TO MONSIEUR DE COULANGES.

THE ROCKS, 22d July 1671.

I WRITE, my dear cousin, over and above the stipulated fortnightcommunications, to advertise you, that you will soon have the honour of seeing Picard; and as he is brother to the lackey of Madame de Coulanges, I must tell you the reason why. You know that Madame the Duchess de Chaulnes is at Vitry. She expects the duke there [he was governor of the province] in ten or twelve days with the Estates of Brittany. 'Well, and what then?' say you. I say, that the duchess is expecting the duke with all the states, and that, meanwhile, she is at Vitry all alone, dying of ennui. 'And what,' return you, 'has this to do with Picard?' Why, look! she is dying with ennui, and I am her only consolation, and so you may readily conceive that I carry it with a high hand over Mademoiselle de Kerborgne and De Kerqueoison. A pretty roundabout way of telling my story, I must confess, but it will bring us to the point. Well, then, as I am her only consolation, it follows that, after I have been to see her, she will come to see me, when, of course, I shall wish her to find my garden in good order, and my walks in good order-those fine walks of which you are so fond. Still, you are at a loss to conceive whither they are leading you now. Attend, then, if you please, to a little suggestion by the way. You are aware that haymaking is going forward? Well, I have no haymakers; I send into the neighbouring fields to press them into my service: there are none to be found, and so all my own people are summoned to make hay instead." But do you know what haymaking is? I will tell you. Haymaking is the prettiest thing in the world. You play at turning the grass over in a meadow; and as soon as you know how to do that, you know how to make hay. The whole house went merrily to the task; all but Picard. He said he would not go; that he was not engaged for such work; and that he would sooner betake himself to Paris. Faith! didn't I get angry? It was the hundredth disservice the silly fellow had done me; I saw he had neither heart nor zeal; in short, the measure of his offence was full. I took him at his word; was deaf as a rock to all entreaties in his behalf; and he has set off. It is fit that people be treated as they deserve. If you see him, don't welcome him, don't protect him, and don't blame me. Only look upon him as, of all servants in the world, the one least addicted to haymaking, and, therefore, the most unworthy of good treatment. This is the sum-total of the affair. As for me, I am fond of straightforward histories, that contain not a word too much, that never go wandering about and beginning again from remote points; and accordingly, I think I may say without vanity, that I hereby present you with a model of an agreeable narration.

Her life in Paris is, in its way, no less agreeable. Even there she contrives to have the pleasures of a garden, in which she can walk in the morning, and enjoy the bursting of the first springblossoms. She is constantly dining and supping with Rochefoucault, the De Coulanges, and Madame de Lavardin; or she is receiving visitors at home, who come sometimes to little dinners, 'good and delicate;' at others to supper, and a great deal of pleasant chat. She goes often to court, or she is sent for by Mademoiselle, when in comes Monsieur, and begins to talk about her daughter.' Sometimes she goes to the theatre, or Corneille reads a play at M. de la Rochefoucault's, full of enchanting passages, which make her 'shed twenty tears in a minute;' and she goes always regularly to church. We have many curious characteristic traits of her town associates; of a certain very absent Brancas, who, when he was overturned into a ditch, asked those who came to help him out, whether they had any occasion for his services; of our good cardinal (De Retz), contentedly feeding his trouts in his retirement; of Racine, teaching the actress Champmélé, with whom he is in love, and who has no genius, to repeat his verses so admirably, that Madame de Sévigné (who, by the by, seldom admires him heartily, except when called on by the king to do so) predicts of him that he is writing for Champmélé, not for posterity, and will only write finely while young and in love; of the painter's widow, Madame de Scarron, afterwards Maintenon (the Pamela of royalty'), who reasons with an engaging wit and surprisingly clear understanding on the horrid confusion and vexations of a court, at which she was so soon to play the most conspicuous part. In short, there is no end to the amusing sketches she gives her daughter of the court, the church, and the country, or to her own pleasant reflections on everything that occurs.

But all her time is not spent happily, nor with the gay and witty. She has no desire to spare herself, or to shrink from any occupation, suggested either by duty or affection. We find her devoting herself to the task of nursing her aunt, who is dying of a painful and lingering illness. In the following letter, we have, besides the touching sketch of the death-bed, a glimpse of the exacting spirit towards her daughter of which she has been accused, perhaps with a shadow of truth, though we are not inclined to bestow a large measure of pity on the colder-tempered daughter for the responsibility she incurs in bearing the weight of so much love :—

TO MADAME DE GRIGNAN.

PARIS, 20th April 1672.

I TOLD you about Madame de la Troche; but as it is not easy for her to do without me, the ice gradually and insensibly gave way, and her good-humour returned. I was pleased to see it. manage to take such little coldnesses as they come from that

I

quarter. Of course, if I were more deeply interested, I should not be able to be so calm. I know you think this is the temper in which one ought always to be one of profound tranquillity. O happy state! but how very far am I from tasting its sweetness! You frighten me by desiring that I should. It seems to me that you can do whatever you wish, and that all at once, while I am loving you the most tenderly, I may find you all coldness and calmness. Ah! for pity's sake, do not treat me with any of this lethargy on my arrival in Provence. If I find a particle of ice then, I shall indeed regret my journey.

Now that I seem, as it were, to touch my departure with the end of my finger, I find what will so soon give me my liberty is costing me many tears. There is something truly pitiable in my poor aunt's condition. The swelling daily increases, and there is an excess of suffering that would pain and oppress the most indifferent spectator. As for me, who pass the greater part of my time sighing beside her, I am sometimes overwhelmed with sadness. She often caresses me so fondly, that I am utterly melted. She speaks of her death as of a journey. She had always a fine spirit, and retains it to the last. This morning, she received her Saviour in the form of the holy sacrament. We were all dissolved in tears. She hopes to partake of it yet once more. She was sitting up-for she cannot lie-and she tried to kneel down. It was a moving and most edifying spectacle.

In our limited space, we cannot attempt to give an account of her frequent changes of abode, or of the notable public events of her day, to all of which she alludes, and into many of which she enters fully, and discusses them with the sense and spirit of an observant and deeply-interested eye-witness. In war-times, and particularly when her son was with the army, she suffered great anxiety. In the summer of 1672 was the famous passage of the Rhine, and nothing can be more graphic than many of her notices. There, Rochefoucault had one son wounded and another killed. The gentleness, and patient silence with which the caustic philosopher bore his bereavement, are well contrasted with the violent and eloquent grief of the poor Princess de Longueville, who lost her son in the same engagement, and of which we have the following affecting history. But first of M. de la Rochefoucault.

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO MADAME DE GRIGNAN.

'PARIS, June 1672.

"THE storm fell on him in my presence; he was deeply afflicted; his tears seemed to flow out from his very heart, but his firmness of mind stopped any unmanly expressions of grief. They sent to Port Royal for M. Arnauld and Mademoiselle Virtus, to break the news to her [Madame de Longueville]. The sight of the latter was sufficient. As soon as the princess saw her: "Ah, mademoiselle, how is my brother?" [the great Condé]. She did not

Madame, his wound is going on well; "And my son?" No answer.

"Ah,

there has been a battle." mademoiselle, my son-my dear child- -answer me; is he dead?" "Madame, I have not words to answer you." "Ah, my dear son! did he die instantly? had he not one little moment? Oh! great God, what a sacrifice!" And with that she fell upon her bed; and all which could express the most terrible anguish, convulsions and faintings, and a mortal silence, and stifled cries, and the bitterest tears, and hands clasped towards heaven, and complaints the most tender and heart-rending; all this did she go through.' Another incident in the famous passage is given with the same shortness and spirit:- The Chevalier de Nantouillet fell from his horse into the river; he sank immediately to the bottom; then rose to the surface; again he sank, and again his head appeared above the stream. At last, he luckily meets with a horse's tail, and clutches hold of it; the horse brings him ashore; he mounts he rushes into the thickest of the battle; he receives two shots in his hat, and comes off gay and victorious. An enchanted hero could not appear more unconcerned and at his ease; he reminds one of Orontes, Prince of the Massagetos.'

;

Very different, indeed, from such idylic pictures as that of the haymaking—

'Breathing of Flora and the country green,

Dance and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth,'

is the next we shall give. It is of some scenes at Versailles, and presents us with an animated view of the court in all the details of its splendour, gaiety, and corruption :

'Not a feature of the scene is in the mirror slighted.'

The principle of loyalty, which was ever potent in Madame de Sévigné, or perhaps a spice of the natural levity, so rarely absent in the French character, probably blinded her a little to the heartlessness and frivolity she describes with a degree of careless gaiety, which would seem to sanction, rather than censure, all that is going on around her. It may be said that we speak after the event-after seeing how directly the splendid follies of the great led to the complete overthrow of social order in France. But we surely do not want revolutionary horrors, to open our eyes to all that is wrong in the state of things here spoken of.

TO MADAME DE GRIGNAN.

PARIS, Wednesday, 29th July 1676. WE have a change of the scene here, which will gratify you as much as it does all the world. I was at Versailles last Saturday with the Villarses. You know the queen's toilet, the mass, and the dinner? Well, there is no need any longer of suffocating ourselves in the crowd, to get a glimpse of their majesties at table. At three,

the king, the queen, Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle, and everything else which is royal, together with Madame de Montespan and train, and all the courtiers and all the ladies-all, in short, which constitutes the court of France, is assembled in that beautiful apartment of the king's which you remember. All is furnished divinely; all is magnificent. Such a thing as heat is unknown. You pass from one place to another without the slightest pressure. A game at reversis gives the company a form and a settlement. The king and Madame de Montespan keep a bank together; different tables are occupied by Monsieur, the queen, and Madame de Soubise; Dangeau and party, Langlée and party: everywhere you see heaps of louis-d'ors; they have no other counters. I saw Dangeau play, and thought what fools we all were beside him. He dreams of nothing but what concerns the game; he wins where others lose; he neglects nothing, profits by everything; never has his attention diverted; in short, his science bids defiance to chance. Two hundred thousand francs in ten days, a hundred thousand crowns in a month-these are the pretty memoranda he puts down in his pocket-book. He was kind enough to say that I was partners with him, so that I got an excellent seat. I made my obeisance to the king, as you told me, and he returned it as if I had been young and handsome. The queen talked as long to me about my illness, as if it had been a lying-in. The duke said a thousand kind things, without minding a word he uttered. Maréchal de Lorges attacked me in the name of the Chevalier de Grignan. In short, tutti quanti [the whole company]. You know what it is to get a word from everybody you meet. Madame de Montespan talked to me of Bourbon, and asked me how I liked Vichy, and whether the place did me good. She said, that Bourbon, instead of curing a pain in one of her knees, did mischief to both. Her size is reduced by a good half; and yet her complexion, her eyes, and her lips, are as fine as ever. She was dressed all in French-point, her hair in a thousand ringlets, the two sides hanging low on her cheeks, black ribbons on her head, pearls-the same that belonged to Madame de l'Hopital-the loveliest diamond earrings, three or four bodkins-nothing else on the head; in short, a triumphant beauty, worthy the admiration of all the foreign ambassadors. She was accused of preventing the whole French nation from seeing the king; she has restored him, you see, to their eyes; and you cannot conceive the joy it has given to all the world, and the splendour it has thrown upon the court. This charming confusion, without confusion, of all which is the most select, continues from three till six. If couriers arrive, the king retires a moment to read the dispatches and returns. There is always some music going on, to which he listens, and which has an excellent effect. He talks with such of the ladies as are accustomed to enjoy that honour. In short, they leave play at six; there is no trouble of counting, for there is no sort of counters; the pools consist of at least five, perhaps six or