of beauty, and could play the coquette. Justice once more resumed her salutary functions; industry acquired a fresh and wholesome activity, and the world of fashion once more pursued with redoubled ardour the pleasures and joys of social existence. St. Everemond, in his old age, speaks of this very time in an epistle to Ninon de Lenclos :

"J'ai vu le temps de la bonne régence, Temps où regnait une heureuse abondance,

Temps où la ville, aussi bien que la cour, Ne respirait que les jeux et l'amour.

*

Femmes savaient, sans faire les savantes; Molière en vain eût cherché dans la cour Les Ridicules affectées ;

Et ses Fâcheux n'auraient point vu le jour, Manque d'objets à fournir les idées."

Madame de Sévigné's was, after all, a very strange destiny. Her course of life was ever attended with prosperity; there were no turns, shifts, changes, or alternations of joy or sorrow, to awaken our secret sympathies or agitate our hearts; her career was uniform and of placid tenor, without curious incidents or remarkable adventures; and yet, from almost her infancy to old age, she moved among the most illustrious, the noblest, the gayest; and she was the eye-witness of all the great events which characterised the times. Her descriptions, therefore, are valuable, even if unaccompanied by the exquisite charms of style. Of these personages and events she has made herself the faithful historian, without being at all aware that she was about to place herself in so important a position. One might almost fancy, from the perusal of her Letters, that she was the centre figure of intrigues, cabals, adventures, and scenes without number; such is her vividness of fancy and the minute facility with which the descriptions are given. It is true that she never dreamt of writing a great work, or troubling herself much about the opinion of posterity; she even smiles at her daughter's warm praises, and expresses great fear at seeing her productions in print. Her Letters, were principally written to afford pleasure to that daughter whom she so tenderly loved and from whom she was so long separated; that daughter's

-

love, praise, and approbation were the prime source of gratification to her to that daughter the mother consecrated the best effusions of her powers of mind-"la fleur de son esprit, le dessus de tous ses paniers," as the lady herself fondly expresses it. But it would be idle to say that the marquise was not fully aware that she possessed a richly cultivated mind, and that, fearful as she expressed herself about publication, she did not look upon letter-writing as an art in which, in consequence of her consciousness of mental superiority, it was due to herself to give proof of her super-excellence.

She had been fully and early initiated into the mysteries of four languages, and was well acquainted with their historians, poets, and moralists. She read by turns Tacitus and St. Augustin, Tasso and Plutarch, Anne Comnenes, and Ariosto, and Josephus, and Mezeray, and Origen, with the same pleasure and the same assiduity. She was familiar with the old chroniclers. Rabelais "made her die with laughter;" she could read and reread Montaigne with undiminished delight; she was fond of the productions of the anchorites of Port Royal : not only of the Provincials, but of the productions of Nicole and Arnauld. At the same time she knew intimately and almost by heart the works of Corneille, Molière, and Lafontaine; she loved to hear the eloquent discourses of Mascaron and Bourdaloue, and the Oraisons Funèbres of Bossuet and Fléchier, over whose deep lessons of wisdom she would often employ her powers of reflection.

"Madame de Sévigné," says Madame de Tastu, "avait un de ces esprits puissants dans leur soudaineté, où la pensée se produit, pour ainsi dire, par éclairs. Elle était douée de cette vivacité d'impressions, de cette impatience de les manifester, qui a enfanté la littérature périodique." A person so constituted could not remain an idle spectator of passing events. The expression of thought with such a person became a matter of vital necessity, and her natural power of intellect soon made her a remarkable figure in the remarkable society which surrounded her. There were then no journals

such as exist in the present day. The communication of events was made throughout society by the aid of private letters. Letters assumed the standard value of good literary compositions. Balzac, Voiture, GuiPatin, and St. Everemond, had already become celebrated as letterwriters. The due exchange of news was effected by regular and multiplied correspondences between the capital and the provinces. The letters of that period, of which many collections still exist in the great libraries of France, were passed from hand to hand, or copies of them were made for distribution, and their contents became generally known. Nor was this difficult. Frequent alliances, exclusive privileges, and a community of interests, had transformed the high nobility of France into, so to speak, one large family. The members of society were on terms of familiar intimacy with each other. Madame de Sévigné calls her friends shortly by their surnames, or the names of convention which attached to almost every one. All were known by sobriquets; as, for instance, "la Souricière," "le Petit Bon," "le Charmant." She laughs at the provincial ceremony which in Brittany transforms Revel into Monsieur le Comte de Revel. As for herself, she adds, she never thinks of calling any one monsieur under the dignity of a duke, and never gives a title to any one below the rank of a marshal of France. As to the unceremonious measure of their intimacies, hear what Madame de Sévigné says by way of illustration: -"Madame de Coulanges apporte au coin de mon feu les restes de sa petite maladie; je lui portai hier mon mal de genou et mes pantoufles; on y envoya ceux qui me cherchaient; ce furent des Schomberg, des Senneterre, des Cœuvres." She, very often, while paying such friendly visits, wrote her letters to her daughter, and to those letters, sometimes, her friends would append a short postscript.

To return to letter-writing, however, we may add, that many women of the period had already gained a reputation for elegance of composition, and that Madame de Sévigné herself had in that way become celebrated even before the commencement of the correspondence with her

daughter. Madame de Thianges requested from Madame de Coulanges the loan of the letter of the Prairie, and also that of the Cheval. Thus were letters named from the particular nature of their contents. Madame de Coulanges writes in the following manner to Madame de Sévigné:-"Your Letters are making as much noise as they deserve; it is certain that they are delicious, and you are yourself no less so than your letters." And Bussy de Rabutin says to his daughter, in reference to these Letters, "Nothing can be more beautiful; the agreeable, the playful, and the serious are so admirably blended together; one might say that Madame de Sévigné was born to assume each of these characters. She is natural, she has a noble facility of expression, and oftentimes a hardy negligence, which is preferable to the observance of the just and rigid rules of the Academicians." And when her friend Corbonelli wished to make her appreciate Cicero, he said, that the orator, like herself, excelled in the epistolary style. Lastly, to shew that she could and did appreciate her own excellence of style, she said to Madame de Grignan, when praising the composition of some lady, "Elle écrit comme nous.'

Her Letters, judged by the standard rule of feeling of the present age, would be often supposed the production of a frivolous and heartless woman. But she always detested constraint in conversation, and her effusions are, after all, but so many specimens of her great powers in refined conversation. This is the description of her by the celebrated Madame de Lafayette, authoress of the Princess of Cleves. It is addressed to Madame de Sévigné herself:

"Sachez donc, madame, si, par hasard, vous ne le savez pas, que votre esprit pare et embellit si fort votre personne, qu'il n'y en a point sur la terre d'aussi charmante, lorsque vous êtes animée par une conversation dont la contraint est bannie. Le brillant de votre esprit donne un si grand éclat à votre teint et à vos yeux, que, quoiqu'il semble que l'esprit ne dût toucher que les oreilles, il est pourtant certain que le vôtre eblouit les yeux."

And the lady thus continues:

"Votre âme est grande et noble; vous êtes sensible à la gloire et à la l'ambition,

et vous ne l'êtes pas moins aux plaisirs ; vous paraissez née pour eux, et il semble qu'ils soient faits pour vous. Votre présence augmente des divertissements, et les divertissements augmentent votre beauté, lorsqu'ils vous environnent."

Let it be remembered, that in France it was the age for general laughter: "Hommes et femmes," says M. Barrière, in his preface to the Memoirs of the younger Brienne, "également spirituels, également ambitieux, ne connoissaient d'occupations que l'intrigue et la galanterie." There was a general desire to be brilliant in conversation, to be pointed out as possessing a keen and sparkling wit. Of backbiting, slander, scandal, and all uncharitableness, there was abundance. The most private transactions in families, high or low, were made the subject of obscene songs, which were publicly sung in the streets of Paris. A multitude of these songs still exist, and they are foul and filthy in the extreme they were then thought witty. They did not spare even the princes of the blood, and the ladies of the court most conspicuous for beauty, fashion, or virtue. They did not spare the ministers of the queen, or even the queen herself. The very misfortunes of life became subjects for ridicule and ribald jests. This propensity to laugh at every thing is visible throughout the whole of Madame de Sévigné's Letters. Every circumstance is turned by her pen into matter for pleasantry and badinage; even afflictions, griefs, moving accidents, and calamities. If she meets in the midst of a journey a line of wretched convicts closely chained together, and destined for the galleys, she must have her joke and laugh; not less so, if a gentleman, while reading a letter from his mistress, is struck by apoplexy, and, falling from his horse, immediately expires. Illnesses, diseases, infirmities of age, executions, gibbets, torture, move her mirth and evoke her laughter. She must have her mot upon the excesses of some brutal soldiers, who, while gar

risoned in Brittany, "mirent, l'autre jour, un petit enfant à la broche !" and then, immediately after, she alludes to the Cordeliers of Provence, "qui savaient employer différemment leurs loisirs!" But nothing can exceed her tenderness, her deep anxiety and concern, when the question arises as to how her daughter, Madame de Grignan, is best to preserve her hair, her complexion, and her teeth!* All this lightness and frivolity would indicate unfeelingness of heart in this celebrated woman, were she to be considered in an abstracted point of view; but to do so would be gross injustice. Her life, habits, manners, opinions, and language, are to be viewed and estimated in connexion with the particular and singular state of society amidst which she was born, lived, and died. Her virtues and good qualities were her own; her faults were the faults of the age which she embellished. In every peculiarity to which we have alluded she observed moderation when compared with others of her contemporaries; and some among these were the highest in the land. The celebrated Chavigny, who was supposed to be a natural son of Cardinal Richelieu, and who was the father-in-law of the younger Count de Brienne, had been of the greatest service during the troubles of the Fronde to the great Prince de Condé. He, upon a vague pretext, so insulted, and grossly and violently abused that minister, that the latter, on reaching his home, fell suddenly ill, and shortly after died. "Monsieur le Prince," says Madame de Motteville, " on going to pay him a visit when he lay in this state, seemed to regret it; and a person, who was present during the interview, has told me that his eyes were red with tears, and that he was about, in a kind of despair, to tear out his hair; but, on departing, he burst into loud laughter, and observed that the minister was as ugly as the very devil himself." The Duke of Nemours, young, handsome, and brave, was killed by a pistol-shot, while engaged in a duel with his brother-in

law, the Duke of Beaufort. Intelligence was brought to Gaston, Duke of Orleans. Hear what Mademoiselle de Montpensier says about the matter:

"Monsieur le Prince at once proceeded to the Duchess de Nemours', whither I also repaired. The duchess lay extended upon her bed in a swoon, the picture of a terrible affliction. The curtains were drawn widely apart, and the bed was surrounded by a crowd of friends. Nothing could be more pitiable than the way in which she received the intelligence of this fatal accident. She happened to be in her own chamber, the window from which looked into the court. She heard some one exclaim,

He is dead!' upon which she fainted away. In the midst of that scene of desolation, Madame de Béthune said something (what, I do not remember) in such a lachrymose tone, that it made Madame de Guise burst into a fit of loud laughter (although she was the most serious woman in the world); and M. le Prince and I, who saw her, could not help fol. lowing her example."

"Ce fut," continues the lady in a maudlin tone, "le plus grand scandale du monde !" There cannot, however, as to the truth of this reflection, be a dissentient voice!

Here are other instances in furtherance of the force of our observation. The younger Brienne confesses that he loved Cardinal Mazarin, and he sorrowed over his approaching death; when, however, the minister said to him, almost in the hour of his last agony, "M. de Brienne, je me meurs," he dryly replied, " Je le vois bien, monseigneur." And yet these few words wounded the expiring minister more deeply than if his very heart had been pierced by a poniard. Again: Anne of Austria was dying slowly from the hideous encroachments of a cancer in the breast; and a few days only before that sad event she said to Beringhem, who was indebted to her for a thousand favours, "M. le Premier, il nous faut quitter." To this touching remark from the lips of his royal mistress, who had been the bountiful source of every thing he possessed, he dryly and unfeelingly replied, "You may imagine, madam, with what grief your ser

vants hear such a decree pronounced; but that which consoles us is the fact, that your majesty will escape infinite pain, added to a "grand incommodité... car ces maux, sur la fin, sont d'une grande puanteur!" At these words the poor queen became pale, and would not return any answer. Nor was this all that the queen had to undergo. While she was dying in the palace, the high festivities of courtly life remained in unabated career. Balls, comedies,

and every species of diversion, succeeded each other in their wonted order :

'Dix jours seulement avant la mort de la Reine, le Roi, maria Mademoiselle d'Artigny, l'amie, la confidante de Mademoiselle de La Vallière: les fiançailles se faisaient au Palais-Royal, tandis que la Reine-Mère expirait au Louvre, et l'on mélait ainsi les apprêts, la pompe, et la joie, d'une noce aux angoisses d'une agonie."

The queen, previously to her death, remonstrated with the young Louis upon his heartless conduct towards herself; but the remonstrance was couched, bad as that conduct was, in the kindest and most gentle terms. Madame de Motteville, the faithful chronicler of her royal mistress's words and actions, says, that she urged upon her son that "les peuples murmureraient contre lui s'ils le voyaient occupé à se divertir dans un temps où elle était menacée d'une mort si prompte." Let not, therefore, Madame de Sévigné be condemned for what she does not de

serve.

Somaize, in his Grand Dictionnaire Historique des Precieuses, mentions that Ménage and Chapelain were two of the most assiduous frequenters of the circle and ruelle of Madame de Sévigné. The latter was fifty years old when he first gave instructions to the young, rich, and lovely Demoiselle de Burgoyne. He was, it may be supposed, past the inflammable age of susceptibility. It was, however, far different with Ménage, who was only thirty-two, and he may be reckoned among the first of her conquests.

The Abbé Ménage, who in that capacity possessed benefices without troubling himself about the discharge

p. 115.

of ecclesiastical duties, enjoyed prodigious celebrity for his erudition. He is even often quoted in our own age. For this he is indebted rather to the variety than to the depth of his learning, though in this last point he was by no means to be despised. He was good-looking, had a good figure, was vain of his personal appearance, and was noted for his inclination for the fair sex. To please, flatter, and win the objects of his devotion, he was constantly inditing verses in their honour in every language within the compass of his knowledge, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and French; and he wrote those effusions as well as a man could write them on whom Nature at his birth had not bestowed the faculty divine. Boileau, who, although young, appreciated at their full value the effusions of the learned and pedantic petit-maitre, and who, perchance, might have been somewhat jealous of his success with women, ridiculed him in one of his earliest satires by the following lines :

"Si je pense parler d'un galant de notre âge,

Ma plume pour rimer, rencontrera Ménage."

The reputation enjoyed by Ménage, however, was of too stable a foundation to be injured by such an attack so thought the satirist, for he afterwards substituted another name, and the lines now stand thus:

"Si je veux d'un galant dépeindre la figure,

Ma plume, pour rimer, rencontrera De Pure."

The Abbé Ménage fell desperately in love, then, with Mademoiselle de Chantal, tried to manifest that love in every possible way, and was plunged into the very depths of despair at her marriage. He often attempted to quarrel with her, often to break with her entirely, and would often absent himself on various frivolous pretexts. All this was met on the lady's part with even, unsubsiding, untiring friendship. In short, she was in no way afraid of him, nor, indeed, of any human being. On one occasion Ménage was at Madame de Sévigné's, when, being desirous of making some purchases, and as her femme de chambre could not go with her, she de

sired that gentleman's company in her carriage. He laughingly consented, though inwardly he was mortified, that she was not afraid to trust herself with him; and he told her that he was surprised that, as she was so cruel towards him, she should not dread the tongue of scandal as regarded himself. But the lady laughed, and answered, "Mettez-vous dans mon carrosse, et, si vous me fâchez, je vous irai voir chez vous!" And, indeed, she did not fail to do so; for once, when she was about to leave the city for the country, she called to take leave of her eccentric friend. On her return, she chided him for not having written to her. "I did write to you," answered Ménage; "but, on reading over my letter, I found that it was too impassioned, and I thought it better not to send it." The interviews of Ménage with his fair pupil were so much the more dangerous for him, as she did not imitate towards him the cold formality of the Précieuses. She admitted him always, even though she was alone, and allowed him freely to kiss her arms and hands, such being the fashion of that period. What Bussy de Rabutin says is confirmed by Ménage himself. "Je tenais," says he, "une des mains de Madame de Sévigné dans les miennes; lorsqu'elle l'eut retirée, M. Pelletier me dit: Voilà le plus bel ouvrage qui soit sorti de vos mains." Upon another occasion, the lady kissed Ménage as though he had been her brother. Many persons were present, and among these were some who were laying siege to her heart: they were all astonished. She turned round towards them, and laughingly said, "C'est ainsi qu'on baisait dans la primitive église !" Again, she was in the habit of imparting to him her secrets, and asking his advice. After a private conversation one day, he said to her, "Je suis actuellement votre confesseur, et j'ai été votre martyr.” "Et moi," answered the lady, readily and gaily, "J'ai été votre vierge!"

The Chevalier de Méré was half courtier, half author, and his successes in the ruelles induced him to fancy that he was the most accomplished gentleman of his time. He was a vain upstart. It was he who wrote to Madame de Maintenon, during the