be more rich, it
would only be so far as your children are concerned."
All this was long, long after the times of which we are
treating.
The Grignan marriage was in 1669, and did not go
off without some contretemps. As usual, there is an
episode with Bussy, who seems to have been justly
offended by the coldness and incivility of the Conite de
Grignan on the occasion, and refuses to sign the contract
or to write his congratulations. Madame de Sevigne is
determined to keep everybody good friends. She per-
suades, entreats, and explains difficulties away. " With
what good grace," says M. Mesnard, " does she abuse
every privilege of a woman ! " " You are right in that in
which anybody else would be wrong," says Bussy, yielding
as usual to her entreaties. M. de Grignan also had to
yield to her wishes, when, less than a year after his mar-
riage, his governorship was transferred from Languedoc to
Provence, and it became necessary for him at once to as-
sume his position. He left his wife in Paris under her
mother's care. Madame de SeVigne was determined to
keep her daughter, and her earliest letters to Grignan
concern Madame de Grignan and her health, and the baby
born some months after his departure. The grandmother
is triumphant, and the mother-in-law still more so.
" Have I not given you the most charming wife in the
world 1 " she cries. " Is it possible to be more well behaved,
more notable ? can you be more tenderly loved, could any-
body have more Christian sentiments ? . . . Your wife
still complains bitterly of all the days that we have detained
GOOD ADVICE. 67
her here, and says seriously that it is cruel to have separ-
ated her from you. One would think that it was for our own
pleasure that we had sent you off two hundred leagues."
" Do not let us speak of this woman," she writes again ;
" we love her beyond all reason. She is very well ; and I am
writing to you to-day on my own private account. I want
to speak to you of M. de Marseille, and to entreat you, by all
the confidence you have in me, to follow my advice in your
conduct towards him. I know what the Provinces are, and
the pleasure people take in encouraging divisions there. I
assure you that time or other reasons have changed his feel-
ing. These few days past he is greatly softened ; and if only
you would not treat him as an enemy, you would not find
one in him. Let us take him at his word until he has done
something against it. Nothing is more likely to change good
feeling than to show doubt ; it is often enough to be suspect-
ed of being an enemy to become one in fact. Confidence, on
the contrary, leads to right doing ; we are touched by the
good opinion of others, nor does one easily resolve to lose it.
Open your heart, and you will perhaps be surprised by the
result."
These letters are full of good sense, of interest and
solicitude, as well as of tender absurdity where her
daughter is concerned : few people are more clear-sighted
than Madame de Sevigne when she is not rapturously
gazing at Madame de Grignan's perfections. Her ad-
miration for her daughter may have been excessive,
her love for her is far more touching, and must come
home to all who have ever loved any one else, or been
loved themselves. Compliments in which we are ex-
pected to agree may easily jar upon us, but sucli tender,
unselfish affection and devotion can only touch our
truest and most natural sympathy.
68
CHAPTEE XI.
A ROMANTIC PRINCESS.
THE mother and daughter were still together, when an
event took place which might be deemed less surprising
now than at a time when caste was worshipped with that
fervour which still exists among oriental nations, where
it forms part of a religious creed. In Madame de Se-
vigne's day, precedence in this world and in the next
were not disentangled ; and even in our own enlightened
times the two things do not seem set quite apart in peo-
ple's minds. Madame de Grignan, being still at home,
is not yet a correspondent : M. de Coulanges, the little
fat cousin, is the person upon whom she pours out
her delightful abundance of interest, and emotion, and
excitement.
" PARIS, Monday, December 15, 1670.
" I am going to tell you of the most astonishing thing,
the most surprising the most marvellous the most mirac-
ulous the most triumphant the most bewildering, unheard-
of the most singular, extraordinary, unbelievable, unfore-
seen event ; the greatest, the smallest, the rarest, the com-
monest, the most vibrating, until this day the most secret ;
the most brilliant and enviable; in short, a thing of which
MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENS1ER. 69
one finds but one example in past ages, a thing which ice
in Paris cannot believe ; how, then, will you credit it at
Lyons ? . . . a thing which may happen on Sunday, and
which perhaps, on Monday, will not have been done. I can-
not make up my mind to tell you, try to find it out for
yourself. I give you three chances. Do you give it up ?
"Well, then, I must tell you : M. de Lauzun is to be married
at the Louvre on Sunday guess to whom. I give you
four, I give you ten, I give you a hundred to one that you
do not guess. I hear Madame de Coulanges saying, ' Here
is a pretty mystification ! It is Madame de la Valliere.' No,
madame ; you are wrong. ' Then, I suppose it is Mademoi-
selle de Retz.' Nothing of the sort, you country lady. ' Oh,
indeed ! do you think us so very dense ? It must be Ma-
demoiselle Colbert.' Still less. ' Then, surely Mademoi-
selle de Cre"qui.' You are quite out of it. I see I shall have
to tell you at last. He is to be married on Sunday, at the
Louvre, with the sanction of the king, to Mademoiselle
Mademoiselle de Mademoiselle Guess again. He
marries Mademoiselle, 011 my word, my sacred word,
Mademoiselle the great Mademoiselle Mademoiselle, the
daughter of the late Monsieur the granddaughter of Henry
IV. Mademoiselle d'Eu ! Mademoiselle de Dombes ! Ma-
demoiselle de Montpensier ! Mademoiselle d'Orleans ! Ma-
demoiselle, first cousin to the king ! Mademoiselle destined
for a throne ! "
Madame de SeVigne" scarcely did justice at first to the
true-hearted, grotesque, one-idea'd princess, who was
ready to sacrifice her throne, her fortune, her high posi-
tion, for the sake of a selfish schemer, 1 who had been
able for a time to conceal his interested and sordid
motives. She attributed every high quality to Lauzun
1 " Lauzun, in order to fascinate, chose the strange method of inso-
lence and scorn. His nephew afterwards used the same successful
means to charm the daughter of the Regent." J. A.
70 MA.DAME DE SE'VTGNE'.
every delicate scruple; adored him; nearly broke her
heart when the king retracted his sanction ; was faithful
to him for years and years ; and finally, poor soul, having
attained her dream, woke up from it as from a nightmare.
Madame de Sevigne, who began by laughing, ended in
sympathy with the poor princess.
" December 19, 1670.
" That which is described as dropping from the clouds is
what happened yesterday at the Tuileries ; hut I must go
farther back than yesterday. You are still in all the joyful
transports and raptures of the princess and her happy lover.
On Monday the thing was declared, as I told you. All Tues-
day went by in talk, in Avonder, in compliments. On Wed-
nesday Mademoiselle made a formal donation to M. de Lau-
zun, in order that he should have the necessary titles, names,
and adornments with which to figure in the marriage-con-
tract, which was drawn up that same day. She gave him
(just to begin with) four duchies : the county of Eu, which is
the first peerage in France, and which confers the first rank ;
the Duchy of Montpensier, of which he bore the name all
day; the Duchy of St Fargeau ; the Duchy of Chatellerault,
all of which are computed at twenty-two millions. Thurs-
day morning that is to say, yesterday Mademoiselle hoped
that the king would have signed the contract, as he had pro-
mised to do ; but about seven o'clock in the evening, the
queen, Monsieur, and several barbons persuaded his Majesty
that this affair was doing harm to his reputation ; so that,
having sent for Mademoiselle and M. de Lauzun, the king
declared to them, in the presence of Monsieur le Prince, that
he positively forbade their thinking any more of this marriage.
M. de Lauzun received this order with all the respect, the
submission all the courage and the despair which so great
a catastrophe deserved. As for Mademoiselle, following her
humour, she burst into tears, into cries, with violent distress
end excessive complainings : all day she has kept her bed,
TOOK MADEMOISELLE. 71
and would take nothing but broth. . . . What a subject for
romance or for tragedy ! above all, what a fine subject for us
to discuss, and to speak of, without ceasing ! That is what
we all do, day and night, evening and morning, unendingly,
unceasingly, and we hope that you will do the same."
So Madame de Sevigne tells the story at first. Later
on, having again seen the Princess, who sent for her,
and poured out her full heart, the not hard-hearted
confidante is melted and touched by the poor lady's
unfeigned misery.
" She called me to her, embraced me, bathed me in her
tears," writes Madame de Sevigne. " She said, ' Alas ! do you
remember all that you said to me yesterday ? Ah, cruel
prudence ! Ah, prudence ! prudence ! ' She made me weep,
so bitterly did she weep herself. I have returned to see
her twice : she is in great affliction, and has treated me all
along as a person who Avould sympathise with her sufferings.
Nor has she been mistaken. I have felt on this occasion
what people rarely feel for persons of so exalted a rank.
This is between us two and Madame de Coulanges ; for, as
you may imagine, such a confidence would be ridiculous
with others. Adieu."
Tragedies, comedies, farces, elegies, and marriage -epi-
thalamiums quickly follow each other, as we read in our
volume. Of poor Mademoiselle's long fidelity ; of Mon-
tespan's enmity to Lauzun, and his many years' incar-
ceration ; of the sacrifices made by the romantic lady,
and the king's consent to accept the enormous bribes
she offered for her lover's release, Mademoiselle has
herself given the history in her memoirs. It is a story
at once pathetic, laughable, and genuinely truthful.
Madame de Grignan had been married for many
months, and had not yet visited her own home. Mon-
72 MADAME DE sviGX&
sieur de Grignan was still absent in his province, nor able
to leave his post. Even Madame de Sevigne" could find
no further excuse for detaining her daughter. Madame
de Grignan had recovered from her confinement : her
baby was now some months old. In those days it
seemed the natural thing for mothers to separate from
their infants, however reluctant they might be to part
from their married daughters. The letters written after
Madame de Grignan's first departure are full of all the
anguish of parting. The poor desolate mother is alone
for the first time. The home is empty, except for the
little nursling baby left to keep her company.
" My trouble would not be what it is if I could describe
it to you," she says ; "but I shall not try to write it down.
In vain I look for my dear child. I do not find her, and
every step she takes divides us farther and farther asunder.
. . . I went to Ste Marie crying, dying : it seemed to
me that my heart and my soul were being torn from me.
Indeed it was so in truth. I asked to be alone, and they
led me into a room belonging to Madame de Housset, where
they lit a fire. Agnes kept looking at me without a word.
There I remained five hours without ceasing to weep ; my
thoughts seemed to kill me. I wrote to Monsieur de Grignan.
You may imagine how I wrote. Then I went to Madame
de la Fayette, who renewed my pain by the sympathy she
showed for it. She was alone, sick saddened by the death
of a sister, a nun. She was as I could have wished to find
her. Then came Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld. They only
spoke to me concerning you. ... At eight o'clock I
came back from Madame de la Fayette ; but as I returned
to this place ah ! do you understand what I felt when I
climbed the steps ? There was the room where I always
entered. I found the doors open wide, but everything un-
furnished, disarranged, and your little daughter in the place
of my own. Do you understand all that I suffered ? The
PREOCCUPATION. 73
awakenings of the night were dark indeed, and in the morn-
ing my spirits were no calmer. You make me again feel
all that it is possible to feel of tenderness ; and if you think
of me, be assured that I also continually am thinking of you.
It is what the devout call an habitual preoccupation ; it is
what one should feel for God : nothing distracts me, for ever
I see that carriage progressing always, which will never come
nearer. 1 I am always on the highroads. Sometimes I fear
lest the carriage may upset : the heavy rains of the last three
days have put me to despair ; the Rhone frightens me
strangely. I have a map before my eyes. I know the places
where you stop : you are at Nevers to-night, on Sunday you
will be at Lyons. Ah, my child ! what would I not give
to see you, to hear you, to enfold you to see you pass by, if
all the rest is too much to ask ! "
Here is a touch of which we must all recognise the
truth :
" I have seen that poor Madame Amelot. She weeps
bitterly. Je m'y connais."
The poor lady is experienced in tears. In this same
letter there is also a tender reproach which hints at
passing difficulties :
" Mechante ! " says the mother, " why do you sometimes
hide from me such precious treasures [of affection] ? You are
afraid I should die of joy ; but do you not fear lest I should
die of displeasure when I imagine the contrary? D'Haque-
ville will bear me witness to the state in which he has
formerly seen me; . . . but let us quit these miserable
remembrances. 5 '
So the letters flow on, full of love and preoccupation,
with a vividness of detail, a tender absorption, which
bears irresistible witness to their genuineness of feeling.
1 " Ce char toujours fuyant," says Ph&dre to her confidante.
74 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".
People have accused Madame de Sevigne of playing a
role, of occasionally posing as the adoring mother ; but
any one who has ever felt, even in part, what is here
described, will recognise the truth and the simplicity
of the many anxieties, preoccupations, quick-changing
emotions, absurd susceptibilities, of a hungry heart.
There seems to have been love enough in this woman
to .make half-a-dozen daughters happy ; perhaps, poor
lady, there was too much for the happiness of one.
Such affection, such absorption, could not be returned
by a cold-blooded person with an irritable temper and
expensive habits, a husband, a huge household, a whole
province to preoccupy her. That Madame de Grignan
should have written so constantly, and preserved her
mother's letters so carefully, gives more assurance of her
merit than all the enthusiastic praises in the correspon-
dence itself, and indeed it seems almost disloyal to the
tender parent pouring out her whole heart to doubt of
her child's merit.
" I am all by myself to-day in my room, where my ill-
humour has brought me. I am weary of everything. It
was a pleasure to me to dine alone, as it is now a pleasure to
write to you without any reason ; but you, alas ! have not
such relief as this. I write on quietly ; but I cannot imagine
that you can read in the same way I cannot see a moment
which you may claim for yourself. I see a husband who
adores you, who is never weary of your company, and who
can scarce believe in his own happiness. There are orations,
infinities of compliments, of civilities, of visits, excessive
honours, which are paid to you ; and to all of this you have
to answer, you are overwhelmed. What does your laziness
do with all this confusion? does it suffer, does it hide away
in some inner closet, and die for fear lest it should not find
YOUE LAZINESS. 75
its proper place ? It waits for you, for some chance moment
in which to remind you, at least, of its existence, and to say
a passing word. ' Alas !' says Laziness, 'have you quite for-
gotten me ? Remember I am your oldest friend that one
which has never abandoned you the faithful companion of
your brightest days, I who consoled you for lost pleasures,
and who sometimes taught you to hate them I who have
prevented you from dying of weariness, and in Brittany, and
when you were laid up. Sometimes your mother disturbed
our pleasures ; but I knew where to find you again. Now I
know not how to behave. These honours, these representa-
tions, will be the death of me if you do not take care.' And
it seems as if you said a little friendly passing word, and
gave some hopes of being more free at Grignan ; but you go
by quickly, and have no time to say much. Duty and reason
surround you, and do not give you one moment's peace. I
myself, who have always respected them, am against them,
as they are against me. ... I assure you, my dear
child, I am continually thinking of you, and every day
I feel what you once said to me, that there are certain
thoughts upon which we dare not dwell we must slide
across them."
She then goes on to recapitulate the parting :
" The closet where I embraced you without knowing what
I did, the church of the Capucins where I went to hear the
Mass, the tears which fell from my eyes to the ground as if
water had been spilt, the convent, Madame de la Fayette,
my return to this house, your room, the night, the morning,
your first letter, and all the others, and all the days, and all
the meetings with those who could enter into my sentiments.
Poor D'Haqueville was the first. I shall never forget the
pity he showed for me. ... I am taking an unfair
advantage of you, my dearest," she says, in conclusion. " I
have allowed myself this letter to-day ; my heart needed it
but I will not make a custom of writing them."
All this is in the first burst of separation. " How
76 MADAME DE SE>IGNE.
much I wish to get a letter from you ! It is nearly
half an hour since I received the last," she writes. Then
she begins to give news again; encloses a letter from
Bossuet M. de Condom, as he was called; goes into
enthusiasm over Bourdaloue's sermon on death ; describes
with interest a thrilling crisis as to who is to present
Mademoiselle with a table-napkin. She can be enter-
taining even though she is in tears.
77
CHAPTER XII.
THK TRAGEDY OF VATEL.
THERE is much truth in a remark of Michelet, who
points out how curiously the pleasant, sprightly mind of
one country lady, writing down second-hand gossip, influ-
ences our impression of an age, of a Court, of which
she knew comparatively little ; whereas the real actors of
those days, who have told their own stories in far less
vivid language, are comparatively forgotten and ignored.
Madame de Sevigne^s glimpses, even though they be but
reflected by her own imagination, are so vivid, that
we are immediately convinced by her account ; and her
tableaux vivants present visions which remain in our
minds, whether or not they were correct. Take the
story of the Court in the chapel, listening to Bourdaloue's
sermon, and the Marechal de Grammont so transported
by the discourse, that he exclaims out loud, " 'S death, he
has the best of it ! " Madame bursts out laughing. The
sermon is interrupted : no one knows what is to happen
next. Madame de Sevigne was no more present on this
occasion than we ourselves ; but nevertheless she takes
us there, and proceeds to moralise upon the event. " I do
not think," she says to her daughter, " from the way in
78 MADAME DE SE'viGXE*.
Avhich you describe your preachers, that it is with admira-
tion that you interrupt them."
Here is another episode which concerns the Marechal :
" I must tell you a little story which will amuse you. It
is quite a true one. The king has lately been dabbling in
verses. Messieurs de St Aignan and Dangeau are giving
him lessons in the art. He made a little madrigal the other
day, with which he himself was not over-delighted. One
morning he said to the Marechal de Grammont, ' Monsieur le
Marechal, I beg of you to look at this little madrigal, and
tell me if you ever read anything so pointless : since it has
been known that I have had a taste for verses, I am over-
whelmed with them.' The Marechal, after reading the
verses, said to the king, ' Sire, your Majesty is a divinely
inspired critic. It is perfectly undeniable that this is the
most stupid and ridiculous madrigal I ever read.' The king
laughed, and said, ' Don't you think that the person who
wrote it must be very fatuous ?' ' Sire, there is no other word
by which to describe him.' ' Well,' said the king, ' I am
delighted at your speaking so openly : it is I who wrote it."
' Ah, Sire, what treason ! let your Majesty give it me back ;
I read it hurriedly.' ' No, Monsieur le Mare'chal ; first feel-
ings are always the best.' The king laughed heartily at
this absurdity, and every one thinks it is the most cruel
little joke to play upon an old courtier. For my part, I, who
always love to make reflections, wish the king would do so
too, and judge from this how little likely he is ever to know
the truth on any subject."
It was in 1671 that Louis XIV. finally determined
upon his campaign against Holland ; and having secured
the consent of Europe to this heroic undertaking, and
wishing to do honour to the great general who was to
take the command, 1 the king graciously accepted an invi-
1 "Although a professed and assiduous courtier, Conde kept up a
THE TRAGEDY OF VATEL. 79
tation to Chantilly, where a fete was to be given in the
forest, the details of which were superintended by the
Due d'Enghien himself ; while Yatel, the general of all
the cooks, was to provide the food. Everything was
arranged with the greatest care and magnificence, every-
thing was going on brilliantly and smoothly, when an
event occurred which cast a gloom over the whole fes-
tivity, and of which the description is best given in
Madame de SeVigne's own words. It was on April 26,
1671, that she writes
" This is not a letter, but an account which Moreuil has
just given me of what happened at Chantilly concerning
Vatel. I wrote to you on Friday that he had stabbed him-
self : this is the story in detail : The king arrived on Thurs-
day evening. The hunt, the lanterns, the moonlight, the
promenading, the collation in a garden of jonquils all was
everything that could be desired. Supper came ; the joint
failed at one or two tables on account of some unexpected
diners. This upset Vatel. He said several times, ' My
honour is lost ; this is a disgrace that I cannot endure.' He
said to Gourville, ' My head fails me ; I have not slept for
twelve nights. Help me to give my orders.' Gourville con-
soled him as best he could. The joint which had failed, not
at the king's table but at the 25th table, haunted his mind.
Gourville told Monsieur le Prince. Monsieur le Prince
went \tp to him in his room and said, ' Vatel, all is well ;
there never was anything so beautiful as the king's supper.'
He answered, ' Monseigneur, your goodness overwhelms me.
I know the joint failed at two tables.' ' Nothing of the
sort,' said Monsieur le Prince ; ' do not disturb yourself, all
is well.' Midnight comes : the fireworks do not succeed; a
cloud overspread them ; they cost sixteen thousand francs.
certain independence of feeling and conduct. He engaged, as an
inheritance from Fouquet, Vatel his superintendent, and Gourville
his man of business." J. A.
80 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
At four o'clock in the morning Vatel wanders about all over
the place : everything is asleep. He meets a small purveyor
with two loads of fish. He asks him, ' Is this all ? ' ' Yes,
sir.' The man did not know that Vatel had sent to all the
seaport towns in France. They wait some time ; the other
purveyors do not arrive. He grows excited ; he thinks that
no more fish will arrive. He finds Gourville, and says to
him, ' Sir, I shall not be able to survive this disgrace. My
honour and reputation are at stake.' Gourville only laughed
at him. Then Vatel goes up to his own room, puts his sword
against the door, and runs it through his heart it was the
third thrust, for he gave himself two wounds which were not
mortal. He falls down quite dead. Meanwhile the fish is
coming in from every side : people are seeking for Vatel to dis-
tribute it ; they reach his room, they clamour, they burst open
the door, they find him lying bathed in his blood. Monsieur
le Prince is hurriedly summoned ; he is in utter despair.
Monsieur le Due burst into tears ; it was upon Vatel that his
whole journey to Burgundy depended. Monsieur le Prince
told the king, very sadly, ' It was said to be the excess of his
own code of honour.' They praised him ; they praised and
they blamed his courage. The king said that for five years
he had delayed his coming, because he knew the extreme
trouble his visit would cause. . . . But it was too late
for poor Vatel. Gourville, however, tried to repair the loss
of Vatel, and the loss was repaired. The dinner was excel-
lent ; so was the luncheon. They supped, they walked, there
were games, there was hunting, the scent of jonquils was
everywhere ; it was an enchanted scene."
This letter was written on a Sunday, and on the fol-
lowing Wednesday Madame de Sevigne herself left Paris
for a few days, and went to Livry, stopping on the way
at Pomponne in order to see the venerable Arnauld
d'Andilly, the father of Pomponne, the Minister the
"brother of the celebrated Mere Angelique of Port Royal.
GRIGNAN KEGINA. 81
He was a wise old man of upwards of eighty years of
age, who appears to have received her with great kind-
ness, and almost fatherly interest ; to have talked to her
about herself, her own state of mind ; to have urged her
with much earnestness to think more seriously of serious
things. She was a pretty pagan, he told her ; she had
an idol in her heart, and her idolatry was no less dan-
gerous than any other. She had not a word to answer
him with, she writes; but the conversation made no
difference in her convictions. After a few days spent
at Livry, where the idol is not forgotten, Madame de
Sevigne returns to Paris, and receives a letter from
Madame de Grignan, written at Marseilles, which fills
her with delight.
Madame de Grignan's progress homewards is like that
of a queen. She is the chief lady in Provence, and is
entertained everywhere with almost royal honours. This
mode of life seems to be agreeable to the belle Made-
lonne. She is feted everywhere, welcomed with bril-
liant hospitality; to the sound of the cannons, the Jwu of
the galley-slaves. Her approach is the signal for com-
pliments and for noises of every description. Out of
politeness to her, the name of Madame de Sevigne is
given as the password for the day ; all of which she
seems to have described at length, as well as her own
beauty, and the junketing and the feasting, and the
groans of the prisoners sinking day and night under the
weight of their chains. Her mother shudders at the
thought of the prisoners, quotes the line
" E di mezzo d'orrore esce il'diletto "
and then recapitulates her daughter's letter in delightful
F.C. xiii. F
82 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE".
admiration, and winds up with a fervent wish that she
could present her compliments to the captain-general of
the galleys.
It is impossible not to be struck in all cases by the
acquiescence of people at their ease in the misery and
suffering around them. Madame de Sevigne, with all
her loving heart, was not faultless, and sometimes her
sentences are witty where we should have still more
loved her if she had been unsophisticated ; but her whole
life was surrounded by ceremony and sophistication.
The footman, lady's-maid, luncheon -basket, and rug of
the present, would make but a sorry figure beside the
triumphal processions which escort the travelling mar-
quises and comtesses of those days. When Madame de
Sevigne is leaving Paris for Brittany, she writes :
" I start on Monday. I think you must want to know
my equipage in order to see me pass by, as I watched M.
Busche t!O by. I am travelling with two carriages. I have
seven carriage-horses, one baggage-horse to carry my bed,
and three or four outriders. I shall be in my own open
coach drawn by two beautiful horses. The Abbe will be
sometimes with me. In the other carriage go my son, La
Mousse, and Helene. To this carriage there will be four
horses, with a postilion."
So they go off horses, postilion, Abbes, lady's-maid,
Marquise, and Baron making their leisurely way along
the road that led north to the old chateau near Vitre.
They amuse themselves on the way with readings from
Corneille by the young Baron ; while the Abbes con-
duct the devotional exercises. Then it is described how
Vaillant, the land-steward, had wished to give them a
brilliant reception, and had raised a little army of 1500
THE ABBE FORGETS. 83
men to receive them, all armed, and neatly dressed with
new ribbons to their collars. These people go in orderly
array to wait for the travellers about a mile from the
house. Alas ! nobody appears, although the poor army is
in waiting from early in the morning until late at night,
when, sorry and disappointed, it is disbanded, and re-
turns to its various homes. The Abb6 had mentioned
the wrong day, and then forgot having so done, and the
travellers come up quietly without any reception, and
settle down to their tranquil country life.
CHAPTEE XIII.
FROM THE ROCHERS.
THESE early letters from the Kochers are full of a tran-
quil melancholy freshness which -is not unlike some of the
best of George Sand's pastoral idyls. Can the mother
see these alleys, these devices, this little study, these
Looks, these rooms, without sadness indescribable 1 ? There
are agreeable memories, but others so sweet, so tender,
as to be scarcely supportable. Sometimes she has reveries
in the forest, after which she comes back shaken as by
an attack of fever. Then she begins to look round, to
revive, to describe how her little trees are flourishing in
great beauty, and how the gardener, with sedulous care
and honesty, is training them up as high as the clouds.
Nothing is so lovely as these alleys which have seen her
daughter's infancy.
" Alas ! my child," she says, " how countrified are my let-
ters at present ! Once upon a time I could talk of Paris with
other people ; now you will only have news of me, and yet
my confidence in you is so great that I am persuaded you
v.'ould rather have this news than any other. The company
1 have here pleases me much. Our Abbe is always admir-
able. My son and La Mousse are ready to put up with me,
and I with them. We are always seeking each other ; and
A GEORGIC. 85
when my affairs keep me away from them, they are all in
despair, and think me absurd to prefer a farmer's tale to one
of La Fontaine's. They are every one of them devoted to you,
and are, I believe, about to write to you. For me, I come in
advance ; I do not care to speak to you in a tumult. My
daughter, love me always : my life, my soul, are in your
love. In you are centred all my joys and all my sorrows.
I own to you that all the rest of my life seems to be covered
with shadow and sadness, when I reflect that so much of it
is destined to be spent away from you."
"Farewell," she says, concluding another letter. "I am
cross ; I am bad company. When I shall have received
your letter, my words will come back to me. At bedtime,
when one lies down, one has thoughts which are grey and
brown, as M. de la Rochefoucauld says, and at night they
become black altogether."
Hers is one of those quick and impressionable natures
of which the moods change, for whom the present is
everything; though be it remembered that to faithful
natures this present ever contains the affections which
are an integral part of loving souls : to Madame de
Sevigne" all through her life her daughter was ever
present.
A Whit-Sunday follows the black and brown one.
" Sunday. At last, my child, I breathe freely. I sup
like M. de la Souche. My heart is relieved from a weight
which gave me no rest. I could better endure to be a little
delayed in your remembrance than to bear that horrible
anxiety about your health. But how I repent having writ-
ten all my fears ! It will give you pain while my own is
ended. This is the misfortune of absence. Alas ! it is not
the only one. And so you are blooming ! What ! not pale,
not thin, not exhausted, like the princess Olympia! Ah ! I
am too happy. Amuse yourself ; take care of yourself. I
thank you for dressing yourself."
86 MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
Then she goes back to her original theme that fugue
of separation which haunts her always.
" How true it is," she says, " that we seem to see each
other, to speak to each other, through a thick crape veil !
You at least know the Rochers, and your imagination can
paint us as we are ; but as for nie, I know not where I am.
I have made a Provence for myself a home in Aix per-
haps more beautiful than the one you possess. I can see you
in it ; I can see Grignan too ; but you have -no trees, that
troubles me. I cannot go where you walk. I fear lest the
wind should blow you from off your terrace. If I thought
some whirlwind would carry you off here to me, I would
keep my windows open, and God knows how I would receive
you
i"
80 the lady travels in spirit forwards and backwards
from the unknown Provence to the present Brittany.
Whether or not the lady's imagination embellished
the home of her daughter, it is certain that nothing
could be a more delightful picture than that one of
the life she is leading in her old chateau. It is like the
mise-en-scene of one of Alfred de Musset's most charming
proverbs. Enter the Abb^s, enter the brilliant lady,
enter the Baron with his songs. There is the elder
Abbe, the uncle, with his accounts and counters, carefully
going over. the business items in the study where he
sits ; there is the easy - going and easily persuaded
La Mousse, who was afterwards converted by his own
catechumens, in the library with his books. There is the
smiling Marquise working at her altar-cloth, and listening
with bright eyes to her son's readings and recitals. He
makes her laugh, nor will he let her go on with her
serious course of study. The Baron prefers Rabelais to
P1LOI3. 8 1 /
Nicole, Corneille to Tacitus. He pours out verses, fables,
comedies, which he acts like Moliere, says his mother.
When he is gone they mean to resume their sermons.
As for Paris and the Court, they are already far distant
from her mind : for her only Brittany and Provence
exist ; and she is beginning, so she says, to make the best
of things, to spend her days in some little peace and joy,
after the heartbreaking days of parting through which
she has had to pass. Her son, when he is there, makes
her laugh; and then when she remembers that her
daughter is not there, she goes away to her own room to
weep. But it is not whilst her son is with her that she is
to be pitied, he and the Abbes make up a happy home
together, and brighten her days as they pass. Out of
doors Pilois the gardener is her trusty escort ; he is her
favourite companion, and she prefers his conversation to
that of many who have the title of Chevalier at the Par-
liament of Eennes. She tells her daughter how much
she sees of him, and that they are constantly about to-
gether at all seasons, in wet weather and in sunshine,
consulting, devising new alleys, new improvements, new
inscriptions. The literary fashion of the day seems to
have been to hang sentences and mottoes everywhere,
inside the old halls and outside in the pleasure-grounds,
on the trees as well as the scutcheons. " Sweet inertia,"
says one tree ; " Lovers hate idleness," cries another.
Madame de Sevigne had a fancy for erecting little
summer-houses for new plantations and avenues. She
takes to building, too, and enlarges the chapel for which
she is working the altar-cloth. The neighbours, says
Walckenaer, hearing this, take it for granted that she
loves the place and loves them too, and means to spend
88 MADAME DE SEVIGNE\
her life among them. But it is to be feared that Madame
la Marquise was scarcely deserving of her popularity,
and had no such intention. Sometimes, it is true, she
pays a visit in a carriage with six horses, attended by
her son. Nothing is more pleasant. They seem to fly,
so she declares ; they sing songs along the road. They
are charmed with the Chateau de Fouesnel, where they
call, and with its amiable inhabitants ; but at other times
she complains (in confidence, be it remembered, and
writing privately to her daughter) of the wearisomeness
of tiresome company, and confesses her joy as she sees
the carriagefuls driving off. I have known, and do still
know, some saints who have, I do believe, never grudged
any human being's share of their friendly time and
charity ; but there are not many such, and too many of
us can, alas ! sympathise with Madame de Sevigne" on.
this occasion. Among the neighbours are noble ladies
from Yitre, who call, rejoicing in the strange names of
Bonne foi de Croqueoison and of De Kerborgne. They
appear in short dresses cut high above the instep, which
amuse their hostess. Perhaps at this distance of time it
may be allowed that the petticoats were not unreasonable,
for it seems to have been a rainy season. " Most people
say, After the rain comes the fine weather," writes the
lady; " but we say, After the rain, more rain." Another
neighbour is Mademoiselle du Plessis, who appears and
disappears in the letters. One day we find her declaring
that twelve hundred joints had been roasted on the
occasion of her sister's marriage. " ' Twelve hundred ?
Perhaps you mean twelve, Mademoiselle.' 'No, Ma-
dame ; twelve hundred, or let us say eleven hundred for
fear of exaggeration.' She would not abate a single
THE ENSIGN'S MALICE. 89
chicken," says Madame de Sevigne, who again, on an-
other day, writes, " Here comes Mademoiselle du Plessis.
She bestows upon me the kiss which you remember, and
begs me to show her that part of your letters where you
speak of her. My son is impertinent enough to declare
to her before me that you always mention her with much
pleasure ; and then he goes on to say to me, ' Show her
the letter, Madame, that she may be assured of this.' I
turn crimson, as you do when you think of the sins of
others. I am obliged to tell a thousand fibs, to say that
I have burnt the letter. Such are among the malices of
our ensign."
Mademoiselle du Plessis was the daughter of some
quiet neighbours with whom Madame de Sevigne was on
terms of friendly intimacy. The girl appears to have
been singularly plain, ill-mannered, and affected ; and
although apparently devoted to the Marquise, this lady
may have had good reason for mistrusting the sincerity
of somewhat overdone professions. Perhaps, however,
when writing to her daughter (and as other mothers are
apt to do), she laughed with her child, while in her heart
she felt some self-reproach for her own satire.
Besides these humble neighbours there are also more
important personages mentioned. Chief among them are
the Governors of Brittany, the Duke and Duchess de
Chaulnes, who make much of the charming widow. Of
the Duke later records give a cruel portrait. The Duchess
seems to have been an impulsive and sprightly person,
wishing for amusement and also for the company of
Madame de Sevigne. There is a sense of Shake-
spearian life in the mirth-loving companies that come and
go, unexpected, uninvited, laughing, joking, clattering
90 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".
on horseback into the courtyard at the Rochers. At
other times they arrive in disguise. They are like the
people in "As You Like It," and our Lady Eosalind
adds too much to the brightness of the hour to be will-
ingly allowed to hide herself away for long in her old
moss-grown castle. But though she is glad to see them,
she complains to her daughter, not without reason, of
the expense and trouble of so much society, and finds
four or five hundred pounds a great deal to spend on
fricassees. There is something essentially French in the
character of Madame de Sevigne^ in her economies as
well as her expenses, her good sense and her gaiety of
heart.
91
CHAPTEE XIV.
SYLLABUBS, DUCHESSES, ANP HAYMAKERS.
LRITTANY had certain independent rights and privi-
leges of its own in those days, and among them that of
assembling a sort of parliament at Rennes, which was by
way of settling the affairs of the Province. "When these
Etats Generaux are opened, all the country assembles to
do honour to the ancient institution, to enjoy itself, to
feast, to make merry. Madame de Sevigne also joins
the concourse, never having been there before, and is
warmly welcomed. This is her impression of what goes
on. Subsequent events showed, alas ! only too plainly,
how correct her impression was.
" The Etats do not last long," she says ; " they ask what is
the king's will, they themselves say not one word, and all is
done. . . . An infinity of presents given, of pensions
granted, of roads and towns repaired ; fifteen or twenty great
tables constantly spread ; unceasing gambling ; perpetual
balls ; comedies three times a- week ; a great deal of finery,
that is what we mean by the States-General. I am forget-
ting," she adds, "the three or four hundred pipes of wine
which are swallowed ; but though I overlook this trifling
item, others take care to remember it."
92 MADAME DE SE~VIGN&
Madame de Sevigne did not remain with the merry-
makers for any length of time on this first occasion;
and after paying her farewell compliments to Madame
de Chaulnes, came home. All Brittany was tipsy the
day she left; forty gentlemen had dined in the room
beneath hers, and had each drunk forty healths that of
the king coming first and all the glasses being broken
after it. The pretext for all this was intense joy and
extreme gratitude for the king's liberality in returning
25,000 francs out of the present which the province was
compelled to make to the Crown. " Thus the present is
now only 2,250,000 francs," says Madame de Sevigne,
who is not tipsy with gratitude. But she had not
escaped so easily.
" Here I am," she writes a few days later, from Vitre, " in
full county company ; otherwise the whole county would be
at the Rochers. Last Sunday, as soon as I had sealed my
letters, I saw four carriages with six horses in my courtyard,
with fifty gardes on horseback, several chargers led and seve-
ral equerries riding. It was M. de Chaulnes, M. de Rohan, M.
de Lavardin, Messieurs de Coetlogon, De Lomaria, the Baron
de Guais, the Bishops of Rennes, of St Halo, Messieurs
d'Argouge, and eight or ten more I did not know. I am
forgetting Monsieur cl'Harouis, who is not worth mention-
ing. I receive all these, a great deal is said, a great deal is
answered. After a walk, with which they all seemed greatly
pleased, a very excellent and very abundant collation was
discovered at the end of my terrace, and above all, Burgundy
wine flowing like the waters of Forgues : all this was sup-
posed to be conjured up by magic. M. de Chaulnes begged
me most pressingly to go to Vitre, 1 and I accordingly went
there on Monday evening. Madame de Chaulnes gave me
i There are delightful glimpses of Vitre, with its gables a
in Mr Caldecott's sketches and Mr Birket Foster's views of Brittany.
AT VITRE. 93
supper, with the comedy of ' Tartufl'e ' not ill played, and a
ball, where the passepied and the minuet nearly made me cry,
they reminded me so vividly of you. People often ask me
about you, and I am not long in finding answers. I always
think that every one can see my thoughts through my petti-
coat-body. . . .
" In the evening we supped together ; then came the ball.
I wish you could see the graces of M. de Lomaria, and the
air with which he takes off his hat and puts it on again.
What lightness, what precision ! he might defy the whole
Court."
Madame de Sevigne has a weakness for dandies.
Here is an allusion to an agreeable scamp she seems to
have had some liking for M. de Pomenars, notorious in
many ways. But our easy-going Marchioness pronounces
him divine, and says there is nobody for whom she would
so gladly wish two heads : never will his one head last
him his life.
She enjoys all this company, but is longing to be
quietly at home again with her Abbes, or walking by
herself in her lonely avenues, for poor La Mousse is
suffering from toothache, and cannot escort her.
" Do not fear for me the weariness that comes from soli-
tude ; except for the evils which come from my heart, against
which I have no strength, I am to be pitied for nothing.
My humour is a happy one, and I find myself better here
and alone than in the bustle of Vitre. I have been for eight
days in a peace, which has cured me of a most horrible chill.
I drank water, I did not speak, I did not sup ; and although
I did not shorten one of my wanderings, I cured myself.
Madame de Chaulnes, Mademoiselle de Murinais, Madame
Fourche, and a good-looking girl from Nantes, were here
on Thursday. Madame de Chaulnes rushed in saying she
could no longer rest without seeing me ; that all Brittany
was weighing on her shoulders, and that, in short, she was
94 MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
dying of it all. Upon which she flung herself upon my bed,
every one surrounding her, and in one moment she was fast
asleep from sheer weariness. We went on talking, and she
woke up at last, praising and delighting in the agreeable
liberty of the Rochers."
Although the quotation is long it is impossible not to
continue it, so pleasant and pretty a picture does it give
of the Watteau-like life of those days :
"We sat in the depths of those woodlands," she says,
" while the others were playing their mall ; and I made her
describe Rome to me, and by what chance she had married
M. de Chaulnes, for I always try to interest myself. While
we were absorbed, comes a barbarous rain like that at Livry,
which, without warning, suddenly begins to drown us, to
drench our clothes with water. In one moment the leaves
were saturated, in the next our clothes were sodden. We all
have to run, some of us call out, some fall down, some
slide. At last we reach home, a great fire is made up ;
every one changes slips and petticoats I supplying every-
thing ; shoes are dried ; we die of laughing. Thus we
treated the Governess of Brittany in her own province.
After everything else came a pleasant collation, and then
this poor woman returned, no doubt more loath to take up
her wearisome r6le than offended by the liberties with which
she had been treated here."
It was in order to do honour to the Duchesse de
Chaulnes that Madame de Sevigne had wished to have
her meadows mown some little time before, and on that
occasion it was that the celebrated letter was written to
Monsieur de Coulanges concerning the lazy valet It
is one which Madame de Thianges admired, and sent to
borrow, together with a second which is unfortunately
lost, and which was called the " Letter of the Horse."
PICARD. 95
"This word is over and above my fortnightly letter, my
dear cousin, to inform you that you will soon have the
honour of receiving Picard ; and as he is the brother of
Madame de Coulanges' valet, I am glad to let you know
what my measures concerning him have been. You know
that Madame de Chaulnes is at Vitre : she is there awaiting
her husband, the Duke, who arrives in ten or twelve days for
the opening of the Brittany Chambers. You think that I am
Avandering : she is there awaiting her husband and all the
Chambers, and, meanwhile, she is at Vitre all alone, dying
of dulness. You cannot understand how this will ever lead
to Picard. She is there dying of dulness. I am her only
consolation, and you can well believe with what a high hand
I carry it over Mademoiselle de Kerbone and De Kerqueoison.
All this is very roundabout, but nevertheless we shall soon
reach the point. As I am her only consolation, after having
paid her a visit, she must come to me, and I want her to
find my lawns neat and my alleys neat those great alleys
which you love. But still you don't understand where this
is leading. Here is another little circumstance relating to it.
You know this is haymaking time : I had no labourers, so
I am obliged to send to that meadow which the poets have
praised, to fetch all those working there to come and clean
up here (you still see no point), and in their place I send all
my people to faner. Do you know what to faner means ? I
must explain : to faner is the prettiest thing in the world. It
is to turn hay over and over whilst gambolling in a meadow ;
if one can do this much, one can faner.
11 All my people went off gaily : Picard alone came to tell
me he wouldn't go, that he hadn't entered my service for
this, that it was not his business, and that he preferred
going back to Paris. Upon my word my wrath rose. I
reflected that this was the hundredth time he had offended
me, that he had no heart, nor feeling; in a word, the meas-
ure was overflowing. I took him at his word, and in spite
of all that was said for him, I remained as firm as a rock,
and he is gone. It is true justice to treat people according
to their services, good or bad. If you see him again, don't
96 MADAME DE SEVIGNE".
receive him, don't protect him, don't blame me ; and remem-
ber that he is the fellow in all the world who least likes
haymaking, and is the most unworthy of being well treated.
This is the story in a few words. For my part, I like narra-
tives in which one is only told what is necessary without any
straying either to the right or to the left, or going back to
the beginning of things. In short, to speak without any
vanity, I think you have here a model of a pleasant nar-
rative."
After all the junketing comes a very natural reaction.
" I am cross to-day, my child ; I am as when you used to
say, ' You are cross ;' I am sad, I have no news of you. A
great friendship is never tranquil, maxime; it rains, we are
alone ; in a word, I wish you more joy than I have to-day."
But though, she complains a little, and is, as all sen-
sitive people must be, liable to sudden changes and de-
pressions, this must have been, on the whole, a happy
time of her life. She is at home among her own
people and her own possessions, she is comparatively
young still, her health is good, her beauty great, her
Avits are bright, she is richer than in later days, when
for her children's sake she had despoiled herself of so
much, that instead of driving with the six horses har-
nessed to her carriage, she had a difficulty in buying
two. Some of her most beautiful letters are written
at this time. Here is one refreshing in tone and in
sentiment :
" You know that I am always a little obstinate about my
reading. It is in the interest of those to whom I speak that
I should read beautiful books. That one which now con-
cerns us is the ' Morale ' of Nicole. There is a treatise
in it upon the art of maintaining peace among men, which
delights me. I have never seen anything more useful, nor
YOUTH AND AGE. 97
more witty and full of enlightenment. If you have not
read it, do so ; if you have read it, read it with new atten-
tion. I can believe that every one will find himself in
it : for me, I am persuaded it was written to my inten-
tion. I hope to profit by it I shall try to do so. You
know I never could endure that old people should say,
I am too old to correct myself. I could more easily for-
give the young folks for saying, "We are too young. Youth
is so amiable that we could only adore it if the soul and
the mind were as perfect as the body ; but when one is no
longer young, then it is that one must try to perfect one's
self, and try to regain by good qualities that which one
loses in the agreeable ones. It is long since I first began
to make these reflections, and for this reason every day I
mean to improve, in soul, in mind, in sentiment. It is with
these things that I am preoccupied with which I fill this
letter, not having many other subjects upon which to write."
" I imagine yon at Lambesc," she continues ; " but I
cannot see you plainly from here. There are sJiadowtt
in my imagination ichich hide you away from my sight"
Another passage in this letter describing the younger
of her two Abbes must not be omitted. How delight-
fully the story is told ! how pleasantly the figure is
sketched !
'' As to La Mousse, he holds catechisms on saints' days and
Sundays. He wishes to go to heaven. I tell him it is on
account of his curiosity, and in order to assure himself once
and for all whether the sun is a mass of dust moving vio-
lently, or a globe of fire. The other day he was interrogating
some little children, and after several questions, they began
jumbling up everything together, so that, when he came to
ask them who the Virgin was, they all answered one after
the other, that she was the creator of heaven and earth. He
was not at all shaken by these little children ; but when he
heard some of the men and women, and even the old men,
F.C. xin. o
98 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\
saying the same thing, he at last became convinced, and gave
in to the general opinion. In short, he didn't know any
longer where he was, and if I hadn't arrived at that moment,
he would never have got out of it. This new view would
have caused a very different disturbance from the various
movements of the small molecules."
So writes Madame de Sevigne to her daughter, an
ardent disciple of Descartes, whose works she had
studied under the guidance of this same La Mousse.
Madame de Sevigne stayed on at the Eochers till late
in November, anxiously waiting for news of Madame de
Grignan, whose lying-in was daily expected. "You
ask me," writes the mother, " whether we have any
green leaves left on our trees. Yes, there are many still :
they are woven in and out with aurora tints and dead
foliage. The whole makes a web of very lovely texture."
This was on the 15th of November 1671. On the 29th
she receives the good news of her daughter's safety. It
is impossible not to love her for her open-hearted delight.
" Do you know what one does in so great an excess of joy ? "
she writes. " The heart seems too full : one weeps without
being able to stop one's self. These tears are of a sweetness
which cannot be compared to anything, not even to the
brightest joys. You who are a philosopher, you know the
meaning of all these results. As for me, I feel them, and I
am going to cause as many masses to be said in gratitude to
God for His goodness as I used to offer up to ask for it. If
this state could last for ever, life would be too happy ; but
one must enjoy the present, sorrows come soon enough. . . .
My child, I thank you more than a thousand times for the
three lines you have written to me they complete my full
joy. My Abbe is transported, as I am, and our Mousse is
enchanted."
99
CHAPTEE XV.
TORCHES AND BEACONS.
ALL this winter of 1671-72, wars and rumours of war
were in the air. Charles de Sevigne had left Paris when
his mother reached the capital. He had been ordered
to join Luxembourg's army, which was encamped near
Cologne. Madame de Sevigne had come back to a new
house which she had lately taken, with an apartment in
it destined for her daughter and her son-in-law, " the
pretty apartment where you can be settled without un-
settling me." It was near the Place Royale where she
was born, and round about which she lived all her life.
She saw her old friends, she made some new acquaint-
ance, she tried for her children's sake to keep up her
connection with the Court ; she wrote letters to her son,
who was spending the winter in dull hardship and weari-
someness. " I am unhappy for your little brother. He is
very cold ; he is camping out ; he is for ever marching to-
wards Cologne. I had hoped to see him here this winter,
but there he still is." So says Madame de Sevigne in
her letters to her daughter, who was meanwhile enjoy-
ing her life to the uttermost, and sparing neither pres-
ent debt nor future difficulties in order to gratify her
100 MADAME DE S^VIGNE.
ambitions. One gets a general impression of grandeur
flags, trumpets, carriages and horses, company, and hosts
of idle servants below, whilst the masters play cards up
above. Nearly a hundred people sit down to dinner
every day in the Chateau de Grignan ; and besides all
this, new courts are built, new turrets are raised, and
enclosing walls. It is not yet known upon what danger-
ous foundations this splendour is reared. The sons of
the family club together to keep up the pomp of the
ancestral home. The daughters are driven into convents
in order to contribute their portions to the general ex-
pense ; but it is not to be met even by such sacrifices as
. these, and debts and display seem to have been an in-
heritance in the ancient family. Madame de Sevigne
prudent woman that she was is beginning already to
write warning after warning. Sainte Chantal's grand-
daughter, the Abbe's pupil, has a born gift for adminis-
tration ; but this, unfortunately, does not seem to have
descended to Madame de Grignan : display, vanity, reck-
less expenditure, gambling of every sort, seem to have
been her curse and that of her foolish family. The Grig-
nans in Provence were only following the example of the
Court in Paris, where expensive displays and masquerades
were filling the minds of the courtiers, but among these
things were others more worthy to be remembered.
Racine was bringing out " Bajazet ; " Corneille was read-
ing his neAV play to Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld
Corneille, whom Madame de Sevigne places so infinitely
beyond Racine. " It is good taste to admire Corneille
beyond every one," she says somewhere, and she urges
her daughter always to show good taste.
The age was rich in literary work of every kind : wars
MADAME SC AKRON. 101
and anxieties did not quench the eager spirit all about
Moliere, and La Fontaine was delighting the world.
A humbler genius. La Eochefoucauld, was publishing
a new edition of his Maxims. " Here they are," says
Madame de Sevigne, " revised, corrected, augmented :
I send them to you from him. There are some which
seem to me divine, others which to my shame I cannot
understand." Then after describing her little grand-
daughter's bedtime and le petit coucher of Mademoiselle
d'Adhemar in a few charming sentences, she goes on to
public affairs, and speaks of the war again : " Spain is
taking the part of Holland ; God preserve France from
the Swedes and the English."
Madame de Sevigne hears all sorts of news from all
sorts of people. She is very much in the world ; her
children are away ; there is nothing to keep her at home.
She is going out and about very constantly with friends,
such as the Coulanges, Pomponne, and Madame de
la Fayette ; and, besides these, she makes many new
ones, among whom not the least noticeable is Madame
Scarron, still the governess of the king's natural children,
but destined to be Madame de Maintenon, Queen of
France in all but name. The ladies spend their even-
ings constantly in each other's society ; they drive about
together.
. " We enjoyed escorting Madame Scarron back at midnight
to the very depths of the Faubourg St Germain, almost by
Vaugirard in the country. It is a fine and large house, into
which one is not allowed to enter. There seem to be a large
garden, and fine big rooms. She has a carriage, horses, and
attendants. She is dressed modestly and magnificently, as a
woman who passes her life with persons of quality. She is
DIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA
102 MADAME DE SE"VIGXE\
amiable, beautiful, good, and natural ; she is very agreeable
company. We came home gaily by the light of lanterns, and
without any fear of thieves."
In juxtaposition with this, I feel impelled to quote
a description of the mother of the children confided to
Madame de Maintenon's care. It was written some
years later.
" The queen has been twice to the Carmelites with Quanta
(Madame de Montespan). This latter took it into her head
to have a lottery : she caused everything that could be suit-
able for nuns to be brought. This made a great play in the
community. She talked much with Sister Louise de la Mis-
ericorde (Madame de la Valliere). She asked her if, in truth,
she was as happy there as people said. * No,' answered the
other, ' I am not happy ; but I am content.' Quanto then
talked a great deal about the brother of Monsieur (the king),
and inquired if she had any message for him, if there was
anything she could say for her. The other very quietly, but
perhaps piqued by this patronage, ' Anything you like,
raadame ; anything you like,' this spoken with all the
grace, wit, and modesty imaginable. Quanto then wished to
eat, and gave a piece of forty pistoles to buy what was neces-
sary for a certain sauce which she herself concocted, and
which she ate with admirable appetite. I tell you the facts
without any comments."
Little comment, indeed, is needed to this curious
description.
Madame de Sevigne, although longing to rejoin her
daughter, was detained in Paris by the dangerous ill-
ness of her aunt, Madame de la Trousse. She remained
therefore at her post ; her little baby granddaughter was
also under her care.
" Yesterday," she writes, " I dined with La Troche, in com-
pany with the Abbe Arnauld and Madame de Valentine.
MADAME DE LA TEOUSSE. 103
After dinner we had Le Camus, and his son and heir. It all
made up a very perfect little symphony. Then came Ma-
demoiselle de Grignan with her attendant knight, Beaulieu ;
her governess, Helene ; her lady's-maid, Marie ; her little
lackey, who was Jaco, the son of her nurse ; and the nurse
herself in her Sunday clothes. She is the very nicest coun-
trywornan I have ever known. All these people were brought
forward, they were sent into the garden and much admired.
I love this little household almost too much. . . . But, my
child, the question is about our departure. One day the
Abbe and I say to each other, ' Let us go ! the aunt will
linger until the autumn.' The next day we find her so ex-
hausted that we say, ' We must not think of going, it would
be barbarous. She will not live beyond the May moon.'
And thus we go from one day to another. Do you under-
stand this condition 1 It is very cruel. One thing which
makes me wish to be in Provence, is to be able to feel sin-
cerely grieved by the loss of a person who has always been
so dear to me ; and I feel that if I am here, the liberty that
I should gain would seem to take away a portion of my ten-
derness and of my true nature. . . . Leave us to unravel
this sad adventure, and be assured that the Abbe and I are
more ready to offend conventionality by leaving too soon,
than the feeling which we have for you, by remaining with-
out necessity."
How pretty all this is about the little grandchild, how
natural and well expressed, how tenderly felt ! If people
have good moods and had ones in the course of their
many varied lives, this surely was one of the wisest and
best of Madame de Sevigne's many moods. She did
her duty bravely all through this summer ; she tended
her sick, consoled those in trouble, bore up against her
own anxieties, sacrificed her own wishes to her sense of
right. It was not for herself that she made excuses
and avoided that which seemed to her the best. It was
104 MADAME DE SEVIGXE.
not for her own convenience that she left unfulfilled
any duty in life. When her suffering aunt died at last,
she closed the weary eyes and brought home to her own
house a cross and lonely cousin whom she seems to have
kept with her for many years. 1
Madame de Sevigne's own letters are full of sadness
about this time.
" Am I, too, to meet this sorrow, with so many others who
are at present in my heart ? The extreme peril in which my
son is placed ; the war raging more and more fiercely each
day ; the couriers who only now bring the news of the death
of some one or other of our friends and acquaintances, and
who may bring worse news still to me ; the dread one feels
lest bad news should come, and the curiosity one has to
know of it ; the desolation of those who are overwhelmed
with sorrow, and with whom I spend so much of my life ; the
indescribable condition of my aunt ; the longing I have to
see you, all this makes me lead a life so strange and contrary
to my humour and temperament, that I must in truth have
good health to withstand so much.
" I am well,' 7 she continues ; " but of what use is my health
to me ? it only serves to watch those who have none. The
fever has traitorously seized poor Madame de la Fayette ;
my aunt is more suffering than ever she is sinking day by
day. What can I do ? I leave my aunt's to hurry to tlje
poor La Fayette, and then again I leave La Fayette to return
1 There are many allusions to Mademoiselle de Meri, and to the
domestic storms incident to her stay. It is most assuredly the pre-
cision of the Abbe. When arithmetic is ignored, when the rules of
twice two make four are offended in any way, the good Abbe" is beside
himself : it is his temper, and he must be taken on this footing. On
the other hand, Mademoiselle de Meri is quite different. When, for
fun or from conviction, she has taken up a side, there is no end to it.
She drives him on, the Abbe is suffocated by a torrent of words. He
loses his temper, plays the uncle, and bids her sharply "be silent."
In return he is told he has no politeness.
A DESOLATE HOUSEHOLD. 105
to my aunt. Neither Livry, nor my walks, nor my pretty
house, are anything to me now ; and yet I must go to Livry
for a moment's rest, for I am quite worn out."
Madame de Sevigne was present by chance when the
news canie, " falling like hail," upon the Due de la
liochefoucauld, of the death of poor young De Longue-
ville, his reputed son of the wound of the Prince de
Marsillac, his heir of the death of the Chevalier de
Marsillac. Poor Madame de Longueville's despair is
most affectingiy described also.
" You have never seen Paris in its present state : every-
body is weeping or expecting to weep. One keeps thinking
of poor Madame de Nugent. Madame de Longueville, I
hear, is quite heartbroken. I have not seen her, but this is
what I have been told. Mademoiselle de Vertus had been
back two days at Port Royal, where she almost always is.
She was sent for with Monsieur Arnauld to break this ter-
rible news. Mademoiselle de Vertus had only to show her-
self ; this hurried return implied something dreadful as soon
as she appeared. 'Ah, Mademoiselle, how is my brother?'
Her thought did not dare go any farther. ' Madame, he is
getting over his wound.' ' There has been a battle and my
son 1 ' She received no answer. ' my son ! my dear
child ! Answer me, Mademoiselle, is he dead 1 ' ' Madame,
I have no words with which to answer.' ' O my dear son !
Did he die instantly ? Not one single moment's grace ? O
my God, what a sacrifice ! ' And thereupon she fell on her
bed, and went through everything which the most keen
anguish could make her endure convulsions, fainting
fits, death-like silences, smothered cries, bitter tears, trans-
ports towards heaven, tender, piteous wailiugs. She sees
certain people ; she takes nourishment, because it is the will
of God she should do so ; she can get no kind of rest ; her
health, already bad, is visibly getting worse. For my part,
death is what I wish for her, not seeing how she is to live
after such a loss."
106
CHAPTER XVI.
LE REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE.
FEW will find fault with Madame de Sevigne's personal
relations with those she loved, and to whom she felt
bound by the ties of life. In impersonal things she has
been blamed, as I have said, for the want of feeling she
showed in describing certain events, such as the sufferings
of the poor country-folks in Brittany during the wicked
campaign of 1675, when their unsparing governor, the
Due de Chaulnes, first drove the peasants to rise against
the cruelty of his rule, and then put doAvn the rebellion
with armed force and cruel executions horrible to read of.
That the Marquise's sympathy was in the right place,
there is no doubt. She was too just and too clear-sighted
not to see the truth; but that she turned away from it and
from painful realities, and avoided any strong emotion
that did not seem to her to be part of her own life, is no
less true. This avoidance of the vicarious pain of others'
sufferings is perhaps the besetting temptation of highly
wrought natures and fine sensibilities. It is one which
haunts the beginning of life when people do not know,
and the end of life when they know too well. In
Madame de Sevigne, some such things especially during
MEETINGS. 107
these years jar upon one's genuine admiration and
enthusiasm. So little more is wanting to this sweet,
sensible, and delightful woman, that one grudges the
inadvertent evidences of want of courage to face the
truth want of honest, righteous indignation where
wrong was done, which she should have resented ; but
at the time the earlier time of which we have been
writing it would be a captious critic indeed who
could do aught but admire and respect her devotion,
her cheerful goodness, her wonderful sympathy and
perception.
It is quite cheering to hear of her at last fulfilling her
heart's desire, and enfolding the idolised form of her
daughter once more in her arms. She seems to have
reached Grignan in the autumn, and made occasional
excursions from time to time. What a pleasant letter is
that one dated from Lambesc, the 20th December 1672!
" . . . I was all ready dressed at eight o'clock. I had
drunk my coffee, heard the Mass, made all my farewells. The
luggage was loaded : the bells of the mules were reminding
me that it was time to mount into the litter. My room was
full of people : they were entreating me not to start for sev-
eral days. The rain had been falling steadily since yester-
day : it had rained continuously, and at this very moment
it is pouring more heavily than usual. I bravely resisted all
these persuasions, honourably keeping to the resolution I had
taken, and which I announced to you by post yesterday,
assuring you that I should arrive on Thursday, when sud-
denly M. de Grignan, in an omelette-coloured dressing-gown,
appears, and speaks to me so seriously of the temerity of my
enterprise, assuring me that my muleteer would not be able
to follow my litter, that my mules would be falling into the
ditches, that my people would be drenched and unable to
assist me, that in one moment I changed my opinion, and
108 MADAME DE SEVIGNE".
yielded entirely to his own remonstrances. Thus, my child,
coffers are brought back into the house, mules unharnessed,
maids and men drying themselves after having only crossed
the yard, and a messenger despatched to you, knowing your
goodness and your anxiety, and waiting also to quiet my own
mind (for I am in trouble about your health) ; and this man
will either return and bring us news of you or lose his way
in the roads. In a word, my child, he will arrive on Thurs-
day at Grignan instead of me, and I shall actually start when
it pleases Heaven ; and M. de Grignan, who rules me in good
faith, and who understands all the reasons which make me
reasonable, desires to be at Grignan."
When Charles de Sevigne got back to Paris at last,
his mother was still in Provence with her daughter.
She had vainly hoped that the Baron might have joined
them, but his leave was very brief. He found Madame
de la Fayette in Paris, and he went to her, for she
writes about this time asking for money for the young
man, and reminding Madame de Sevigne that her ex-
cessive liberality towards her daughter entails some
equivalent towards her other child. 1 The young soldier's
expenses were enormous, as indeed were the expenses of
all the wars and all .the warriors of those days. The
ensign, let us hope, obtained his supplies, for he soon
hurried back to his army, in which was M. de Luxem-
1 "Your son has just left me," writes faithful Madame de la Fay-
ette. " He came to bid me farewell, and to beg me to explain to
you the reason he has for needing money. They are so good that I
have no need to explain them to you at much length, for you can
realise from where you are the expense of an endless campaign : every
one is in despair, every one is ruined. It is impossible that your son
should not do a little as others do ; and besides this, the great affec-
tion you have for Madame de Grignan should make you testify to
her brother as well." The beautiful pearl necklace which is painted
in the portraits hal just gone to Madame de Grignan.
TARIS AGAIN. 109
bourg, as his mother said. Madame de Sevigne mean-
while remained with her daughter until October, when
they parted after a whole year spent together, during
which another son was born to Madame de Grignan.
The poor Marquise does not get used to these partings,
and writes as touchingly as ever :
" This is a terrible day, my child. I own to you that it is
almost more than I can bear. I have left you in a state
which only adds to my pain. I think of all the steps you
take, and of those I also take, and how in this way it might
happen that we might never meet again. This heart is at
rest when I am near to you ; it seems to be its natural con-
dition, and the only one that contents it. ... I am
always looking for you, and I find that everything is want-
ing because you are wanting. ... I must not hope more
from the future than from the past. I know what your
absence has made me suffer, and that I shall be still more to
be pitied. It seems to me that I did not half embrace you
when we parted : I did not tell you enough how your
tenderness has satisfied me."
And so on, and so on. She is steeped in Grignans,
she says. She did not come back straight from Pro-
vence, but took a month on her road, going round by
Eourbilly, the home of her forefathers, to collect her
rents, which seem to have been very scarce notwith-
standing the plenty of the harvest and the fulness of the
crops. She returned to Paris to her cousin's house at
first to that Emmanuel de Coulanges who was her play-
fellow all through life, and to whom almost her latest
letter is written. The little, round, jovial, merry, easy-
going man is well known to us through Saint Simon's
description, and so is his wife the sylph, the leaflet, as
Madame de Sevigne calls her. There are extant letters
110 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".
not very readable of Madame de Coulanges. She is
described as lively, talkative, brilliant, welcomed at
Court and everywhere else for her bright wits. It was
a reproach to her, in this age of universal grasping, that
she begged no favour either for herself or for her hus-
band from her powerful relations. She and M. de
Coulanges seem to have lived apart for many years : the
only thing we hear of her asking is once when she is
very ill, and she sends a farewell message to her parents,
with a request that they will remember to leave money
to her husband, for although she is estranged from him
she cannot forget that before quitting him she spent all
his. The two were living together when Madame de
Sevigne arrived from Provence, and she seems to have
received a little ovation on this occasion. She sets
down a page full of the names of the people who came
to supper on her arrival. She then retired to the most
comfortable bed in the world, which she says wearied
her more than her whole four weeks of travel. After
counting every hour, she finally arose in the dawn to
find a chicken and a pan of broth simmering on her hob ;
and at nine o'clock in the morning most of the people
who had left at two seemed to have returned again.
" If you ask me what people speak of in Paris," she
writes, " I should tell you that they speak only of M.
and Madame de Grignan, their affairs, their interests."
This was about the tune of the siege of Orange, a strong-
hold in France fortified by the Dutch, which M. de
Grignan had been ordered to attack. The garrison was
very small. People said that he (Grignan) would have
to bombard it with roast apples. The country rallied
round him on this occasion, and the Count, at his own
A FORTIFIED CITY. Ill
expense, raised an army, and besieged and carried the old
place in its sunny plain among the olives and the vine-
yards. His exploit brought him into favour at Court : the
king graciously remarked that he was satisfied with Grig-
nan. Madame de Sevigne, delighted, sends off the news,
and urges them by every inducement to lose no time in
coming to Paris to profit by the sunshine of their favour.
Pomponne also is all-powerful at this time, and very
favourably disposed towards his old friend and her chil-
dren. Madame de Sevigne had long known Pomponne
and his family. It was to him that she wrote the well-
known letters about the trial of Fouquet, which are the
first we have of hers. She seems to have lived on easy
and familiar terms with him, and she describes among
other things how she had amused herself by playing a
certain game with the great Minister, a game that many
people have tried to play since her time. It is called the
reverse side of tJte cards, and it consists in guessing at
the realities that lie under the resemblances all round
about. On one occasion Pomponne had turned a compli-
ment, which she repeats with no little pleasure. " "Would
you know," he says, " why it is that Madame de Sevigne
appears to love Madame de Grignan so passionately 1 ?
It is because she loves her passionately."
This game, applied to the events now crowding in
daily from every side, might have revealed strange con-
trasts to the national trophies of splendour, victory,
prosperity. There go the king's triumphant armies,
invading peaceful and unoffending nations, with great
magnificence and clanking, with victorious generals
commanding. Here come deputies from the provinces,
swelling the crowds of courtiers, with abject gratitude
112 MADAME DE SE>IGNE\
for ridiculous favours ; and on the other side we find
misery and sorrow, the poor oppressed and ruined, 1
starving country-folks rebelling, homes desolate, rich
and poor alike in sorrow and tribulation.
We have read of the old Marechal de Grammont
and his buffoon-like performances. There is a descrip-
tion of the Marechal, which gives a very different pic-
ture of the poor old courtier. A courtier no longer, a
stricken father mourning his son, it is indeed a reverse
side to the glittering medal. It is dated December 8,
1673.
" I nvust begin by telling you about the death of the
Comte de Quiche. The poor fellow died of illness and ex-
haustion in the army of M. de Turenne ; the news arrived
on Tuesday morning. Father Bourdaloue came to announce
what had occurred to the Marechal de Grammont, who was
not unprepared, for he knew of his son's extreme clanger.
He made every one go out of his room. He was in the little
apartment just outside the Capucines. When he was alone
with the priest, he flung his arms round his neck, saying that
he guessed what he had come to tell him ; that it was his
own death-stroke, and that he received it from the hand of
God ; that he was losing the only and the veritable object of
all his tenderness and all his natural inclination ; that he
had never had any real joy or real sorrow except by this
son, who had many admirable qualities. He flung himself
upon a bed, for he was at the end of his strength ; but he
did not weep, for in such a condition one does not weep.
The priest was weeping, and, as yet, he had not said one
1 " Many of those who interested themselves in the cause of the
peasants paid for their sympathy with disgrace and ruin : Racine,
Fenelon, Vauban, were examples of this. La Fontaine was more
fortunate, but not less outspoken. See the fable of ' Death and the
Woodman.'" J. A.
THE MARSHAL DE GRAMMONT. 113
word. At last lie spoke to him of God, as you know he can
speak. They were together for six hours, and then, to com-
plete the sacrifice, the priest led him to the church of those
good Capucines where they were repeating vigils for the
dear son. The Marechal came in almost falling, trembling,
rather dragged and pushed along than on his legs. His face
was scarcely to be recognised. M. le Due saw him in this
condition, and wept as he described it to us at Madame de la
Fayette's. The poor Mare'chal then at last returned to his
little room: he is like a condemned man. The king has
written to him. Nobody sees him. Madame de Monaco is
entirely unconsolable ; so is Madame de Louvigny, for the
reason that she is not afflicted. Do you not wonder at her
good fortune? Here in one moment she is Duchesse de
Grammont. The Comtesse de Quiche behaves with great pro-
priety. She weeps when they tell her of the messages and
excuses her dying husband sent to her. She says, ' He was
amiable ; I should have loved him passionately if he had
loved me a very little. I suffered his indifference with
pain, his death affects me and fills me with pity. I always
hoped that perhaps his feeling for me might change.' "
All this is sincere, and written with true feeling.
F.C. xin.
114
CHAPTER XVII.
AX UNCOMFORTABLE CHAPTER.
WHATEVER else she writes about, all Madame de
Sevigne's letters at this time begin and finish in one
strain, urging, entreating, advising, persuading her
daughter to join her at Paris. Madame de Grignan,
who seemed in no hurry to obey her mother's summons,
gave the expense of the journey as an excuse. Ma-
dame de Sevigne was deeply hurt, and writes a some-
what sarcastic letter to her who is wisdom and reason
and philosophy in one recalling the enormous sums
spent at Aix, in comedies, in fetes, in diversions, and
banquets of every sort. She will try to submit to accept
the role of an extravagant, unreasonable parent expect-
ing impossibilities, and to look upon it all as a penance
inflicted by Heaven; but those are depths, she says,
which take away all the gladness of life. At last, after
much demur, the Grignans arrive upon the scene.
It is no very grateful task to inquire into the condi-
tions of the happiness and the unhappiness which this
mother's devoted absorption in her daughter gave rise to.
It has been said that the two could not live together in
any peace, and people have again and again mistrusted
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 115
their sincerity. It is, I think, evident enough all
through this correspondence that they loved each other,
truly, devotedly. But it is not always those who love
each other most who escape the jars and trials of love itself.
Madame de Sevigne seems to have been in a somewhat
morbid and susceptible condition, to have been perhaps
unreasonable in her demands and anxieties about this
time, and perhaps also she realised only too well, now
that she had lived a year in Provence, what were the
dangers and overhanging shadows of the house; and
her eagerness to bring her daughter to Paris and to
further her worldly success was but a very natural desire
to avert the ruin which seemed to her impending. Her
constant warnings and entreaties may have given offence.
When Madame de Grignan came at last, it seems as
if the two were out of tune. "When you choose
you can be adorable," writes the poor mother from
Livry that summer. " I must indeed be well persuaded
of the solid foundation of your affection for me, since I
am still alive." And again, " The excesses of liberty
which you give me wound my heart." This one letter
only remains written to Madame de Grignan in the
summer of 1674, during a temporary absence. Nor is
it till the 27th of May 1675 that the correspondence be-
gins again ; but, meanwhile, there are one or two letters
to Bussy and his daughter, and one to the Comte de
Guitaut. There is a business letter from the Abbe, men-
tioning a wound which the young Marquis de Sevigne
has received in the war, and threatening a farmer that
he will be renounced for ever unless, under these circum-
stances, he pays his rent.
Madame de Sevigne is ill at this time, and threatened
116 MADAME DE SE~VIGNE".
with that mysterious and universal malady, vapours. A
pretty little note of Madame de Grignan's on the subject
sounds genuine somehow. " Thank you for thinking of
me," she wrote to Bussy, " to pity me for my mother's
illness. I am glad that you know how my heart is
touched by anything that can happen to her. It
seems to me that this is the best part of myself."
There is also a correspondence about the marriage of
Bussy's daughter with the Marquis de Coligny (the
poor young bridegroom), who died so soon after, and
who was so quickly forgotten.
" I think I am mad not to have written to you sooner
about my niece's marriage," says the Marquise ; " but I am
in reality as a mad woman, and this is the one good reason
that I can give you. My son is going away in three days to
the army, my daughter in a few more goes to Provence. It
is not possible that, with such separations, I should be able
to keep before me what I possess of good sense. Take pity
on me, therefore, and believe that among all my own tribu-
lations I feel the injustice which has been done to you. I
approve entirely of the alliance with M. de Coligny : it is an
establishment which appears suitable for my niece."
Madame de Grignan having finally departed, the cor-
respondence begins again. "Ah, what a day is that
one which opens absence ! How has it seemed to you 1
To me it has brought all the bitterness and the sorrow
I apprehended."
There is something almost of a great composer's art in
the endless variations and modulations of this lady's
fancy. She laments, she rejoices, she alters her note,
her key ; she modulates from tears to laughter, from
laughter to wit. She looks round for sympathy, tells
"MUSIC IN WORDS." 117
the stories of the people all about her, repeats their
words, describes their hopes, their preoccupations. Then
she remembers her own once more, and repeats again and
again, in new words from fresh aspects, the fancies and
feelings which fill her heart. No wonder Madame de
Grignan valued such letters, and prized them, and kept
them safe.
118
CHAPTEE XVIII.
THE GREAT GENERAL.
THE July of the year 1675 was a month of pouring
rain, followed by extreme heat. Madame de Sevigne"
describes a procession from St Genevieve to Notre Dame,
in which a sacred reliquary was carried by twenty men
dressed in white, with bare feet, preceded by an arch-
bishop and an abbe blessing everybody right and left,
and by 150 monks, also barefooted, and followed by the
whole Parliament dressed in red, and various companies.
The provost and the town councillors were left at St
Genevieve as hostages for the safe return of the relics.
The reason of this procession was to invite the return of
fine weather, and to cause the rain to cease. It seems
that the weather became settled just before the proces-
sion started, and it was therefore supposed that any
extra virtue left over from the ceremony went to bring
back the king from his campaign.
The procession, whatever its merits may have been,
did not avert the great disaster which so soon befell the
king's armies, and of which the news shortly reached
them all in Paris, spreading universal consternation.
TURENNE. 119
The account of Turenne's death is one often quoted and
referred to.
"Let us speak a little of M. de Turenne. Do you not
wonder that \ve should find ourselves happy to have re-
crossed the Rhine ? and that which would have shocked us
if he had been in the world, now seenis a piece of prosperity,
because we have him no longer. See what a difference
conies from the loss of one man alone. Listen to what seems
to me very fine. It strikes me as if reading Roman his-
tory. Saint Hilaire, lieutenant-general of artillery, made
M. de Turenne, who had been always galloping until then,
to stop short, in order that he might show him a battery.
It was as if he said, ' Sir, I pray you stop a little, for it is
here that you are to be killed.' Then the cannon-ball comes
and carries off the arm with which Saint Hilaire is pointing
out the battery, and strikes M. de Turenne at the same mo-
ment. The son of Saint Hilaire flings himself on to his
father, and begins to cry and to weep. ' Be silent, my
child,' the father says, and he shows him M. de Turenne
stiff and dead. ' That is what you have to weep for ; that is
wJiat is irreparable.' And without heeding himself he begins
to bemoan this great loss. M. de Rochefoucauld weeps him-
self, admiring the man's generosity."
There is a further account, of which the first part is
somewhat melodramatic, where the company outvies
itself in lamentations, but the end is simple and full
of truth.
" My daughter, I am really going to speak to you again
of Monsieur de Turenne. Madame d'Elbceuf, who is spend-
ing some days with the Cardinal, her brother, begged me to
dine with them both to talk over their affliction. Madame
de la Fayette came too. We did exactly that which we had
intended : our eyes were not dry the whole evening. Mad-
ame d'Elbceuf had a divinely well-painted portrait of the
120 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\
hero, whose suite had arrived at eleven o'clock. All these
poor people were in tears, and already dressed in black.
Three gentlemen from amongst them came forward, whom
the sight of this portrait almost killed. There were heart-
breaking cries, no one could say one word : his valets, his
lackeys, his pages, his trumpeters all were weeping, and
made the others weep too. The first who was able to speak
answered our sad questions, and gave us the narrative of his
death. He had wished to go to confession, and whilst he
was closeted he had given his orders for the evening : he
was to take the Communion the following day, Sunday,
which was the day he thought he should give battle. He
mounted his horse on the Saturday at two o'clock, after
having eaten ; and as he had a great many followers, he
left them all thirty feet off from the height which he wished
to reach, and said to little D'Elbceuf, ' My nephew, stay
there ; you do nothing but hover round me, and make me con-
spicuous.' M. d'Hamilton who was near the spot whither
he was going, said, ' My lord, come this way ; they are fir-
ing in the direction towards which you are going.' ' Sir,'
said he to him, ' you are right ; I have no wish whatever to
be killed to-day ; that will be the best way.' He had scarce-
ly turned his horse when he saw Saint Hilaire, hat in hand,
who said to him, ' My lord, cast your eyes on that battery
which I have just had placed.' M. de Turenne turned ; and
in one instant, without being stopped, his arm and his body
were shattered by the same shot which carried off the arm
and hand which held Saint Hilaire's hat. This gentleman,
who was still looking at him, didn't see him fall ;. the horse
carried him on to where he had left little D'Elbceuf ; he
had not yet fallen ; but he was bent head downwards on
the saddle. At that moment the horse stops, the hero falls
into the arms of his men ; twice he opens wide both eyes and
his mouth, and then remains motionless for ever: he was
dead, one half of his heart carried off. There were screams
and tears : M. d'Hamilton stopped the noise, and removed
little D'Elbo3iif, who had thrown himself on the body, re-
fusing to leave it, and who was swooning with anguish.
CRAPE AND MUFFLED DRUMS. 121
They cover the body with a mantle and carry it on a litter
noiselessly : a carriage comes and conveys him to his tent.
It was there that M. de Lorges, M. de Roze, and many
others, thought they should die of grief ; but they had to
control themselves, and to think of the great matters which
lay on their shoulders. There was a military service given
him in camp, where tears and cries formed the true mourning,
besides which all the officers wore crape scarves. All the
drums, too, were covered with crape, and only beat one roll,
trailing bayonets, and arms reversed. One cannot realise the
tears of a whole army without feeling deep emotion. . . .
When. the corpse left the army, a new despair began, and
wherever it passed, one heard only wailings. At Langres
they went to meet him in mourning dress, to the number of
two hundred or more, followed by the populace, and all the
clergy fully robed. A solemn service took place in the
town, and in one moment they had all agreed to share the
expense^ which amounted to five thousand francs, for they
followed the corpse to the next town, and wished to pay
for everything. What do you say to these natural signs
of a feeling founded upon extraordinary merit 1 He is to
arrive at St Denis to-night or to-morrow : all his people
go to meet him two leagues away."
After Turenne's death, it being impossible to replace
him, it was agreed that the king should make eight
generals in the place of this one. People in those
days called their eight generals " change for Monsieur
de Turenne."
It is during this autumn that Madame de Sevigne
again writes to Bussy complaining of " vapours." " That
good health which you have seen so triumphant has
received attacks of which I am humiliated, as though I
had been affronted. As for my life," she says, "you
know it well enough. It is passed with five or six
friends whose society pleases, in a thousand duties
122 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".
which one is compelled to attend to, and which are no
trifling matter. But that which vexes me is that in
doing nothing the days pass on : one grows older one
dies. I find this very evil." Then she returns to the
death of Turenne once more to that cannon fired by
chance, which has taken him alone among ten or twelve.
" For myself, iclio see Providence in all things, I see that
cannon loaded from all eternity. I see everything leading
M. de Turenne to its mouth, and I find nothing hurtful
in all this, supposing his conscience to be in a good con-
dition. What would he have ? He dies in his glory : his
reputation could gain nothing more. In that moment he
enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing his enemies retreat of
reaping the fruit of his three months' endeavours. Some-
times, in the course of a long life, the star grows dim."
AVas this the thought which induced Cardinal de Eetz,
Madame de Sevigne's. faithful old friend and connection,
to retire from the world about this time, to give up his
cardinal's hat, to take leave of all his friends, of busy life
and its complicated interests 1 De Eetz is spoken of as by
far the ablest politician of the day, but he had missed his
mark somehow, others were preferred to him. After
the death of the hero of war, " he of the breviary " also
wishes to depart the world of politics and fashion, and
in going seems to have wished to bestow various pos-
sessions upon his most favoured friends. There is much
talk of a certain silver casket or cassolette which Madame
de Grignan refuses, and Avhich her mother entreats her
to receive with some little graciousness. It is said that
in all loyalty and friendship Madame de Se"vigne hoped
much for her grandchildren for Pauline his god-
daughter -from the succession of the Cardinal ; that
JEALOUSY. 123
Madame de Grignan alternately yielded to and rebelled
against her mother's well-meaning endeavours for bring-
ing her into nearer relations with the Cardinal. One
might imagine many reasons which may have set Ma-
dame de Grignan against him, some of them more
reasonable and perhaps more to her credit than that
curious and unamiable jealousy which ever set her
against those friends dearest to her mother.
124
CHAPTEE XIX.
BASSETTE AND HOCA.
" MY hair stood on end," cries our Marchioness,
"when the coadjutor told me that at Aix the other
day he found M. de Grignan playing at Iwca. What
a madness ! In God's name, do not allow it." The
rage for lioca which then existed was something be-
sides a mere passion for gambling. These extrava-
gant people, all wanting money, none able to earn it,
tried to make a living out of games of chance, and
played from dire necessity. There seems to have been
less excuse for others the Queen, for instance, who
" lost twenty thousand pieces, and missed her Mass one
morning before mid-day." The King said, "Madame,
let us calculate how much this would come to in a year."
There is an odd outburst in one of Madame de SeVigne's
letters, where she is speaking of the romantic episode of
Madame de la Sabliere and her devoted La Fare, who
was not, alas ! faithful to the end. Here is Madame
de Sevigne's epitaph upon the grave of a friendship
which should have lasted to the end :
" You ask me what has caused the dissolution of con-
tinuity between La Fare and Madame de la Sabliere. It is
MADAME DE LA SABLIERE. 125
bassette. Could you have believed it ? This is the name by
which infidelity has declared itself : it is for that prostitute
bassette he has quitted that religious adoration. The moment
had come when this passion was to cease, to pass to another
object. Who would have believed that bassette would have
proved the road to salvation for any one ? Ah ! it has been
well said there are five thousand roads that lead to Paradise.
Madame de la Sabliere noticed from the first this distraction,
this desertion. She examined the bad excuses, the insin-
cerities, the pretexts, the embarrassed explanations, the
forced conversations, the impatiences to be gone from her,
the journeys to St Germains, where he was in the habit of
playing, the weariness, the not knowing what to say next ;
and at last, when she had well observed this eclipse which
was falling, and the strange phenomenon that was gradually
hiding so much bright love, she took a resolution. I know
not what it cost her ; but, in short, without quarrelling,
without reproach, without excitement, without dismissing
him, without explanations, without wishing to confound
him, she herself eclipsed herself ; and although she did
not give up her house, where she sometimes returns even
now, and without having said that she was renouncing
all, she has found herself so well established at the In-
curables that she spends nearly all her life there, feeling
with pleasure that her illness is not like that of the sick
people whom, she serves. The superiors of the house are
charmed with her wit ; she governs them all. Her friends
go and see her ; she is always good company. La Fare
plays bassette. This is the end of this great affair, which
drew the attention of every one. This is the road God had
marked out for this pretty woman. She did not say, with
crossed hands, ' I wait for grace.' How weary am I of these
discourses ! . . . She learns the returns, the bassettes, the
uglinesses, the pride, the grief, the misfortunes, the splen-
dours, everything is of use. Everything is made to serve by
the Great Workman. . . . My child, this letter becomes in-
finite : it is a torrent that I cannot keep back. Answer me
in three words. Rest yourself, keep yourself, and let me
126 MADAME DE SEVIGXE.
see you and embrace you again with all my heart. That
is the aim of my wishes. I do not understand any change
in solid friendship, wise and well founded ; but as for love
ah ! that is too violent a fever to last Farewell, my very
dear and very loyal one. I like that word."
A good deal has been said in these pages, but perhaps
scarcely enough, of the desperate extravagance of the
Grignan family, whose magnificence was not to be paid
for even by an income such as theirs. The little eldest
daughter, of whom her grandmother wrote such affecting
descriptions, had now attained the mature age of five years,
and her anxious parents began to look forward to her
future. Whether it was for the sake of the little son of
three, or in order to pay the parent's debts at hoca, or to
keep Lachan the valet in wigs, it is certain that poor
little Marie Blanche's portion was needed by her splendid
family; and it was arranged that the child should be
disposed of in the most convenient and cheapest fashion.
In vain Madame de Sevigne protested. Marie Blanche
was to be a nun, pious and economical. It may be said,
in bare extenuation of her parents' conduct, that such
arrangements belonged to the custom of the day, and to
the tradition of a family which counted a saint among
its many distinctions. But the poor little girl was no
saint. She seems to have been clever, loving, jealous,
attaching by nature, with little turn for convent life.
" My heart aches for her," says the grandmother ; but
her remonstrances lack the vigour of irresistible indig-
nation ; they are far too gentle, too gracefully worded.
In 1680 Madame de Grignan made a retreat to the very
convent at Aix where her little daughter was immured.
" You do not mention little D'Adhemar," says Madame
MARIE BLANCHE D'ADHEMAR. 127
de Sevigne ; " did you not allow her a tiny corner from
which the child might peep at you?"
For sixty years to come, the poor little D'Adhemar
was destined to live in her unwilling captivity ; nor was
she freed till her life ended at sixty-five, by which time
her cold-hearted mother and the sons for whom she
schemed were dead, and the house of Grignan and its
meretricious splendours were laid low, and the palace
built up of daughters' dowries, of the younger sons'
portions, passed into the hands of strangers.
There were worse things happening in 1675 than the
cloistering of a helpless child, though, for the matter of
that, cruelty in a parent seems perhaps the most wicked
of wicked things. It was in this year that the rebellion
in Brittany broke out afresh, and was put down with
monstrous retaliation, that cannot be read of even now
without indignation.
Madame de Sevigne, whose own affairs imperatively
demanded her presence at the Rochers, hesitated for some
time before she dared face the journey in the disturbed
state of the country. The farmers were unable to pay
their rents ; they were overwhelmed with taxes and im-
positions; the country people were uprising; the fields
were uncultivated, the farms unlet. The intrepid old Abbe
urged his niece to delay no longer : aged as he was, he was
prepared to accompany her, and to set to work for her
service. Some of his letters written at this time are still
extant, and full of shrewd prudence and patient ability.
Madame de Sevigne started by water in order to vary
the journey, which was far less alarming than she had
anticipated. They floated from one pleasant old town
to another, from chateau to chateau, from welcome to
128 MADAME DE SE>IGNl
welcome. Occasionally they stuck in the mud. After
some difficulties and adventures, they finally reached
their home, which was standing peaceful and secure
amidst a sea of troubles. "Whatever may have been
the faults of the Due de Chaulnes, he was a good
friend to his friends. He protected the widowed
Marquise, kept the armies from the gates, the oppressors
from her door : all was peace at the Eochers, although
elsewhere, and all about the country, far and near, the
cry of the despoiled and martyred inhabitants went up
to heaven.
When Madame de Sevigne does speak of the troubles
of her unhappy province, it is to the purpose. On the
13th of October she writes
" You say with good reason that dates do nothing to make
delightful the letters of those we love. Good heavens ! are
public events so dear to us ? Your health, your family,
your least action, your sentiments, your bubbles from Lam-
besc, these are what really touch me ; and I believe that you
are in the same mind, so that I do not hesitate to speak to
you of the Rochers, of Mademoiselle du Plessis, of my alleys,
my woods, my affairs, of the Bienbon and of Copenhagen, when
the occasion presents itself. Everything is important to me
that comes from you, even to your strips of worsted-work.
I am glad to know everything. If you want any more
needles to work with, I have some admirable ones. Yester-
day I did infinite needlework ; it was as dull as my com-
pany. I only work when they all come in. As soon as I am
alone I walk, I read, I write, and a Du Plessis no more hin-
ders me than does Marie. Heaven gives me the grace not to
hear a word she says. . . ."
Then she continues
" Would you have news of Rennes ? There are now five
thousand troops there, for others have come from Nantes.
AT EENNES IN 1675. 129
They have laid a tax of a hundred thousand crowns upon
the inhabitants, and if this sura is not produced in four-and-
twenty hours, it is to be doubled and exacted by the soldiers.
They have hunted out and banished the inhabitants of one
whole great street, and forbidden, upon pain of death, that
any of these are to be sheltered or taken in, so that all these
miserable people were to be seen ; women lying - in, old
men, children wandering in tears at the gates of the town,
not knowing where to go, nor how to find food, nor where
to sleep. The day before yesterday a pedlar was broken on
the wheel : he had begun the dance and the pillage of the
stamps. He was quartered after his death, and his four
parts exposed at the four corners of the town. He, dying,
said that the Commissioners of Stamps had given him
twenty-five crowns to begin the sedition, and nothing else
would he say. Sixty burghers have been taken, and to-
morrow they are to begin the hangings. This province is a
fine example for the others above all, to teach respect for
governors and governesses, and not to say rude 1 things to
them, and not to throw stones into their gardens."
De Quincey's celebrated passage about incivility was
not then written, but surely this is plain speaking for
1675. Again she writes in " bitter irony," as Walckenaer
says
" You speak very pleasantly of our miseries. "We are no
longer so much broken on the wheel as we were. One of us
a- week only, to keep justice in hand. It is true that mere
hanging now seems a refreshing process. I have quite a
new idea of justice since I am in this country. Your galley-
slaves seem to me a society of honest folks, who have retired
from the world to lead a peaceful existence."
The Bienbon seems to have set to work immediately
on his arrival at the Rochers.
" The Bienbon is ever the Bienbon," writes her niece.
" His are speaking deeds. The obligations I owe to him are
F.c. xiii. I
130 MADAME DE SE'VIGNK.
innumerable, and that which makes me even more grateful
for them is his constant friendship and affection for you, and
the zeal he has for your interests. ... I do not dare think
about seeing you : when this hope enters my heart and its
realisation is so far away, it gives me too much pain. . . .
You assure me that you are well. God grant it, my best one.
... As for me, I am in perfect health. You would like
my sobriety and my exercise ; seven hours of bed like a
Carmelite. This rigid life pleases me."
131
CHAPTEE XX.
F1DELE AND OTHER FRIENDS.
THE Bienbon was not the only good friend at work
trying to serve the Marquise with her complicated af-
fairs ; another who remained in Paris was D'Haqueville,
who for many years appears in her correspondence,
active, busy, always ready. " He is those D'Haque-
villes" says the grateful lady ; " so many are his good
deeds that one man could not suffice to them. "Write
to them, my daughter, in all confidence; their kind
hearts suffice to everything. . . . He only loves
those who overwhelm him," she continues. "Let us
overwhelm him."
" You do not tell me," she asks a few clays later, " if you
have been so well treated in your Assembly as to be allowed
to send the king no more than your usual gift ; ours is aug-
mented. I could have beaten that gaffer Boucherat [the
Chancellor], when I heard of this augmentation. I do not
think half of it can be paid. The States are opened to-
morrow at Dinan. All this poor Parliament is ill at Vannes.
Rennes is a deserted town. The taxes and the punishments
have been cruel. . . ."
Then she passes to her own affairs. There is a pleasant
132 MADAME DE SOIGNE".
apparition of a little dog breaking in to relieve all tins
gloom, and to divert their minds. The dog is a present
from a friend and neighbour, Madame la Princesse de
Tarente, a curious character, and at this time a constant
companion of Madame de Sevigne. She was Amelia of
Hesse, daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and
she was aunt to Madame, the second Madame. She had
been married to the Due de la Tremouille, Prince of
Tarente, who died in 1672, leaving her with a son and a
beautiful daughter, who was then at the Court of the
King of Denmark. The parent princess is described as
having a heart of wax, which seems a questionable com-
pliment; but for Madame de Sevigne the heart was
made of more lasting material, and to her life's end
Madame de Tarente proved a true and faithful friend.
Fidele was the little dog, the rival of Marphise, who
had been left in Paris, and who was not to be allowed to
know of Fidele's existence. Fidele was a little per-
fumed creature, with silky ears, "soft breath," blond
coat, the gift of the impetuous princess to her friend.
He eats bread, he attaches himself to Madame de Se"-
vigne ; she fears she may succumb to his charms, al-
though she has vowed never to love any dog but Mar-
phise. St. Martin's summer burns on, and her continuous
walks are protracted. She does not know the use of an
arm-chair, and spends the hours alone in these alleys,
followed by a servant. She comes home when night is
falling, and the fire and the tapers have brightened the
room. She fears the twilight when no one speaks.
She is happier in the woods than alone in her room.
Their great vastness suits her better than the weariness
of an easy-chair. One can understand her depression ;
THE PRATER ON HIS KNEES. 133
sorrows are brooding on every side, stories of cruelties
and tortures ; her son away, her affairs in confusion.
" As for your poor little brother, I know not where he
has been hidden ; for these three weeks past he has not
written to ma . . . Every one believes him to be here.
In truth, his fortunes are sad."
Madame de Tarente, who treated her own children
with German severity, used to blame Madame de Se-
vigne for her indulgence to her son. It is true that
young Sevigne gave good grounds for complaint and
displeasure at times. For the present he had entirely
disappeared, and caused no little anxiety to his mother
by neither writing nor rejoining her, nor giving any
sign of existence. Here is a pleasant description of his
resuscitation :
" As I was walking on my terrace the day before yester-
day, what should I discover at the end of the mall 1 the
Prater, who, when he saw me, immediately knelt down upon
both knees, feeling so guilty at having been three weeks
singing matins underground that he dared not approach me
in any other way. I had resolved to speak seriously to him,
but I knew not where to find my anger, I was so glad to see
him. You know what a delightful companion he is. He
kissed me a thousand times ; he gave me the worst reasons in
the world, which I accepted as good ones. We talk a great
deal, we read, we walk together, and thus we shall finish the
year. . . . My letter was hardly gone," she says, " when
eight hundred men arrived at Vitre. The princess is ill
pleased. It is true that they are but passing, but they live,
by my faith ! as if they were in a conquered country.
Black fancies are flitting in and about her woods, al-
though, now that her son is home, her mind is relieved of
one great anxiety. But the state of Brittany is still full
134 MADAME DE SE>IGNE".
of misery and consternation. The bishop the mitred
linnet, as she calls him has come back, transported with
delight at the king's goodness and the polite attentions
he has himself received, quite heedless of the ruin of
the province which he brings home so agreeably ; and
announcing that it is out of confidence and affection
that his Majesty is sending 8000 men to invade the
place.
" Thank you, my child, for remembering the paterno
nido" she writes again. " Alas ! our chateau en Espagne
would be to see you in this one. What joy ! and why
should it be so impossible 1 " Then she describes her
reading. Her favourite Nicole seems to have stood her
in good stead during this anxious time ; she divides her
life between the ' Essais de Morale ' and her daughter's
letters, of which the Bienbon is alloAved to hear choice
passages, which " transport him ; " so also is a " little
person" without a name, staying in the chateau, ad-
mitted to this privilege. She is but fifteen. She seems
to have been thought of as a suitable parti for the
Baron, but she is only a child, and the idea is aban-
doned. She eats " beurrees " so long as to reach from
January to Easter ; she enjoys three green apples with
her brown bread after dinner, and laughs and chatters,
and delights them all with her gaiety. So the time
passes. The whole party are thinking of a return to
Paris when evil days befall the poor lady.
135
CHAPTEE XXI.
ILLNESS.
Now and then signs of weariness had begun to appear
in her letters. Madame de Sevigne quotes a friend's
saying "That which I do wearies me, that which I
leave undone wears me." She seems to have wandered,
restless and uneasy, along her alleys late into the even-
ing. Chill, and depression, and anxiety of mind may
have brought illness in their train. It was in February
1676 that she had her first illness that one which she
says destroyed in her the pleasant illusion of being im-
mortal. "Guess, my child, what is the thing in the
world which comes soonest, which goes away most
slowly, which brings you nearest to convalescence,
which drives you farthest from it ; which seems to
make you approach the most agreeable of conditions,
and then prevents you from enjoying anything in
the world." This state which the poor lady de-
scribes so gaily is nothing more nor less than rheu-
matic fever. "Since the fourteenth day," she says,
" the fever has left me without pain ; and in this blessed
condition, and feeling as if I were quite able to walk,
which is all that I desire, I find myself swelled in
136 MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
every part my feet, my legs, my hands, my arms ; and
this swelling, which is in truth my cure, is the cause of
all my impatience, and would be that of my merit if I
were more good."
All through this cruel illness the Prater is the best
and most devoted of nurses to the poor patient in her
yellow bed in the alcove where she lies. He watches
her, comforts her, writes for her, has passages-at-arms
with his sister concerning her medicines. There are
two pages of such enthusiastic description as only a
Frenchman could write, of certain powders of M. de
1'Orme which the patient has been taking at his re-
commendation, and against which Madame de Grignan,
with characteristic jealousy, inveighs from her distant
province. The little person takes her share of the
nursing. She reads to the sufferer and writes for her,
and, above all, knows how to speak to her of Madame
de Grignan.
Between them they seem to have made a wonderful
cure of it, and Madame de Sevigne is actually able to
date from Paris on the following 8th of April, where
her friend and ally, the ponderous and philosophic
Corbinelli, now appears to take his share in the atten-
tions which the poor invalid requires. " I have just
arrived. I hasten to assist this shuddering hand. It
shall, when it so pleases, resume the pen," writes he.
One does not wonder that Madame de Sevigne preferred
"the little person" to a secretary with such imposing
periods. Corbinelli seems to have been very highly
thought of by all his friends, and it is perhaps absurd,
after two hundred years, to complain of being bored by
him. Nevertheless, his extreme reputation and morali-
DAUGHTERS AND MOTHERS. 137
ties, and his elaborate platitudes, are certainly irritat-
ing. He seems to have clung on to the skirts of ad-
miring patrons. De Eetz and others pensioned him ;
for a long time he inhabited the Hotel de Carnavalet ;
and the 'Biographic Generale' states that he lived to
be over a hundred, by which time his wisdom must
have been something portentous. Meanwhile Madame
de Sevigne, as soon as she was able to do so once
more, wrote of him with the greatest veneration and
respect.
She did not recover the use of her hand for some
time, not indeed until after her visit to Vichy, whither
she went hoping for health from those healing waters
and douches ; and she also hoped for the possible pres-
ence of her daughter her best medicine, she says, and
her one infallible cure. Madame de Sevigne is not the
only woman who has felt this longing. Other mothers
there are, with daughters more like themselves, and with
hearts to carry them across every obstacle to the help
of those they love, who with greater sufferings have at
least found greater consolation than our poor Marquise.
Madame de Grignan did not come. She was reigning
in state, and unable to leave her southern kingdom ;
and although Madame de Sevigne writes one appeal
after another, no help reached her from Aix.
A friend, living in a beautiful garden herself, tells me
that the house in the garden where Madame de Sevigne
lived at Vichy is still shown. The garden is planted
full of tall white lilies, and the house is a low stone
house standing detached in its parterre. The waters of
Vichy sparkle right into the letters, which are written in
delightful gaiety and pleasantness of spirit. She de-
138 MADAME DE SEVIGX&
scribes the pretty moor where the shepherds of Astrea
might still he seen, she thinks, if people were to look
hard enough. As for the waters, " Ah, how nasty they
are ! " cries the lady.
" By six o'clock one is at the fountain," she says. " Every-
body is there : one drinks, one makes wry faces ; for imagine
to yourself boiling water with a most disagreeable taste of
saltpetre. One wanders round, coming and going, and walk-
ing here and there ; one hears Mass ; one talks confidentially
of the effect of the waters. Nothing else is thought of until
twelve o'clock. Then at last comes dinner, and after dinner
one goes to some one's. To-day it was to me they came.
Madame de Brissac played at Jiombre with Saint Kerens;
Piancy the chanoine and I read Ariosto. . . . Some girls of
the country came with a flute, dancing a bourree to perfection.
Here it is that the gipsies flourish : they cut capers, to which
the priests object a little. At last, at five o'clock, one wanders
out into the delicious country ; at seven we sup lightly ;
at ten o'clock we go to bed. Now you know as much as
I do.
" Madame de Brissac gave herself out for ill to-day, and
remained in bed, beautiful enough and frizzed enough to
turn everybody's head. 1 I wish you could have seen the use
she made of her sufferings of her eyes, of her sighs, of her
arms, of her hands languishing on the counterpane, of the
situation and of the compassion she wished to excite. I was
overcome with tenderness and admiration as I gazed on the
performance, which seemed to me so fine : my riveted at-
tention must surely have given satisfaction, and remember
that it was for the Abbe Bayard, for Saint Kerens, for Mont-
jeu and Piancy, that the scene was got up. You seem to me
a mere bungler. When I remember with what simplicity
you are ill, the rest you give your pretty countenance, in
short, what a difference ! . . ."
1 " Coiffee a coiffer tout le monde."
MADAME DE BEISSAC. 139
Then comes the cure :
"After that excellent performance the illness we are
now privileged to witness a convalescence full of languor,
which is so well arranged upon the stage that several
volumes would be requisite for me to describe all the merits
I discover in this masterpiece."
This lovely duchess was the sister of whom Saint
Simon writes with so much fraternal admiration and
affection. It is fortunate that family eyes do not look
through the same focus as strangers' eyes. The letters
go on to describe Madame de Sevigne's own symptoms
as a Frenchwoman only would describe them, and then
comes a reflection :
"Age and a little illness," she says, "give one time to
think a great deal. You ask me if I am devout. Alas ! no ;
but it seems to me that in some measure I am more divided
from what is called the world ; but then that which I take
from the public I give to you, so I advance little in the
realm of self-abnegation."
She gives a curious incidental description of Montes-
pan, the Cleopatra of those days, in her barge going to
meet her victorious lover at Fontevrault. The barge is
lined with crimson damask, with a thousand ciphers and
emblems of France and Navarre. Never was anything
more splendid. The expense must have been more than
a thousand ecus ; but it was all more than paid for by
a letter from the beauty to the king. Then comes an
idyl:-
" I found this morning by the fountain a good Capuchin
monk. He saluted me very respectfully. I also curtseyed
to him, for I respect the livery he wears. He began by
HO MADAME DE SE>IGNE".
speaking to ine of Provence, of you, of M. de Roquesante,
of having seen me at Aix, of the sorrow my illness caused
to you. I should have liked you to see what this good
Father was to me from the moment he seemed so well
informed."
Some painter might, I think, make a pretty little
picture of the fountain, of the smiling lady, of the
humble monk, of the summer-time.
HI
CHAPTER XXII.
AT COURT AND ELSEWHERE.
THE letters written after this bad illness are not those
which make us love Madame de Sevigne most, although
they are among the most brilliant and sparkling in the
collection. Her description of La Brinvilliers's death and
torture jars upon our modern (and let us hope our gen-
nine) sentimentalism. Madame de la Brinvilliers had
poisoned her father, her child, her husband, and con-
fessed to a score of others murdered. The good Mar-
quise went out with all Paris, and waited on the Pont
Neuf to see the wicked one led by to execution. All
she saw was a little white cap passing by in a tumbril.
Her next expedition was to the Court, where, as yet, no
echoes of heavy tumbrils were to be heard, and where
everything was splendid and supreme, the king, the
queen, Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle, all the princes
and princesses, Madame de Montespan, all her suite, the
courtiers, the ladies in the fine apartment of the king,
Avith the divine furniture.
" One is not crowded, one passes from place to place ; a
game of reversis gives countenance to the assemblage. The
king is by Madame de Montespan, who holds the cards,
142 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
Monsieur, the queen, Madame de Soubise, Dangeau and
company, Langlee and company. A thousand pieces are
scattered on the cloth. There are no other markers. I
watched Dangeau play, and wondered at our own stupidity
compared to him. He is only thinking of his business,
winning while the others lose, neglecting nothing, profiting
by everything never distracted, in a word ; his excellent
conduct defies fortune. Thus 200,000 francs in ten days,
100,000 louis in a month all this is written in the. book of
his receipts."
Then she describes Montespan's wonderful beauty
eyes, lips, complexion :
" She is all dressed in French point-lace, with a thousand
ringlets, two falling low from her temples upon her cheeks.
She wears black ribbons in her hair, the pearls of the Mare-
chal de 1'Hopital among her curls, and diamond pendants
of the greatest beauty, two or three lappets, no coiffe in a
word, a triumphal beauty to dazzle all ambassadors. People
had complained that Madame de Montespan kept the king
away from those who had a right to enjoy his presence. She
has now given him back to France, to the joy of every one
to the delight of the Court. Every day, from three to six, the
king gives audience in an agreeable confusion, without con-
fusion of everything that is most select : this lasts from three
o'clock to six. When the couriers arrive, the king retires
for a moment to read his letters, and then returns. Music
is always sounding, which he listens to, and which adds to
the completeness of the whole. He talks to the ladies who
are used to this honour. At last the courtiers cease their
play. Finally, at six o'clock, every one goes off in carriages
the king, Madame de Montespan, Monsieur, Madame de
Thianges and the good D'Heudicourt on the step that is
to say, as if in Paradise. You know how these carriages
are built ; you do not see one another, all being turned one
way. The queen follows in another, with the princesses,
and every one troops after according to fancy. They float to
ALCESTE. 143
music on the canal in gondolas ; they come back at ten to a
play ; midnight strikes ; the media-noce is served. Thus
Saturday was spent."
The courier's news was not what should have most
added to the king's enjoyment. One place after another
was being carried by the enemy, and the king's victo-
rious armies were cutting a sorry figure. Madame de
Sevigne follows the armies with interest. Her son and
the Chevalier de Grignan are both engaged, and both are
mentioned with honour. The Baron is distinguishing
himself, and bent on distinctions which never come.
He was present at the siege of Aire, which was carried
by the French ; and indeed its inhabitants do not seem
to have been heroes, according to the account of the con-
quering Baron. " The nerves of their backs which serve
to turn, and those which cause the legs to move and run
away, were not restrained by the desire for glory." A
little story of a conversation between the king and the
upright and outspoken Montausier is to the honour of
both of them. One morning the king read
" In truth I think we shall not be able to relieve Philips-
bourg, but I shall not the less be king of France."
M. de Montausier answered
" ' It is true, Sire, that you would still be king of France if
they had taken Metz, Toul, Verdon, and the Franchd Comte,
and several other provinces which your predecessors were
able to do without.' The courtiers all began to bite their
lips at this, and the king, with very good grace, said ' I
understand you very well, M. de Montausier : you mean that
you think my affairs are going ill ; but I find what you say
very good, for I know what a true heart yours is for me.' "
" This is a true story," says Madame de Sevigne,
144 MADAME DE SISVIGNE'.
" and I think they both played their parts excellently
well."
The Baron came home from the wars somewhat in
disgrace, having turned his back wearily upon the fight-
ing, and brought with him no distinction, but a rheu-
matism for his mother to nurse. This she speaks of,
and of the dress of gold, upon gold embroidered with
gold, and fretted with gold, given to Madame de Monte-
span, &c. ; and of the serious illness of her cousin,
Coulanges' wife, all told in a bright succession of
flashing words, and sparkling sentences not unlike the
golden -gilt gold -embroidered stuff she describes.
The correspondence comes to a temporary end in De-
cember 1676. Madame de Grignan arrives in Paris to
find her mother waiting dinner, smoking broth, lighted
tapers, blazing fire, " and the person in the world who
loved her most tenderly " with arms open to receive her.
It was in 1677 that Madame de Sevigne 1 , to her
great delight, found herself installed in the Hotel de
Carnavalet, where there is room for all she loves, for
her daughter and her family above all (as she says) for
Pauline, the little granddaughter, whose poor baby fate
was then hanging in the balance. Madame de Sevigne
trembled lest the child should be sent after her sister
into the dim -Hades of convent life. Alas! we have
but one poor life in this world, she pleads. Here is
room for Pauline, and here is fine air, and a big court-
yard, and a beautiful garden. She will have to go with-
out parquets and little fashionable chimneys for the
present, but they will be all together, and at their ease,
in the beautiful home. Madame de Sevigne went to
stay with her cousin, Emmanuel de Coulanges, while she
ARRIVALS. 145
furnished and made ready. The arrangement seems to
have given satisfaction to all parties.
" We hold her at last, that incomparable mother-beauty,"
writes the little, fat, cheerful man. " She is more beautiful,
more incomparable than ever. Do you think that she came
to us tired ? Do you think she stayed in bed to rest after her
fatigues ? Nothing of the sort. She did me the honour to
land at my door more beautiful, more refreshed, more radi-
ant than I can describe ; and since then she has been in a
continual agitation, which does not in the least injure her
health. She is well in body. As for her soul, it is, by my
faith, altogether with you ; and if it chances to revert to its
beautiful shrine for a while, it is only to speak of that rare
Countess in Provence."
The poor old Abbe is less fortunate : he has a fever
and a cold, but he too shakes off his ills, and lives for
ten years more to enjoy the beautiful home. As yet
everything is chaos, " and the world and its elements are
being divided anew," the lady says. She receives her
friends in the courtyard, on the steps of their big car-
riages. La Eochefoucauld comes, the Princess de Tarente
comes, Corbinelli remains for good on a mysterious re-
gimen of melted gold and milk which has disagreed
with him. Then, finally, the Grignans arrive, daughters,
brother-in-law, young Marquis and attendants: one can
imagine them clattering in, under the big archway,
and settling down in the many apartments and corri-
dors. Some rooms open to the court; these are for
the Chevalier de Grignan, the generous, kind brother-
in-laAv, who is a martyr by gout. There is a quiet library
now in the room where the family assembled, a sort
of panelled quiet broods over the place. The closet
is shown where the letters were written a dark and
F.C. xm. K
146 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE\
sunless little room opening from a bedroom. The par-
quets are now there which were wanting to Madame
de Sevigne's comfort, and the little fashionable chim-
neys she wished for. Were they added by her or
by those who have come after 1 Along with her, many
people inhabited the hotel at one time and another.
Mademoiselle de Meri, the sick cousin, seems for a
long while to have made her home there; the Che-
valier de Grignan and others spent many months in
the house ; Corbinelli, the philosopher, stayed for years
at a time. The jealous Madame de Grignan was
jealous of Corbinelli among other people, and seems to
have suspected him of wishing to deprive her of her
mother's affections. Did she fear him as a step-father ]
One has more sympathy with this phase of the belle
Madelonne's mind than with others less human, and
indeed the admiring way in which Madame de Sevigne
quotes her philosopher is certainly irritating to those
who love her memory. The son of the house was also
able to join the party for a time, Charles de Sevigne,
" the grey-bearded ensign," as he calls himself, much
discontented with his slow advancement, and little
caring for the life he had to lead. He was allowed but
a brief space to cultivate his home affections, and was
soon called away again to Luxembourg's army, which was
now near Mons, where not long afterwards the battle of
Denis was fought, in which the Baron greatly distin-
guished himself, though with small recognition. Not-
withstanding Madame de Sevigne's prayers and loving
entreaties, Pauline, the little granddaughter, was not
with them she had been left in the south in some con-
vent school ; but the two elder daughters of the house,
CELESTIAL AND TEKKESTEIAL. 147
the Demoiselles de Grignan, daughters of the Count
by his first marriage, with Angelique d'Angennes, were
there making great friends (as who did not 1 ?) with
Madame de Sevigne". The young ladies were heiresses
in their own right : the eldest was Louise, the celestial
daughter, so Madame de Sevigne used to christen her ;
the second, Mademoiselle d'Aleyrac, as she was called,
was the terrestrial daughter, not so much occupied with
the joys of the next world as with present gaieties.
148
CHAPTEE XXIII.
FAMILY DISCUSSIONS.
FOR two years they were all together. Madame de
Grignan's health was precarious ; and Fagon, the great
doctor, forbade her to return to the keen air of her
home. The whole Grignan family seem to have spent
the time more or less at the Hotel de Carnavalet and at
Livry. Any one who knows anything of French family
life its gaiety, its vehemence, its pleasant sociability,
its sudden storms and tempests can imagine what sort
of home it was which all these people made in common.
That storms were not unknown is very evident from the
few letters which still exist dated from this time. There
is one from the mother at Livry, sending back some
carriage - horses, and commencing, " You should spare
me the horrible remembrance of the last words you
spoke if I do not love you if I am not glad to see
you. ..." And another to Bussy, in which the Mar-
quise comments somewhat sadly on old age, and says
she could correct herself of her faults if only she might
live two hundred years, so as to become an admirable
person.
Madame de Grignan may not have been altogether to
TO THE FRONT. 149
blame. One of Madame de Sevigne's biographers well
describes her insatiable tenderness; but whatever her
unreasonableness may have been, a word, a return, a
caress, disarms her in an instant.
It is curious how, even now, two hundred years
after her death, biographers still fall victims to the
charm of Madame de Sevigne's personality. "VValcke-
naer writes with something like enthusiasm. M.
Mesnard is scarcely less fascinated by his heroine ;
and indeed it is impossible to resist her grace, her
goodwill. When she does that which we disapprove,
we feel personal pain and regret, as for a friend's
failing.
If the Baron her son was rheumatic, lazy, and dis-
graced in 1677, in 1678 he retrieved his character
brilliantly. Notwithstanding the declaration of peace,
the Prince of Orange suddenly fell upon the French
at Mons. After a brilliant engagement, in which an ex-
traordinary number of people were killed and wounded,
a conference between the leaders took place, in which
Marshal Luxembourg was asked which was that squadron
which had, during two whole hours, stood the fire of
nine cannon - mouths ? The Marshal replied that the
squadron was that of the Dauphin's men-at-arms, and
that it was commanded by M. de Sevigne". It is curious
to mark the shuffling of the cards as one watches them
dealt out again and again by Madame de Sevigne's
pretty white hands. It is not long after this that she
describes the great Luxembourg himself as arrested on
suspicion of witchcraft, and driven off in his own carriage
to the Bastille.
"When the Grignan family returned to Provence in
150 MADAME DE SE~VIGNE~.
the autumn of 1678, Madame de Sevigne found herself
very lonely in her big empty house. She writes anx-
iously about her daughter's health about Pauline,
whom she loves so tenderly :
" The good Abb6 was telling me a little while ago that I
ought to ask you for Pauline : he says that she would cheer me
and amuse me, and that I am better able to bring her up well
now than I ever have been. I was delighted with this sug-
gestion of his. Let us put it by to ripen. We will think of it
one of these days. I have an idea that you would not give
her to me, that you have not a good enough opinion of me.
My child, hide this thought from me, if you have it ; for I
feel that it is unjust, and that you do not really know me.
It would be a delicious occupation to cherish all this little
creature's wonderful ways. Mesdemoiselles de Grignan, do
you not love her ? You should write and tell me a thousand
things, easily, without troubling yourselves ; and above all,
tell me how your dear step-mother is in health."
The pacific Sevigne' had come home after his fight-
ing, and made a journey to Brittany, by way of looking
after his tenants. He was weary of the profession,
of the distinctions once longed after, and he soon after-
wards gave up the army, to his sister's extreme in-
dignation. He also was thinking of marriage, not less
to her indignation. One of the complaints urged against
the poor young man is that he has a curious taste in
wives, and falls in love with dowdy unsuitable ladies.
His magnificent countess - sister and his aristocratic
mother are in despair at the badness of his taste. Is
it possible that he can appreciate m, they say, if he
takes such extraordinary fancies?
Charles finally, when he was no longer young, when
his chances of advancement were ended, when his
POMPONNE IN DISGRACE. 151
mother had begun to give up all hope of a suitable
marriage, found a rich, high-born, and devoted young
lady ready to share his small fortune ; and although, as
usual, Madame da Grignan's demands were such as
almost to break off the match, Charles's sweet temper
and generosity carried the day. From this marriage
might be dated the happiness of his life. He loved his
wife tenderly, and she returned his affection. Her name
was Jeanne de Brehat de Mauron.
But this was long after 1679, when Madame de
Sevigne had many cares on her mind besides her son's
want of good taste in marriage. Not the least among
these are her daughter's difficulties and money embar-
rassments, and the load of debt and anxiety, which
added to Madame de Grignan's physical exhaustion.
Their all-powerful friend Pomponne, the Minister, was
to have come to their help, when lo ! Pomponne him-
self was disgraced. The account is curious.
" On Friday we had gone, as I have already said, to
Pomponne M. de Chaulnes, Caumartin, and myself. We
found him and the two ladies, who gave us a delightful
reception. The evening passed in conversation and at
chess. But ah ! what a checkmate was in store at Saint
Germain ! He set off thither, the first thing in the morning.
. . . As for us, we did not leave till after dinner. The ladies
remained at Pomponne ; and Madame de Vins in particu-
lar loaded me with endless kind messages to you. It was
thus necessary to send to tell them the bad news; and it
was one of M. de Pomponne's own servants who appeared
in the room at nine o'clock on Sunday morning. The
man's demeanour was so strange, he was so extraordinarily
changed, that Madame de Vins felt sure he had come to an-
nounce M. de Pomponne's death : on hearing that he was only
in disgrace, she revived. As she recovered, she was able to
152 MADAME DE SE*VIGXE".
realise the misfortune, and went to break it to her sister.
They started at once, leaving those poor little boys crying ;
and reached Paris at two in the afternoon, overwhelmed
with sorrow. You can imagine their meeting with M. de
Pomponne, and what they felt at seeing each other under
conditions so different from what they had thought, only
the evening before, were theirs. For myself, I heard the
news through the Abbe de Grignan, and I own it cut me to
the heart. As soon as it was evening, I went to the house
for they were not visible to ordinary visitors. On going in,
I found them all there together. M. de Pomponne embraced
me, without being able to say a word. The ladies could not
check their sobs, nor I mine. If you had been there, my
child, you would have cried too. It was a pitiful sight !
Our sympathies were the deeper for the accident of our
having said good-bye at Pomponne in so different a mood.
It is quite impossible to describe the state they were in.
Poor Madame de Vins, whom I had left so blooming, was
unrecognisable literally unrecognisable. A fortnight's
fever would not have changed her more.
" You can imagine that I often go to see him. I was
touched the other day when he appeared without any signs
of sorrow or dejection. Madame de Coulanges had begged
me to take her with me. He complimented her for re-
membering the unfortunate. But he did not dwell long on
that strain, but passed on to something that might lead to
a general conversation, which he made as agreeable as ever,
without any affectation of gaiety, but speaking in a manner
so manly, so simple, so exactly and happily touched by
everything that was sure to command our appreciation,
that he had no difficulty in attaining his end. It seemed
that at last we were once more going to see the same perfect
M. de Pomponne whom we knew of old. That first day,
however, affected me. He had nothing to occupy him, and
was beginning to realise life, and the true meaning of the
slowness of time. For, owing to the way in which his time
used before to be filled, life to him had been like a flow-
PORT ROYAL. 153
ing torrent. He was hardly aware of it, as it rushed by,
without admitting a moment's pause."
Pomponne came of too good a stock not to show of
what stuff he was made in the hour of trial. The
energetic race of Arnaulds, whatever their varieties of
opinion, carried out their convictions with unflinching
courage and determination, in good and bad fortune
alike. The story of Port Royal, so intimately asso-
ciated with the Arnauld family its groAvth, its liberal
opinions, its final overthrow by the Jesuits, and the
courageous protest of its aged martyrs for conscience'
sake is one of the most moving histories imaginable.
Madame de Sevigne did not live to see these later per-
secutions, but her sympathy was openly avowed all
along, and is said to have materially affected her favour
at Court. She contributed to the Paris establishment.
Renaud de Sevigne, her uncle, was also one of the prin-
cipal benefactors of the institution, which he finally
joined. It was to him that the Mere Angelique, on her
deathbed, sent the touching message: "At length our
good Lord has seen fit to deprive us of all. Fathers,
sisters, disciples, children, all are gone. Blessed be the
name of the Lord. Grief and sorrow, indeed, abound,
but peace and resignation to His holy will abound yet
more." This was in 1656, at the time of the first perse-
cution. Pomponne was always faithful to his friends
and relatives, and was able to help them in some degree.
Some of them, when dispersed from Port Eoyal, 1 retired
to his estate, M. de Saci among others, Pomponne's
1 Sir James Stephen's account of Port Royal is so vivid as to carry
one there, and almost to enable one to see what Madame de Sevigne
saw with her own eyes.
154 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
cousin, a man of wide influence and very holy
character.
In November 1664, Madame de Sevigne, writing to
Pomponne, mentions the story of poor Jacqueline Ar-
nauld's signing the formulary :
" I went to the Convent of Ste Marie, where I saw
Madame your aunt, who seemed lost in divine ecstasy.
She was assisting at the Mass, as if in a rapture. Madame
your sister seemed to me pretty, fine eyes, an intelligent
countenance. The poor child fainted this morning. She
is suffering very much. Her aunt is still kind as ever.
Monsieur de Paris gave her a certain sort of authorisation,
which won her heart : it was this which obliged her to sign
this device of a formulary. I did not speak to either of
them ; M. de Paris had forbidden it. But here is one more
instance of prejudice. The Sisters of Ste Marie said to me,
' At last, God be praised, He has touched the heart of that
poor child. She has put herself in the way of salvation
and obedience.' From thence I go to Port Royal. I find a
certain great solitary whom you know, who begins to say :
' Well, so the poor fledgling has signed. God has abandoned
her. She has taken the fatal leap.' As for me, 1 nearly
died of laughing as I thought of the effect of preconceived
ideas. This is indeed humanity in its natural condition."
The laughing philosophy of the lady is no less a
curious sensation than the more fervent feelings of the
others.
" This Port Royal is a Thebaide," she writes on a sxibse-
quent occasion, " a Paradise, a desert, where the devotion of
Christendom is collected together, and holiness spreads for
a league in circumference. There are five or six Solitaires
who live like the penitents of St John Climaques. The
nuns are angels upon earth. Mademoiselle de Vertus is
ending her life there with extreme resignation and incon-
PORT ROYAL. 155
ceivable suffering. She will not be alive in another month.
Everything that serves to their necessities the carters, the
shepherds, the workmen all is holy, all is modest. I con-
fess to you that I was delighted to see this solitude, of which
I have heard so much. It is a frightful valley, quite suit-
able to work out one's salvation in. I slept at Mesnil on
my way back, and we returned here after again embracing
M. d'Andilly. I think I shall dine to-morrow with M. de
Pomponne, and it will not be without speaking of his father
and of my daughter."
156
CHAPTER XXIV.
MADAME DE LA FATETTE AND OTHERS.
IN 1679 Madame de Sevigne was about fifty-four years
of age. From all accounts she seems to have been beauti-
ful still and blooming. Six years later even she received
an offer of marriage from the Due de Luynes, 1 which,
however, she could not be persuaded to accept. Her
heart, her interests, her sympathies belonged to her
children : her daughter's health already filled her with
anxiety, and her correspondence is overflowing with
most tender solicitude.
" If I had a heart of crystal," she writes, " in which you
could read the sad and deep-felt pain which pierced me
when you desired that my life should be composed of more
years than yours, you would know clearly with what truth
and ardour I also desire that Providence should not change
the order of nature which caused me to be born your mother,
and to come into this world very much before you. It is
rule, it is reason, my daughter, that I should go before
you."
Madame de Sevigne forbids her daughter to write, but
continues herself to give her news, honours, disgraces,
1 He also was a friend and benefactor to Port Royal.
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 157
weddings, funerals, treats, tortures, Court scenes, and
gaieties the death of her old friend La Rochefoucauld,
after a life of cruel suffering 1 are all described in a
bright torrent of flashing words, at once matter of fact,
fanciful, brilliant, and amusing. Some part of it sur-
prises, and perhaps shocks one, in a woman so faithful,
so ready to weep with those who weep ; but her heart is
not the less warm because her pen runs away with her
words.
In March 1680 she writes from Paris :
" This is "Wednesday, and M. de la Rochefoucauld still
dead, and M. de Marsillac still afflicted, and so closely shut
up that it seems as it" he did not ever dream of leaving the
house."
Of her old, close friend, bound to La Eochefoucauld
by years of sympathy and devotion, she speaks with
more feeling. Where will Madame de la Fayette find
such a friend as he is again such a companion ! where
find such gentleness, such pleasantness, such confidence,
such consideration for her and for her sons 1 She is in-
firm ; she is in her room ; she cannot run the streets.
M. de la Eochefoucauld was also sedentary, and nothing
could be equal to the confidence and the charm of their
friendship. " Think of it, my child," the mother con-
tinues ; " you will find it is scarcely possible to experi-
i " I was there yesterday. I found him crying aloud, his pain had
reached so great a point. All his constancy was overcome. Not
one good remained to him. The extremity of his suffering was so
great, that he was beating the air in a violent fury. He filled me
with pity. I had never before seen him in this condition. He
begged me to tell you of it, and to assure you that people on the
rack do not suffer more than he does during half his life, and that he
longs for death as for a mercy -stroke."
158 MADAME DE SEVIGX&
ence a greater loss one which time can do less to re-
pair. I have not left my poor friend all these days;
she did not join the crowding family ; she needed some
one to have pity on her."
In the many changes of life these two women were
ever faithful to one another. Madame de la Fayette,
ailing, suffering, faithful, and sincere, never changed in
her affectionate devotion to Madame de Sevigne. They
had known each other in their earliest youth; their
lives had run side by side ; they were well fitted to be-
friend each other. Madame de la Fayette loved Madame
de Sevigne as much as she hated writing to her : hers
was a silent heart, clear-sighted, not protesting over
much, not fearing to speak the truth, warmly interested
in the wellbeing of all those whose wellbeing concerned
her friend. To be true, to be real, was Madame de la
Fayette's aim in life ; and this aim she fulfilled simply,
somewhat austerely, but with a warm and generons
fidelity of heart. " Is it not enough to be ? " she used to
say. Besides the works by which she is known, she
helped La Rochefoucauld in his collection of 'Maximes.'
It may have been through her influence that he, year by
year, condensed them and simplified their form. Her
own works were widely read at the time. ' La Princesse
de Montpensier,' ' Zayde,' ' La Princesse de Cleves,' were
published in her lifetime ; after her death were printed
'Memoirs of the French Court' in 1686 and 1689, and
her ' History of Henrietta of England.'
For twenty-five years the affection of La Rochefoucauld
had lightened her life, already saddened and weighed
down by constant ill -health. After his death she
seems to have been very lonely. Madame de Sevigne
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. 159
complained that servants robbed Madame de la Fayette
as she lay helpless on her sick-bed. One other good
friend and her director, Father Duguet of Port Eoyal,
also assisted her in her last years. One hears little of
her sons, who, let us hope, did not entirely abandon their
mother. She died in 1693, three years before Madame
de Sevigne.
It is hard to reproach the chronicler with too much
brilliancy and vividness as one reads the account
of the events of the year which followed Madame de
Grignan's return to Provence. Here is a veil as it
were uplifted, a glimpse into the unknown, into that
which is no longer history :
" Yesterday I went to the great Carmelites," she says,
" with Mademoiselle, who had the good thought of bidding
Madame de Lesdiguieres to take me. We entered the holy
place. I was charmed with the wit of Mother Agnes, who
spoke of you, as knowing you through her sister. I saw
Madame Stuart, beautiful and content. I saw Mademoiselle
d'Epernon, who did not find me disfigured more than
thirty years had passed since we had met. She seemed to
me horribly changed. The little Du Janet did not greet me ;
since three days she wears the white veil. She is a prodigy
of fervent vocation. I am going to write to her mother
about her. But what an angel [Madame de la Valliere]
appeared in the end ! for M. le Prince de Conti had detained
her in the parlour. There, to my eyes, were all the charms
we have formerly beheld. She was neither changed nor
sallow. She is less thin, more happy ; the same eyes, the
same glances. Austerity, bad food, and little sleep have not
wearied nor sunk them. The strange dress takes nothing
from her grace nor her distinction. As for modesty, it is
not less than when she gave a Princess de Conti to the
world, but this is more than enough for a Carmelite. . . . M.
160 MADAME DE SEVIGNE".
de Conti loves and honours her tenderly. She is his director.
The Prince is devout, and will be like his father. In truth,
this dress and this retreat are a great dignity for her."
Words more or less lively and indifferent seem to
matter little : one episode which occurs not long after
this, that of the Demoiselles de Grignan, is one which
did not end in words only. It is difficult to forgive
or explain. They were both rich, and to each of them
did their father owe great sums of money. When
Pauline, comparatively dowerless, was threatened with a
cloister, her grandmother most certainly helped to save
her from this condign fate ; but when a question arose as
to the vocation of the eldest daughter of the house, the
young step-daughter of Madame de Grignan, Madame de
Sevigne served God and mammon to the utmost of her
power ; there are no doubts, no protestations, only con-
gratulations : they may be somewhat satirical at times,
but there is no relenting, no hesitation. It is a happy
stroke of chance a lucky throw of the dice, by which
Mademoiselle de Grignan has been persuaded to retire
to pray for her family, and to bestow her dowry to fill
its empty coffers. Madame de Grignan has not a little
contributed to this happy result, so Madame de Sevigne
tells Bussy, who replies that his daughter is thankful
that she has not so able a step-mother as Madame de
Grignan, otherwise she too might be safely shut up in a
convent. Finally, when the poor young lady's health
failed, and she was obliged to leave the Carmelites, she
returned home indeed, but never resumed her place in
the world. She made a donation of all her possessions
to her father, and lived a semi-cloistral and religious life.
Sainte Grignan she is called by Madame de Sevigne, who
IN BRITTANY AGAIN. 161
implies of herself long afterwards that the fault in
her life one which had rendered her hateful at times
was that she looked on blandly at wrong-doing in those
she loved, but which she should have resented, wrongs
to which she would never have stooped herself. The
vounger, the terrestrial daughter of the house of Grignan,
also left her father's home for her uncle's, and finally,
after going to law with her family, married to every-
body's disapprobation.
Madame de Grignan came to Paris about 1680, and
remained with her mother for eight years ; but before
her arrival Madame de Sevigne paid a visit to Brittany,
Avhere business again required her presence. She was
reluctant to go, but the wise old uncle urged her, and
notwithstanding his great age, this faithful guardian
prepared to accompany her. " My Eienbon desires me
to assure you that he is at your service," the mother
writes. " I am greatly taken up by the care of him.
Journeys are no longer for him what they formerly
were." She dates from Blois, that most enchanting
of old French towns, writing romantically, she says,
on the river-side. But though she has heard a thousand
nightingales on her way, she is listening for those which
her daughter can hear from her balcony in Provence.
From Nantes she writes :
" I begin this letter to-day, because we receive our letters
at ten o'clock in the morning, and the post goes out at six
in the afternoon punctually ; and now I am going to tell
you something which will amuse you it is, that the first
time I read your letters I am so agitated that I do not see
one half of what is in them. In reading them over again
more at my leisure, I find a thousand things that I want
to talk to you about. . . .
F.C. xill. L
162 MADAME DE
" I am here in the midst of all the worry of completing
the whole accounts for nineteen years, of which my son had
only made a rough draft. They try to make letters which
I have written pass as receipts : it is pitiful to see the mean
shifts to which a bad debtor will have recourse for a balance
of 400. We are going to settle everything ; we are looking
to certain fines of alienation and sale of land held from us ;
we shall want 80 presently. We have plenty of people to
advise us ; the only thing that vexes me is to do harm : but
when I play at drowning, and I ask myself which of us shall
be drowned M. de la Jarie or myself I say without hesi-
tating that it shall be M. de la Jarie, and that gives me
courage."
She is at the end of her travels when she says, still
writing from Xantes :
" I am like Harlequin, who answers his letter before
receiving it. I was yesterday at the Buron. I came home
in the evening. I thought I must weep when I saw the
condition of the place. Those used to be the oldest woods
in all the world. My son during his journey caused the
last strokes of the hatchet to fall upon them and lay them
low. He even sold one last little copse which remained in
great beauty. He received four hundred pistoles for it all,
of which not one remained to him in a month. All those
sad dryads that I saw yesterday, those ancient sylvans no
longer knowing where to hide, those venerable crows estab-
lished for two hundred years in the depths of their woods,
the owlets in the gloom who announced by their cries the
troubles of mankind, all these poured out plaints which
touched my very heart. Who shall say that some of these
old oaks did not also speak, like that one in which Clarinda
was concealed ? .This spot also was a luogo d'incanto, if ever
one existed. I came home very sad. The supper which the
president and his wife had prepared did not cheer me."
1G3
CHAPTEE XXV.
OLD AND NEW GENERATIONS.
IN these succeeding years there are few letters to quote
from. The marriage of Charles takes place, as we have
read, in 1683 ; and in the consequent divisions of pro-
perty, Madame de Grignan, as usual, grasps at the larger
share. Madame de Sevigne reluctantly enough seems to
have torn herself from her daughter to pay a motherly
visit to her daughter-in-law; but she seems afraid of
making the elder lady jealous, and apologises for her
journey and her visit to her son, and writes coldly of
her daughter-in-law, who, however, in the end won a
warm place in her heart.
The younger Madame de Sevigne' is described as a
delicate and nervous person, for whom the days were all
too long. She, however, suited her husband, whose
kindness and softness of heart specially fitted him for
taking care of others, most of all of those who depended
upon him. The young Marquise seems to have been
only anxious to make the mother of the husband she
loved feel at home in the old castle which had been
ruled by her so long and so ably. "It is not possible
to feel that there is any other mistress than myself in
164 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
this house," Madame de Sevigne writes to her daughter
when describing the life at the Eochers. The Bienbon
is there too, quite well, and calculating all day long.
The days go by monotonously, though not unpleasantly.
" We are leading a quiet enough life here ; I do not think,
however, that more excitement would be any pleasanter for
me. My daughter-in-law is only cheerful at times she
changes her moods a hundred times a-day without finding
one to suit her. She is extremely delicate, she hardly takes
any exercise, she is always cold ; by nine o'clock in the
evening she is quite worn out. The day is too long for her,
and the necessity which she has for rest gives me my freedom,
so that I may leave her free : this is a great pleasure to me.
I cannot by any possibility feel that there is any other mis-
tress in this house than myself. Although I do not trouble
myself about anything, I find all my wants attended to as if
by invisible orders. I take my walks alone, but I dare not
go out in the twilight for fear of bursting out sobbing and
crying ; the dark would be bad for me in my present state.
Even if I had sufficient strength of mind to enjoy it, I would
sacrifice this mournful pleasure to the fear of vexing you.
At present my health forbids it ; then, again, it is you who
have told me to take care of myself, it is always you."
It was not until some years after Charles's marriage
that the good Abbe departed this life, in 1687, full of
age and honour. I have already quoted Madame de
Sevigne's grateful tribute to the uncle to whom she
owes the sweetness and the peace of her life. She
writes to Bussy :
" You too owe him any brightness I gave to your society;
without him we should never have laughed together. You
have to thank him for all my good-humour, my vivacity,
the gift I had of sympathising with you, the intelligence
which made me understand what you said, and guess at
DEATH OF THE BIENBON. 165
that which you were going to say : in a word, the good Abbe,
in withdrawing me from the abysses in which M. de Sevigne
had left me, has rendered me that which I was, that which
you found me, worthy of your friendship and your esteem.
I have deeply felt the loss of this beneficent source of the
repose of my whole life. He died in seven days of a con-
tinued fever, as if he had been a young man with very
Christian sentiments, which touched me deeply. His life
lasted eighty years. He lived with honour ; he died as a
Christian. May God grant us the same grace ! It was
towards the end of August that I bitterly lamented his loss.
I never should have left him if he had lived as long as I
myself; but about the 15th or 16th of September, finding
myself only too free, I determined to go to Vichy at least to
cure my imagination."
Further on she describes giving up the pretty old Abbey
de Livry, to which all her life she had returned, and
always with new pleasure.
The good old Abbe went to his rest in 1687; in 1688
the whole of Europe was in arms against Louis XIV.
The Prince of Orange was uprousing the land against
the invader. The Protestants were crying out against
the cruelty with which they were assailed. The revoca-
tion of the Edict of Nantes brought indignation, which
had long been smouldering, to a crisis. Among other
places, Philipsbourg, which had been taken by the Ger-
mans, was now again attacked by the French. The
young Marquis de Grignan, Louis Provence, who was
then sixteen years of age, was sent there at the head
of a company, carefully chosen and equipped by his
mother. Madame de Sevigne may have judged of her
daughter's anxieties by her own. It is certain that
while the danger lasted she would not leave Paris, but
day by day despatched letters, with what comfort she
166 MADAME DE SE"VIGNl
could collect, to the absent and terrified mother. Did
she sleep at the post, as Madame de Coulanges declared,
in order to get news the sooner ? Perhaps she contented
herself by remaining in Paris until the 1st of November,
when she writes a joyful letter of good news. " Philips-
bourg is taken; your son is safe." The little Marquis
was safe, with a slight wound in the thigh, which
only added to his newly gained distinctions. He now
appears constantly in the letters, and is seen in his own
person respectfully kissing his mother and his grand-
mother's hands. He is feted, caressed, and welcomed
by his friends and relations, and by Monsieur le Cheva-
lier his uncle, so long an inhabitant of the ground-floor
rooms in the Hotel de Carnavalet. The little Marquis's
presence must have brought much life and interest to
the household of people whose own lives were growing
sad and dreary. His grandmother and the suffering
Chevalier seem to have enjoyed his brilliant youth.
His grandmother throws herself with delightful gaiety
into his adventures, and amusements, and ecstasies.
Perennial Coulanges also seems to have been amusing
himself, and attending a great Court ceremony at Ver-
sailles an investiture of blue ribbons. The letter is
one often quoted :
"He told me that they began on the Friday: the first
took their oaths with Court dresses and with collars on. Two
marshals of France stayed over for Saturday. Marshal de
Bellefonds was perfectly ridiculous, partly from modesty
and partly from indifference. He had neglected to put
bows at the knees of his page's costume, so that it had an
air of veritable bareness. The whole troop were magni-
ficent, M. de la Trousse among the best ; but there was a
tangle in his wig which obliged him to push what ought to
THE INVESTITURE OF BLUE RIBBONS. 167
have been at the side far away behind, so that his cheek was
all uncovered. He was always pulling at that which em-
barrassed him, and which would not come, and this caused
him no little vexation. But along the same line M. de
Montchevreuil and M. de Villars entangled themselves one
to the other so furiously the swords, the ribbons, the laces,
the tinsel hangings were all mixed, confused, jumbled ; all
the little crooked atoms so perfectly interlaced, that no
human hand could separate them ; the more people tried
the more they seemed to entangle them, like the rings in
Roger's coat of mail. At last the whole ceremony, all their
salutations, the whole performance coming to a standstill,
it was necessary to separate the two by main force, and the
stronger carried the day. But that which entirely discon-
certed the gravity of the ceremony was good M. d'Hocquin-
court's negligence, who is so accustomed to be dressed like
the Provenals, or even Bretons, that his page's breeches being
less commodious than those which he is accustomed to wear,
his shirt would not remain in place, however much he
wished it to do so. Knowing his condition, he tried con-
stantly to put order to it, but always in vain, so that
Madame la Dauphine could no longer contain her burst of
laughter. It was deplorable ; the majesty of the king itself
was nearly shaken, and never in the history of the Order was
such an adventure known."
There is another pretty account of the King of France
going with true courtesy to welcome the Queen of Eng-
land flying from her country, and a pleasant description
of the little girls at St Cyr acting " Esther " before the
Court. The king's remarks are chronicled. He came
up to Madame de Sevigne : l " Madame, I am certain
that you have been pleased," he said. She, without
1 " It is to be remarked that Madame de Sevigne does not forget her
prejudice against Racine, even in the king's dazzling company. In lit-
erature, as in politics and religion, she is always half a rebel." J. A.
168 MADAME DE
surprise : " Sire, I am charmed ; tliat which I feel is
beyond words." The king replies, " Racine has great
cleverness." " Sire, he has much cleverness ; but so, in
truth, have these young ladies. They throw themselves
into a subject as if they had never done anything else."
To which the king replies, " Ah, yes, that is true ; " and
leaves Madame de Sevigne the object of universal envy.
" My small prosperities," says Madame de Sevigne,
speaking of these events. But all this magnificence,
and all the dignities bestowed, and the blue ribbons,
did not go far to fill the empty coffers of the needy
family of Grignan, whose difficulties had grown more
and more uneasy to surmount.
169
CHAPTEE XXVI.
NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY.
THE end of a life would be only sad to write and sad
to read of, if it were not for certain redeeming things
which in some degree perhaps make good the loss of the
brightest and best treasures of existence. Youth and
strength, hope, fervent aspiration, are the first flowers of
a healthy natural life ; then when these are over comes
fruition, and then follows the seed-time ; and old age, to
those who have lived in some sympathy with the people
and the things around them, should be the good and
pregnant seed-time width of understanding, tranquillity
of soul, charity and fearlessness, and the knowledge of
human weakness and its pathetic possibilities and im-
possibilities, all these are good seeds bearing priceless
fruit. The brilliant, laughing, beautiful young woman,
in her glittering coach with the six prancing horses, is
not a more delightful figure than the gentle, generous-
hearted mother, aged, impoverished, failing in health,
softened, still devoted, still absorbed in her children's
welfare, still planning, hoping, devising, living only for
their wellbeing, and with what strength remained still
shielding them to her utmost, as we have all seen young
170 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE'.
leaves in the spring-time and early summer covered and
protected from the cold by the last year's leaves as they
wither on their stalks.
" You are old," wrote Madame de la Fayette in a
letter full of heart and tender affection, urging Madame
de SeVigne" to consent to a certain plan which had been
devised by two or three of her faithful old friends for
subscribing together to bring her back to Paris to be
among them all. But she would not hear of their
scheme she was with her son, she was happy, she
could not be indebted to any of them. Madame de la
Fayette's appeal fell strangely on her ears. " You were
struck, as I was, by Madame de la Fayette's sentence.
I own I was surprised, for as yet I feel no failure to
remind me of this truth, which I should not forget."
Speaking of her friends' alarm at her country winter,
she describes the woods all penetrated with sunshine
when there is any ; the dry soil, the " Place Madame "
facing the south, the end of a great avenue where the
west works wonders. " When it rains," she says, " there
is a comfortable room with a big fire. There is some
company here, which, however, does not disturb me.
I go my own way. When we are alone, everything is
better still" This was written in 1689, when she was
about sixty-three. No one has written of old age more
touchingly and with greater wisdom :
" In reality it is not at all what one expects. Providence
leads us with so much goodness through the different stages
of our life, that we hardly are conscious as they pass by.
This loss is effected with such gentleness that it is impercep-
tible : it is the hand on the dial which we do not see moving.
If at twenty they were to give us the position in the family,
OLD AGE. 171
and to show us in a looking-glass the countenance which
we have or should have at sixty, comparing it with that of
twenty we should be quite overcome and horrified at that
face ; but it is day by day that we grow older : to-day we
are as we were yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day ; and thus
we go on without feeling it, and this is one of the miracles
of that Providence that I adore."
Elsewhere she says :
" How foolish it is not to enjoy with gratitude the conso-
lations which God sends us, after the afflictions which He
sometimes causes us to feel ! There is, it seems to me, great
wisdom in enduring storms with resignation, and in enjoying
the calm when it pleases Him to restore it to us, for this is
to follow the ordinances of Providence. Life is too short to
halt too long in one frame of mind ; one must take the days
as they come, and I feel that I am of this happy tempera-
ment."
And she expresses her whole life in these few words.
There is something pleasant and useful in reading of
the rest and tranquillity for others even two hundred
years ago. I think this is the secret of the extreme
popularity of certain books describing very simple mon-
otonies, which go through as many editions as the most
startling of sensational novels. Madame de Sevigne's
life at this tune was of this tranquil nature, and she
seems to have stayed on nearly two years with her son
and her daughter-in-law. Her life with them was a
strange contrast to the life she spent with her daughter.
She was economising as well as enjoying her children's
society. Her house in Paris was shut up, her living
cost little. Charles owed her moneys which he was glad
to return in kind, as he owed her a duty and affection
which he never failed to pay to the uttermost. He was
172 MADAME DE SEVIGNE".
perhaps a better son than this mother deserved, who
divided her love in two such unequal shares. " We lead
a somewhat dull life," she writes. " I do not, however,
imagine that more racket would be agreeable." And
then, when Madame de Grignan exclaimed, and de-
lighted her mother's heart by complaining, that she was
not with her
" You ask me, my best one, why I am not with you ?
Alas ! how easy it would be to tell you why, if I chose to
tarnish my letters with the reasons which oblige me to this
separation ! The misery of our country, all that is owed to
me, the little wliich is paid that which I owe to others,
and the way in which I should have been overwhelmed and
choked by my affairs if I had not, with infinite annoyance,
taken this resolution. I cannot hazard hazardous conduct.
That which I possess is no longer mine."
And she goes on to say that the time has come for her
to render up her account to her children.
So she lingers on in the old house where she had
come as a bride half a century before, where her children
had grown up and grown to her heart, where for her
all she had ever loved and hoped for, as she looked
around, must have crowded into the silent rooms, along
the pretty green walks of the old parks. She looks
around for the last time, and then starts off, crossing by
country roads and byways to the south, leaving the stem
but reviving country where so much of her life had been
passed, descending by degrees into the warmth and glow
and overflowing abundance of a southern life, and is
not her daughter at the journey's end?
173
CHAPTER XXY1I.
THE LAST.
" WHEN you see the date of this letter, my dear cousin,"
Madame de Sevigne writes to Bussy, " you will take me for
a bird. I have passed courageously from Brittany to
Provence. If my daughter had been at Paris I should
have gone there ; but knowing that she was spending the
winter in this beautiful country, I resolved to spend it with
her, and to come and enjoy her glowing sunshine."
Then she describes the sunshine, her arrival, the
beautiful house, her welcome. This is a charming letter,
which space prevents our giving in its completeness.
.She speaks of the death of Colbert's son. " It seems
to me that splendour is dead," she says. Then she
winds up with gentlest words of old affection. " Love
me always," she says ; " it is not worth while to change
after all these years." Old as she is, according to
Madame de la Fayette, she is writing her best. Some
of her most striking and original passages occur in
these latest letters. She was often ill during these last
few years. Her rheumatism troubled her greatly, and
she suffered in other ways. Years may have taken from
her strength of body, but her mind did not fail, nor her
174 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".
vividness and "brilliance of intellect. Her letter on the
death of Louvois is very striking and eloquent. She
was near seventy when it was written.
" I am so entirely bewildered by the news of the sudden
death of M. de Louvois, that I know not how to begin to
speak of it to you. So he is dead, this great Minister, this
eminent man, who held so great a place, whose self, as M.
Nicole says, was so widely spread, he who was the centre
of so many things. What businesses, what designs, what
profits, what secrets, what interests to disentangle, what wars
to carry on, what intrigues, what a grand game of chess
to play and to conduct ! Ah, my God ! give me a little
time : I should like to give checkmate to the Due of Savoy,
checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no ; you cannot
have one instant, not one single instant. Is it possible to
reason upon this strange event ? No, in truth ; it is only to
be thought over alone in one's closet. This is the second
Minister we have seen die since you have been at Rome.
Nothing can be more different than their deaths, nor more
equal than their fortunes."
So she writes of the Minister " formed by Louis " not
many years before her own last year.
Here is a piece in still life that her contemporary,
Eachel Ruysch, or Van Huysum himself, might have
envied :
" Our partridges are all fed on thyme, on sweet marjoram,
and upon all the perfumes of our sachets : there is nothing
to choose between them. I may say as much for our fat
quails, whose thighs must part from their bodies at the first
summons (they never fail to do it) ; and the turtle-doves are
all quite perfect too. As for the melons, the figs, and the
muscat grapes, they are marvels. If by some strange whim
we were to try and find a bad melon, we should be obliged
to send to Paris for it : there are none to be found here.
IN THE SOUTH. 175
The figs are white and sweet ; the muscats are like drops of
amber, only delectable ; and they would soon go to your
head if you ate without measure, because it is as if you were
drinking little sips of the most exquisite wine at Saint
Laurent. My dear cousin, what a life ! You know it
under less sunny aspects. It does not in any way recall
that of La Trappe. See what details I have gone into. It
is chance which guides our pens ! "
She seems to have "been happy and at peace in this
broad southern sunshine, as ever, absorbed in her
daughter's interests. The children were children no
longer. Pauline was of marriageable age. The young
Marquis was looking out for a wife, divided between
stones and bread, it is said, between money to retrieve
their ancient state, and empty honours to add to their
dignities. Madame de Sevigne's own health was still
good, but she felt, as M. Mesnard justly says, that the time
was come for her to give up her own life and share her
children's. Time was too short now for separations to
be possible. All her interest had centred in one person.
One last tender mother's office she rendered to the child
she had borne in her youth. Madame de Grignan fell
ill, and for months lay in a most critical condition,
nursed by her mother and daughter. It was about this
time that Pauline was engaged. Her wit and grace
stood her in place of the dot to which she had so nearly
been sacrificed. The Marquis de Simiane, the son of a
neighbour, was the approved suitor.
Another less sentimental but extremely useful mar-
riage was that of the young Marquis de Grignan with
the daughter of a rich M. de St Amand. They hesitated
between stones and bread, as I have said. The sensible
176 MADAME DE
Couianges strongly urged the money marriage. Madame
de Grignan is described by Saint Simon as winking and
blinking, and shrugging her shoulders, and saying confi-
dentially to her friends that it was necessary from time
to time to manure one's fields !
M. de St Amand was naturally very indignant with
the haughty lady, and seems also to have had just reason
to complain of her conduct respecting money. It is very
difficult to be honest when the wherewithal does not
exist. Becky Sharp's ,3000 a-year would have gone a
very short way with Madame de Grignan.
Of these marriages the grandmother writes to the
President de Moulceau :
" You have perhaps heard of the marriage of the Marquis
de Grignan with Mdlle. de Saint Amand. You have seen her
often enough at Montpellier to know her person. You may
also have heard of her father. You may perhaps not be un-
aware that this marriage was solemnised with great prepara-
tions in the castle you are acquainted with."
To her son she goes into further details :
" As for the complaints of Monsieur de Saint Amand, of
which he has made so much noise at Paris, they are founded
on the fact that my daughter having actually proved, by ac-
counts which she has showed to us all, that she had actually
paid nine thousand francs to her son out of the ten thousand
she had promised him, and consequently having only sent
him the remaining thousand, M. de Saint Amand declared
that he was being cheated, that everything was being put upon
him, and that he would give nothing more. All this passed
off. M. de Saint Amand reflected that it would be unpleasant
to quarrel with his daughter. He came here meek as any
lamb, only wishing to please and to take back his daughter
to Paris. The advantage of being there with her husband,
GRANDCHILDREN'S MARRIAGES. 177
comfortably lodged in that fine house of Monsieur de Saint
Amand's, well furnished, well fed, at no expense, induced
unhesitating consent to her enjoyment of all these advan-
tages. We did not see her go without tears, for she is very
amiable. She, too, melted when she took leave of us, so
that it did not seem as though she were in truth leaving us
to commence a life full of agreeableness in the midst of
abundance. . . . Believe me, my son, no Grignan had
any intention of deceiving you. You are loved by all ; and
if this trifle had been a worthy thing, we should have been
sure that you would have sympathised as you always do."
There are compliments and motherly recommenda-
tions to the young Marquise de SeVigne in this letter.
She is ill, she must take care and be wrapped in cotton.
She promises to send for some books which he has re-
commended. There is a significant allusion to two
papers by M. de la Trappe. Charles had a great leaning
towards an ascetic and contemplative life. He and his
wife eventually joined a religious community in Paris,
where he died not a very old man.
Of Pauline's marriage she writes to the President de
Moulceau :
" I take to myself the compliments which are my due, sir,
on the marriage of Madame de Simiane. I only deserve the
praise of having extremely approved that which my daughter
had long since planned in her own mind. Nothing could be
better. Everything is noble, convenient, and advantageous
for a daughter of the house of Grignan, who has found in
her husband and his family those who prize her merit, her
person, and her name, and who care nothing for her fortune.
And we have profited with pleasure of so rare and so gen-
erous a sentiment."
When Pauline was married in the chapel of the
Chateau de Grignan, her mother was too weak to be
F.C. XIIL ii
178 MADAME DE SE'VIGNE*.
present at the ceremony. She had been suffering from a
long and trying illness which, so it is said, killed, not
Madame de Grignan, who recovered, but her tender and
devoted mother.
" For three months," Madame de Sevigne writes, " my
daughter has been overwhelmed with a sort of malady
which is, they say, not dangerous, but which I find the sad-
dest and most alarming of all those which can be endured.
I confess to you, my dear cousin, that it kills me outright,
and I am scarcely able to support the terrible nights this
causes me to pass. . . . You must love your friends with
all their failings, and it is a great one to be ill. God pre-
serve you from it."
Madame de Se"vigne's strength kept up while her
daughter's illness still threatened danger : then when this
was over for Madame de Grignan, the mother's strength
must have failed her. One of the curses of those days
was the smallpox, strangely fatal to the Sevigne family.
Madame de Sevigne, exhausted by anxiety, caught the
infection, without strength to resist its ravages. From
the first she knew that her case was hopeless. May we
not believe that this tender woman, true to her early
and generous impulses, forbade those about her to let
her daughter suspect her danger 1 Madame de Grignan
still lay slowly and with difficulty recovering to life,
while the aged and devoted parent was dying. Not-
withstanding the terror which the illness inspired, the
Marquise was devotedly nursed, so we are told, by two
of her daughter's attendants, one of them being the
faithful Mdlle. de Montgobert, of whom mention is often
made in the letters. Madame de Sevigne died on the
10th of April 1696. Most of her generation had gone
THE LAST LETTER. 179
before Her, Bussy, the fierce cousin ; Madame de la
Fayette, the gentle and faithful ; D'Haqueville, the
untiring friend, and now her OAVII hour had come. " A
brave woman facing death, which she foresaw from the
first day of her illness, with firmness and surprising
resignation. This person, so tender, so feeble where
those she loved were concerned, only found courage and
religion Avhen she felt that she had but herself to think
of." So writes her son-in-law 1 to little, laughter-loving
Coulanges, who was almost the only one of her early com-
panions left to mourn her loss. But a few days before
she had been writing to him herself, writing wearily
and sadly enough, as if with a presentiment of sorrow-
ful separation. The letter the last of all her letters
is dated March 29, 1696. A few days more and the
writer is at rest for ever.
1 The letter is so cordially expressed, and so truly felt, that it is
worth giving here :
" You, sir, will understand, perhaps better than any other person,
the greatness of the loss we have experienced, and my most just regret.
You well knew the high merit of Madame de Sevigne. It is not only
a mother-in-law I mourn such a title does not always impose upon
one ; it is an amiable and faithful friend, a delicious companion. But
she is still more worthy of our admiration than of our regret, as a
brave woman facing death, which she foresaw from the first days of
her illness, with firmness and surprising resignation. This person,
so tender, so feeble, where those she loved were concerned, only found
courage and religion when she felt that she had but herself to think
of. We could not help observing how useful and of what importance
it is to fill GUI- minds with good things and holy readings, for which
Madame de Sevign6 had a taste, not to say an avidity that was truly
surprising, when we realised the good use she knew how to make of
these wise provisions in the last moments of her life. I tell you all
these details, sir, because I am certain of your sentiments and of
the affection you felt for her whom we mourn ; and I own to you
that my mind is so full of them, that it is a relief to me to find a
man so well able as you are to listen to me."
180 MADAME DE SE"VIGNE".
" All other things ending, I weep and loudly bewail the
death of Blanchefort, that amiable fellow whom we held up
as an example to all our young men. His reputation was
made, his valour well known and worthy of his name, his
humour admirable for others and for himself (for ill humours
torment), "but his was good to his friends, good to his family,
good to his mother, good to his grandmother ; he loved and
he honoured them, he knew their worth and took pleasure
in making them feel his gratitude, thus repaying the excess
of affection. He had good sense with his good looks, nor
was his head turned by his youth, as is the case with so
many of our young fellows, who seem to be possessed. . . .
And this amiable boy disappears in one moment, as a flower
blown away by the wind, without war, without reason. . . .
My dear cousin, how am I to find words either to tell you
what we here feel concerning the anguish of those two
mothers, or to tell them how much they are in our thoughts ?
We do not dream of writing to them ; but if at any oppor-
tunity you find the moment to name us, my daughter and
myself, and the MM. de Grignan, this is our feeling con-
cerning this irreparable loss. Madame de Vins has lost
everything, I own ; but when the heart has chosen between
two sons, it sees one only : I can speak of nothing else. I
bow to the holy and modest sepulchre of Madame de Guise.
And Madame de Miramion, that mother of the Church, hers
will he a public loss. Farewell, my dear cousin, I cannot
change my tone. You have had your jubilee ; your charm-
ing St Martin journey followed quickly upon the ashes and
cinders of which you spoke to me, and the delights which
Monsieur and Madame de Marsan now enjoy deserve that
you should witness them and put them away in your wallet ;
and as for me, I deserve that I should he put into that one
where you place those who love you ; but I fear that for
these you have no wallet."
And so she ends her long life's flow of written
thoughts. The last few letters seem tired, the sentences
CONCLUSION. 181
labour more heavily, the hands have held the pen so
many years that it is time for them to lay it down ;
the sparkling stream runs slowly, it no longer dances,
bubbles, ripples, flashes back the thousand lights and
twinkling points along the shore. Has it already met
the salt waters of the sea ? is it losing itself in the great
waters ?
END OF MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM ELACKWOOD AND SONS.
Pq
A?
THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Santa Barbara
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW.
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