Her Genius—Her Youth—Her unworthy Husband—Her impertinent Cousin—Her love for her Daughter—Her Letters—Hotel de Carnavalet—Mme. Duiplessis Guenegaud—Mme. de Coulanges—The Curtain Falls
Among the brilliant French women of the seventeenth century, no one is so well-known today as Mme. de Sevigne. She has not only been sung by poets and portrayed by historians, but she has left us a complete record of her own life and her own character. Her letters reflect every shade of her many-sided nature, as well as the events, even the trifling incidents, of the world in which she lived; the lineaments, the experiences, the virtues, and the follies of the people whom she knew. We catch the changeful tints of her mind that readily takes the complexion of those about her, while retaining its independence; we are made familiar with her small joys and sorrows, we laugh with her at her own harmless weaknesses, we feel the inspiration of her sympathy, we hear the innermost throbbings of her heart. No one was ever less consciously a woman of letters. No one would have been more surprised than herself at her own fame. One is instinctively sure that she would never have seated herself deliberately to write a book of any sort whatever. While she was planning a form for her thoughts, they would have flown. She was essentially a woman of the great world, for which she was fitted by her position, her temperament, her esprit, her tastes, and her character. She loved its variety, its movement, its gaiety; she judged leniently even its faults and its frailties. If they often furnished a target for her wit, behind her sharpest epigrams one detects an indulgent smile.
The natural outlet for her full mind and heart was in conversation. When she was alone, they found vent in conversation of another sort. She talks on paper. Her letters have the unstudied freedom, the rapidity, the shades, the inflections of spoken words. She gives her thoughts their own course, "with reins upon the neck," as she was fond of saying, and without knowing where they will lead her. But it is the personal element that inspires her. Let her heart be piqued, or touched by a profound affection, and her mind is illuminated; her pen flies. Her nature unveils itself, her emotions chase one another in quick succession, her thoughts crystallize with wonderful brilliancy, and the world is reflected in a thousand varying colors. The sparkling wit, the swift judgment, the subtle insight, the lightness of touch, the indefinable charm of style—these belong to her temperament and her genius. But the clearness, the justness of expression, the precision, the simplicity that was never banal—such qualities nature does not bestow. One must find their source in careful training, in wise criticism, in early familiarity with good models.
Living from 1626 to 1696, Mme. de Sevigne was en rapport with the best life of the great century of French letters. She was the granddaughter of the mystical Mme. de Chantal, who was too much occupied with her convents and her devotions to give much attention to the little Marie, left an orphan at the age of six years. The child did not inherit much of her grandmother's spirit of reverence, and at a later period was wont to indulge in many harmless pleasantries about her pious ancestress and "our grandfather, St. Francois de Sales." Deprived so early of the care of a mother, she was brought up by an uncle, the good Abbe de Coulanges—the "Bien-Bon"—whose life was devoted to her interests. Though born in the Place Royale, that long-faded center of so much that was brilliant and fascinating two centuries ago, much of her youth was passed in the family chateau at Livry, where she was carefully educated in a far more solid fashion than was usual among the women of her time. She had an early introduction to the Hotel de Rambouillet, and readily caught its intellectual tastes, though she always retained a certain bold freedom of speech and manners, quite opposed to its spirit.
Her instructors were Chapelain and Menage, both honored habitues of that famous salon. The first was a dull poet, a profound scholar, somewhat of a pedant, and notoriously careless in his dress—le vieux Chapelain, his irreverent pupil used to call him. When he died of apoplexy, years afterwards, she wrote to her daughter: "He confesses by pressing the hand; he is like a statue in his chair. So God confounds the pride of philosophers." But he taught her Latin, Spanish, and Italian, made her familiar with the beauties of Virgil and Tasso, and gave her a critical taste for letters.
Menage was younger, and aspired to be a man of the world as well as a savant. Repeating one day the remark of a friend, that out of ten things he knew he had learned nine in conversation, he added, "I could say about the same thing myself"—a confession that savors more of the salon than of the library. He had a good deal of learning, but much pretension, and Moliere has given him an undesirable immortality as Vadius in "Les Femmes Savantes," in company with his deadly enemy, the Abbe Cotin, who figures as "Trissotin." It appears that the susceptible savant lost his heart to his lively pupil, and sighed not only in secret but quite openly. He wrote her bad verses in several languages, loaded her with eulogies, and followed her persistently. "The name of Mme. de Sevigne," said the Bishop of Laon, "is in the works of Menage what Bassan's dog is in his portraits. He cannot help putting it there." She treated him in a sisterly fashion that put to flight all sentimental illusions, but she had often to pacify his wounded vanity. One day, in the presence of several friends, she gave him a greeting rather more cordial than dignified. Noticing the looks of surprise, she turned away laughing and said, "So they kissed in the primitive church." But the wide knowledge and scholarly criticism of Menage were of great value to the versatile woman, who speedily surpassed her master in style if not in learning. Evidently she appreciated him, since she addressed him in one of her letters as "friend of all friends, the best."
At eighteen the gay and unconventional Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was married to the Marquis de Sevigne; but her period of happiness was a short one. The husband, who was rich, handsome, and agreeable, proved weak and faithless. He was one of the temporary caprices of the dangerous Ninon, led a dashing, irresponsible life, spent his fortune recklessly, and left his pretty young wife to weep alone at a convenient distance, under the somber skies of Brittany. Fortunately for her and for posterity, his career was rapid and brief. For some trifling affair of so-called honor—a quality of which, from our point of view, he does not seem to have possessed enough to be worth the trouble of defending—he had the kindness to get himself killed in a duel, after seven years of marriage. His spirited wife had loved him sincerely, and first illusions die slowly. She shed many bitter and natural tears, but she never showed any disposition to repeat the experiment. Perhaps she was of the opinion of another young widow who thought it "a fine thing to bear the name of a man who can commit no more follies." But it is useless to speculate upon the reasons why a woman does or does not marry. It is certain that the love of her two children filled the heart of Mme. de Sevigne; her future life was devoted to their training, and to repairing a fortune upon which her husband's extravagance had made heavy inroads.
But the fascinating widow of twenty-five had a dangerous path to tread. That she lived in a society so lax and corrupt, unprotected and surrounded by distinguished admirers, without a shadow of suspicion having fallen upon her fair reputation is a strong proof of her good judgment and her discretion. She was not a great beauty, though the flattering verses of her poet friends might lead one to think so. A complexion fresh and fair, eyes of remarkable brilliancy, an abundance of blond hair, a face mobile and animated, and a fine figure—these were her visible attractions. She danced well, sang well, talked well, and had abounding health. Mme. de La Fayette made a pen-portrait of her, which was thought to be strikingly true. It was in the form of a letter from an unknown man. A few extracts will serve to bring her more vividly before us.
"Your mind so adorns and embellishes your person, that there is no one in the world so fascinating when you are animated by a conversation from which constraint is banished. All that you say has such a charm, and becomes you so well, that the words attract the Smiles and the Graces around you; the brilliancy of your intellect gives such luster to your complexion and your eyes, that although it seems that wit should touch only the ears, yours dazzles the sight.
"Your soul is great and elevated. You are sensitive to glory and to ambition, and not less so to pleasures; you were born for them and they seem to have been made for you... In a word, joy is the true state of your soul, and grief is as contrary to it as possible. You are naturally tender and impassioned; there was never a heart so generous, so noble, so faithful... You are the most courteous and amiable person that ever lived, and the sweet, frank air which is seen in all your actions makes the simplest compliments of politeness seem from your lips protestations of friendship."
Mlle. de Scudery sketches her as the Princesse Clarinte in "Clelie," concluding with these words: "I have never seen together so many attractions, so much gaiety, so much coquetry, so much light, so much innocence and virtue. No one ever understood better the art of having grace without affectation, raillery without malice, gaiety without folly, propriety without constraint, and virtue without severity."
Her malicious cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, who was piqued by her indifference, and basely wished to avenge himself, said that her "warmth was in her intellect;" that for a woman of quality she was too badine, too economical, too keenly alive to her own interests; that she made too much account of a few trifling words from the queen, and was too evidently flattered when the king danced with her. This opinion of a vain and jealous man is not entitled to great consideration, especially when we recall that he had already spoken of her as "the delight of mankind," and said that antiquity would have dressed altars for her and she would "surely have been goddess of something." The most incomprehensible page in her history is her complaisance towards the persistent impertinences of this perfidious friend. The only solution of it seems to lie in the strength of family ties, and in her unwillingness to be on bad terms with one of her very few near relatives. Bussy-Rabutin was handsome, witty, brilliant, a bel esprit, a member of the Academie Francaise, and very much in love with his charming cousin, who clearly appreciated his talents, if not his character. "You are the fagot of my intellect," she says to him; but she forbids him to talk of love. Unfortunately for himself, his vanity got the better of his discretion. He wrote the "Histoire Amoureuse des Gauls," and raised such a storm about his head by his attack upon many fair reputations, that, after a few months of lonely meditation in the Bastille, he was exiled from Paris for seventeen years. Long afterwards he repented the unkind blow he had given to Mme. de Sevigne, confessed its injustice, apologized, and made his peace. But the world is less forgiving, and wastes little sympathy upon the base but clever and ambitious man who was doomed to wear his restless life away in the uncongenial solitude of his chateau.
Among the numerous adorers of Mme. de Sevigne were the Prince de Conti, the witty Comte de Lude, the poet Segrais, Fouquet, and Turenne. Her friendship for the last two seems to have been the most lively and permanent. We owe to her sympathetic pen the best account of the death of Turenne. Her devotion to the interests of Fouquet and his family lasted though the many years of imprisonment that ended only with his life. There was nothing of the spirit of the courtier in her generous affection for the friends who were out of favor. The loyalty of her character was notably displayed in her unwavering attachment to Cardinal de Retz, during his long period of exile and misfortune, after the Fronde.
But one must go outside the ordinary channels to find the veritable romance of Mme. de Sevigne's life. Her sensibility lent itself with great facility to impressions, and her gracious manners, her amiable character, her inexhaustible fund of gaiety could not fail to bring her a host of admirers. She had doubtless a vein of harmless coquetry, but it was little more than the natural and variable grace of a frank and sympathetic woman who likes to please, and who scatters about her the flowers of a rich mind and heart, without taking violent passions too seriously, if, indeed, she heeds them at all. Friendship, too, has its shades, its subtleties, its half-perceptible and quite unconscious coquetries. But the supreme passion of Mme. de Sevigne was her love for her daughter. It was the exaltation of her mystical grandmother, in another form. "To love as I love you makes all other friendships frivolous," she writes. Whatever her gifts and attractions may have been, she is known to the world mainly through this affection and the letters which have immortalized it. Nowhere in literature has maternal love found such complete and perfect expression. Nowhere do we find a character so clearly self-revealed. Others have professed to unveil their innermost lives, but there is always a suspicion of posing in deliberate revelations. Mme. De Sevigne has portrayed herself unconsciously. It is the experience of yesterday, the thought of today, the hope of tomorrow, the love that is at once the joy and sorrow of all the days, that are woven into a thousand varying but living forms. One naturally seeks in the character of the daughter a key to the absorbing sentiment which is the inspiration and soul of these letters; but one does not find it there. More beautiful than her mother, more learned, more accomplished, she lacked her sympathetic charm. Cold, reserved, timid, and haughty, without vivacity and apparently without fine sensibility, she was much admired but little loved by the world in which she lived. "When you choose, you are adorable," wrote her mother; but evidently she did not always so choose. Bussy-Rabutin says of her, "This woman has esprit, but it is esprit soured and of insupportable egotism. She will make as many enemies as her mother makes friends and adorers." He did not like her, and one must again take his opinion with reserve; but she says of herself that she is "of a temperament little communicative." In her mature life she naively writes: "At first people thought me amiable enough, but when they knew me better they loved me no more." "The prettiest girl in France," whose beauty was expected to "set the world on fire," created a mild sensation at court; was noticed by the king, who danced with her, received her share of adulation, and finally became the third wife of the Comte de Grignan, who carried her off to Provence, to the lasting grief of her adoring mother, and to the great advantage of posterity, which owes to this fact the series of incomparable letters that made the fame of their writer, and threw so direct and vivid a light upon an entire generation.
The world has been inclined to regard the son of Mme. de Sevigne as the more lovable of her two children, but she doubtless recognized in his light and inconsequent character many of the qualities of her husband which had given her so much sorrow during the brief years of her marriage. Amiable, affectionate, and not without talent, he was nevertheless the source of many anxieties and little pride. He followed in the footsteps of his father, and became a willing victim to the fascinations of Ninon; he frequented the society of Champmesle, where he met habitually Boileau and Racine. He recited well, had a fine literary taste, much sensibility, and a gracious ease of manner that made him many friends. "He was almost as much loved as I am," remarked the brilliant Mme. de Coulanges, after accompanying him on a visit to Versailles. He appealed to Mme. de La Fayette to use her influence with his mother to induce her to pay his numerous debts. There is a touch of satire in the closing line of the note in which she intercedes for him. "The great friendship you have for Mme. de Grignan," she writes, "makes it necessary to show some for her brother."—But we have glimpses of his weakness and instability in many of his mother's intimate letters. In the end, however, having exhausted the pleasures of life and felt the bitterness of its disappointments, he took refuge in devotion, and died in the odor of sanctity, after the example of his devout ancestress.
Mme. de Grignan certainly offered a more solid foundation for her mother's confidence and affection. It is quite possible, too, that her reserve concealed graces of character only apparent on a close intimacy. But love does not wait for reasons, and this one had all the shades and intensities of a passion, with few of its exactions. D'Andilly called the mother a "pretty pagan," because she made such an idol of her daughter. She sometimes has her own misgivings on the score of religion. "I make this a little Trappe," she wrote from Livry, after the separation. "I wish to pray to God and make a thousand reflections; but, Ma pauvre chere, what I do better than all that is to think of you. .. I see you, you are present to me, I think and think again of everything; my head and my mind are racked; but I turn in vain, I seek in vain; the dear child whom I love with so much passion is two hundred leagues away. I have her no more. Then I weep without the power to help myself." She rings the changes upon this inexhaustible theme. A responsive word delights her; a brief silence terrifies her; a slight coldness plunges her into despair. "I have an imagination so lively that uncertainty makes me die," she writes. If a shadow of grief touches her idol, her sympathies are overflowing. "You weep, my very dear child; it is an affair for you; it is not the same thing for me, it is my temperament."
But though this love pulses and throbs behind all her letters, it does not make up the substance of them. To amuse her daughter she gathers all the gossip of the court, all the news of her friends; she keeps her au courant with the most trifling as well as the most important events. Now she entertains her with a witty description of a scene at Versailles, a tragical adventure, a gracious word about Mme. Scarron, "who sups with me every evening," a tender message from Mme. de La Fayette; now it is a serious reflection upon the death of Turenne, a vivid picture of her own life, a bit of philosophy, a spicy anecdote about a dying man who takes forty cups of tea every morning, and is cured. A few touches lay bare a character or sketch a vivid scene. It is this infinite variety of detail that gives such historic value to her letters. In a correspondence so intimate she has no interest to conciliate, no ends to gain. She is simply a mirror in which the world about her is reflected.
But the most interesting thing we read in her letters is the life and nature of the woman herself. She has a taste for society and for seclusion, for gaiety and for thought, for friendship and for books. For the moment each one seems dominant. "I am always of the opinion of the one heard last," she says, laughing at her own impressibility. It is an amiable admission, but she has very fine and rational ideas of her own, notwithstanding. In books, for which she had always a passion, she found unfailing consolation. Corneille and La Fontaine were her favorite traveling companions. "I am well satisfied to be a substance that thinks and reads," she says, finding her good uncle a trifle dull for a compagnon de voyage. Her tastes were catholic. She read Astree with delight, loved Petrarch, Ariosto, and Montaigne; Rabelais made her "die of laughter," she found Plutarch admirable, enjoyed Tacitus as keenly as did Mme. Roland a century later, read Josephus and Lucian, dipped into the history of the crusades and of the iconoclasts, of the holy fathers and of the saints. She preferred the history of France to that of Rome because she had "neither relatives nor friends in the latter place." She finds the music of Lulli celestial and the preaching of Bourdaloue divine. Racine she did not quite appreciate. In his youth, she said he wrote tragedies for Champmesle and not for posterity. Later she modified her opinion, but Corneille held always the first place in her affection. She had a great love for books on morals, read and reread the essays of Nicole, which she found a perpetual resource against the ills of life—even rain and bad weather. St. Augustine she reads with pleasure, and she is charmed with Bossuet and Pascal; but she is not very devout, though she often tries to be. There is a serious naivete in all her efforts in this direction. She seems to have always one eye upon the world while she prays, and she mourns over her own lack of devotion. "I wish my heart were for God as it is for you," she writes to her daughter. "I am neither of God nor of the devil," she says again; "that state troubles me though, between ourselves, I find it the most natural in the world." Her reason quickly pierces to the heart of superstition; sometimes she cannot help a touch of sarcasm. "I fear that this trappe, which wishes to pass humanity, may become a lunatic asylum," she says. She believes little in saints and processions. Over the high altar of her chapel she writes SOLI DEO HONOR ET GLORIA. "It is the way to make no one jealous," she remarks.
She was rather inclined toward Jansenism, but she could not fathom all the subtleties of her friends the Port Royalists, and begged them to "have the kindness, out of pity for her, to thicken their religion a little as it evaporated in so much reasoning." As she grows older the tone of seriousness is more perceptible. "If I could only live two hundred years," she writes, "it seems to me that I might be an admirable person." The rationalistic tendencies of Mme. de Grignan give her some anxiety, and she rallies her often upon the doubtful philosophy of her PERE DESCARTES. She could not admit a theory which pretended to prove that her dog Marphise had no soul, and she insisted that if the Cartesians had any desire to go to heaven, it was out of curiosity. "Talk to the Cardinal (de Retz) a little of your MACHINES; machines that love, machines that have a choice for some one, machines that are jealous, machines that fear. ALLEZ, ALLEZ, you are jesting! Descartes never intended to make us believe all that."
In her youth Mme. de Sevigne did not like the country because it was windy and spoiled her beautiful complexion; perhaps, too, because it was lonely. But with her happy gift of adaptation she came to love its tranquillity. She went often to the solitary old family chateau in Brittany to make economies and to retrieve the fortune which suffered successively from the reckless extravagance of her husband and son, and from the expensive tastes of the Comte de Grignan, who was acting governor of Provence, and lived in a state much too magnificent for his resources. Of her life at The Rocks she has left us many exquisite pictures. "I go out into the pleasant avenues; I have a footman who follows me; I have books, I change place, I vary the direction of my promenade; a book of devotion, a book of history; one changes from one to the other; that gives diversion; one dreams a little of God, of his providence; one possesses one's soul, one thinks of the future."
She embellishes her park, superintends the planting of trees, and "a labyrinth from which one could not extricate one's self without the thread of Ariadne;" she fills her garden with orange trees and jessamine until the air is so perfumed that she imagines herself in Provence. She sits in the shade and embroiders while her son "reads trifles, comedies which he plays like Moliere, verses, romances, tales; he is very amusing, he has esprit, he is appreciative, he entertains us." She notes the changing color of the leaves, the budding of the springtime. "It seems to me that in case of need I should know very well how to make a spring," she writes. She loves too the "fine, crystal days of autumn." Sometimes, in the evening, she has "gray-brown thoughts which grow black at night," but she never dwells upon these. Her "habitual thought—that which one must have for God, if one does his duty"—is for her daughter. "My dear child," she writes, "it is only you that I prefer to the tranquil repose I enjoy here."
If her own soul is open to us in all its variable and charming moods, we also catch in her letters many unconscious reflections of her daughter's character. She offers her a little needed worldly advice. "Try, my child," she says, "to adjust yourself to the manners and customs of the people with whom you live; adapt yourself to that which is not bad; do not be disgusted with that which is only mediocre; make a pleasure of that which is not ridiculous." She entreats her to love the little Pauline and not to scold her, nor send her away to the convent as she did her sister Marie-Blanche. With what infinite tenderness she always speaks of this child, smiling at her small outbursts of temper, soothing her little griefs, and giving wise counsels about her education. Evidently she doubted the patience of the mother. "You do not yet too well comprehend maternal love," she writes; "so much the better, my child; it is violent."
Unfortunately this adoring mother could not get on very well with her daughter when they were together. She drowned her with affection, she fatigued her with care for her health, she was hurt by her ungracious manner, she was frozen by her indifference in short, they killed each other. It is not a rare thing to make a cult of a distant idol, and to find one's self unequal to the perpetual shock of the small collisions which diversities of taste and temperament render inevitable in daily intercourse. In this instance, one can readily imagine that a love so interwoven with every fiber of the mother's life, must have been a little over-sensitive, a little exacting, a trifle too demonstrative for the colder nature of the daughter; but that it was the less genuine and profound, no one who has at all studied the character of Mme. de Sevigne can for a moment imagine. How she suffers when it becomes necessary for Mme. de Grignan to go back to Provence! How the tears flow! How readily she forgives all, even to denying that there is anything to forgive. "A word, a sweetness, a return, a caress, a tenderness, disarms me, cures me in a moment," she writes. And again: "Would to God, my daughter, that I might see you once more at the Hotel de Carnavalet, not for eight days, nor to make there a penitence, but to embrace you and to make you see clearly that I cannot be happy without you, and that the chagrins which my friendship for you might give me are more agreeable than all the false peace of a wearisome absence." In spite of these little clouds, the old love is never dimmed; we are constantly bewildered with the inexhaustible riches of a heart which gives so lavishly and really asks so little for itself.
The Hotel de Carnavalet was one of the social centers of the latter part of the century, but it was the source of no special literature and of no new diversions. Mme. de Sevigne was herself luminous, and her fame owes none of its luster to the reflection from those about her. She was original and spontaneous. She read because she liked to read, and not because she wished to be learned. She wrote as she talked, from the impulse of the moment, without method or aim excepting to follow where her rapid thought led her. Her taste for society was of the same order. Her variable and sparkling genius would have broken loose from the formal conversations and rather studied brilliancy that had charmed her youth at the Hotel de Rambouillet. The onerous duties of a perpetual hostess would not have suited her temperament, which demanded its hours of solitude and repose. But she was devoted to her friends, and there was a delightful freedom in all her intercourse with them. She has not chronicled her salon, but she has chronicled her world, and we gather from her letters the quality of her guests. She liked to pass an evening in the literary coterie at the Luxembourg; to drop in familiarly upon Mme. de La Fayette, where she found La Rochefoucauld, Cardinal de Retz, sometimes Segrais, Huet, La Fontaine, Moliere, and other wits of the time; to sup with Mme. de Coulanges and Mme. Scarron. She is a constant visitor at the old Hotel de Nevers, where Marie de Gonzague and the Princesse Palatine had charmed an earlier generation, and where Mme. Duplessis Guenegaud, a woman of brilliant intellect, heroic courage, large heart, and pure character, whom d'Andilly calls one of the great souls, presided over a new circle of young poets and men of letters, reviving the fading memories of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Mme. De Sevigne, who had fine dramatic talent, acted here in little comedies. She heard Boileau read his satires and Racine his tragedies. She met the witty Chevalier de Chatillon, who asked eight days to make an impromptu, and Pomponne, who wrote to his father that the great world he found in this salon did not prevent him from appearing in a gray habit. In a letter from the country house of Mme. Duplessis, at Fresnes, to the same Pomponne, then ambassador to Sweden, Mme. de Sevigne says: "I have M. d'Andilly at my left, that is, on the side of my heart; I have Mme. de La Fayette at my right; Mme. Duplessis before me, daubing little pictures; Mme. De Motteville a little further off, who dreams profoundly; our uncle de Cessac, whom I fear because I do not know him very well."
It is this life of charming informality; this society of lettered tastes, of wit, of talent, of distinction, that she transfers to her own salon. Its continuity is often broken by her long absences in the country or in Provence, but her irresistible magnetism quickly draws the world around her, on her return. In addition to her intimate friends and to men of letters like Racine, Boileau, Benserade, one meets representatives of the most distinguished of the old families of France. Conde, Richelieu, Colberg, Louvois, and Sully are a few among the great names, of which the list might be indefinitely extended. We have many interesting glimpses of the Grande Mademoiselle, the "adorable" Duchesse de Chaulnes, the Duc and Duchesse de Rohan, who were "Germans in the art of savoir-vivre," the Abbess de Fontevrault, so celebrated for her esprit and her virtue, and a host of others too numerous to mention. The sculptured portals and time-stained walls of the Hotel de Carnavalet are still alive with the memories of these brilliant reunions and the famous people who shone there two hundred years ago.
Among those who exercised the most important influence upon the life of Mme. de Sevigne was Corbinelli, the wise counselor, who, with a soul untouched by the storms of adversity through which he had passed, devoted his life to letters and the interests of his friends. No one had a finer appreciation of her gifts and her character. Her compared her letters to those of Cicero, but he always sought to temper her ardor, and to turn her thoughts toward an elevated Christian philosophy. "In him," said Mme. de Sevigne, "I defend one who does not cease to celebrate the perfections and the existence of God; who never judges his neighbor, who excuses him always; who is insensible to the pleasures and delights of life, and entirely submissive to the will of Providence; in fine, I sustain the faithful admirer of Sainte Therese, and of my grandmother, Sainte Chantal." This gentle, learned, and disinterested man, whose friendship deepened with years, was an unfailing resource. In her troubles and perplexities she seeks his advice; in her intellectual tastes she is sustained by his sympathy. She speaks often of the happy days in Provence, when, together with her daughter, they translate Tacitus, read Tasso, and get entangled in endless discussions upon Descartes. Even Mme. de Grignan, who rarely likes her mother's friends, in the end gives due consideration to this loyal confidant, though she does not hesitate to ridicule the mysticism into which he finally drifted.
After Mme. de La Fayette, the woman whose relations with Mme. de Sevigne were the most intimate was Mme. de Coulanges, who merits here more than a passing word. Her wit was proverbial, her popularity universal. The Leaf, the Fly, the Sylph, the Goddess, her friend calls her in turn, with many a light thrust at her volatile but loyal character. This brilliant, spirituelle, caustic woman was the wife of a cousin of the Marquis de Sevigne, who was as witty as herself and more inconsequent. Both were amiable, both sparkled with bons mots and epigrams, but they failed to entertain each other. The husband goes to Italy or Germany or passes his time in various chateaux, where he is sure of a warm welcome and good cheer. The wife goes to Versailles, visits her cousin Louvois, the Duchesse de Richelieu, and Mme. de Maintenon, who loves her much; or presides at home over a salon that is always well filled. "Ah, Madame," said M. de Barillon, "how much your house pleases me! I shall come here very evening when I am tired of my family." "Monsieur," she replied, "I expect you tomorrow." When she was ill and likely to die, her husband had a sudden access of affection, and nursed her with great tenderness. Mme. de Coulanges dying and her husband in grief, seemed somehow out of the order of things. "A dead vivacity, a weeping gaiety, these are prodigies," wrote Mme. de Sevigne. When the wife recovered, however, they took their separate ways as before.
"Your letters are delicious," she wrote once to Mme. de Sevigne, "and you are as delicious as your letters." Her own were as much sought in her time, but she had no profound affection to consecrate them and no children to collect them, so that only a few have been preserved. There is a curious vein of philosophy in one she wrote to her husband, when the pleasures of life began to fade. "As for myself, I care little for the world; I find it no longer suited to my age; I have no engagements, thank God, to retain me there. I have seen all there is to see. I have only an old face to present to it, nothing new to show nor to discover there. Ah! What avails it to recommence every day the visits, to trouble one's self always about things that do not concern us? .... My dear sir, we must think of something more solid." She disappears from the scene shortly after the death of Mme. De Sevigne. Long years of silence and seclusion, and another generation heard one day that she had lived and that she was dead.
The friends of Mme. de Sevigne slip away one after another; La Rochefoucauld, De Retz, Mme. de La Fayette are gone. "Alas!" she writes, "how this death goes running about and striking on all sides." The thought troubles her. "I am embarked in life without my consent," she says; "I must go out of it—that overwhelms me. And how shall I go? Whence: By what door? When will it be? In what disposition: How shall I be with God? What have I to present to him? What can I hope?—Am I worthy of paradise? Am I worthy of hell? What an alternative! What a complication! I would like better to have died in the arms of my nurse."
The end came to her in the one spot where she would most have wished it. She died while on a visit to her daughter in Provence. Strength and resignation came with the moment, and she faced with calmness and courage the final mystery. To the last she retained her wit, her vivacity, and that eternal youth of the spirit which is one of the rarest of God's gifts to man. "There are no more friends left to me," said Mme. de Coulanges; and later she wrote to Mme. de Grignan, "The grief of seeing her no longer is always fresh to me. I miss too many things at the Hotel de Carnavalet."
The curtain falls upon this little world which the magical pen of Mme. de Sevigne has made us know so well. The familiar faces retreat into the darkness, to be seen no more. But the picture lives, and the woman who has outlined it so clearly, and colored it so vividly and so tenderly, smiles upon us still, out of the shadows of the past, crowned with the white radiance of immortal genius and immortal love.
Her Friendship with Mme. de Sevigne—Her Education—Her Devotion to the Princess Henrietta—Her Salon—La Rochefoucauld—Talent as a Diplomatist—Comparison with Mme. de Maintenon Her Literary Work—Sadness of her Last Days—Woman in Literature
"Believe me, my dearest, you are the person in the world whom I have most truly loved," wrote Mme. de La Fayette to Mme. de Sevigne a short time before her death. This friendship of more than forty years, which Mme. de Sevigne said had never suffered the least cloud, was a living tribute to the mind and heart of both women. It may also be cited for the benefit of the cynically disposed who declare that feminine friendships are simply "pretty bows of ribbon" and nothing more. These women were fundamentally unlike, but they supplemented each other. The character of Mme. de La Fayette was of firmer and more serious texture. She had greater precision of thought, more delicacy of sentiment, and affections not less deep. But her temperament was less sunny, her genius less impulsive, her wit less sparkling, and her manner less demonstrative. "She has never been without that divine reason which was her dominant trait," wrote her friend. No praise pleased her so much as to be told that her judgment was superior to her intellect, and that she loved truth in all things. "She would not have accorded the least favor to any one, if she had not been convinced it was merited," said Segrais; "this is why she was sometimes called hard, though she was really tender." As an evidence of her candor, he thinks it worth while to record that "she did not even conceal her age, but told freely in what year and place she was born." But she combined to an eminent degree sweetness with strength, sensibility with reason, and it was the blending of such diverse qualities that gave so rare a flavor to her character. In this, too, lies the secret of the vast capacity for friendship which was one of her most salient points. It is through the records which these friendships have left, through the literary work that formed the solace of so many hours of sadness and suffering, and through the letters of Mme. de Sevigne, that we are able to trace the classic outlines of this fine and complex nature, so noble, so poetic, so sweet, and yet so strong.
Mme. de La Fayette was eight years younger than Mme. de Sevigne, and died three years earlier; hence they traversed together the brilliant world of the second half of the century of which they are among the most illustrious representatives. The young Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne had inherited a taste for letters and was carefully instructed by her father, who was a field-marshal and the governor of Havre, where he died when she was only fifteen. She had not passed the first flush of youth when her mother contracted a second marriage with the Chevalier Renaud de Sevigne, whose name figures among the frondeurs as the ardent friend of Cardinal de Retz, and later among the devout Port Royalists. It is a fact of more interest to us that he was an uncle of the Marquis de Sevigne, and the best result of the marriage to the young girl, who was not at all pleased and whose fortunes it clouded a little, was to bring her into close relations with the woman to whom we owe the most intimate details of her life.
The rare natural gifts of Mlle. De La Vergne were not left without due cultivation. Rapin and Menage taught her Latin. "That tiresome Menage," as she lightly called him, did not fail, according to his custom, to lose his susceptible heart to the remarkable pupil who, after three months of study, translated Virgil and Horace better than her masters. He put this amiable weakness on record in many Latin and Italian verses, in which he addresses her as Laverna, a name more musical than flattering, if one recalls its Latin significance. She received an education of another sort, in the salon of her mother, a woman of much intelligence, as well as a good deal of vanity, who posed a little as a patroness of letters, gathering about her a circle of beaux esprits, and in other ways signaling the taste which was a heritage from her Provencal ancestry. On can readily imagine the rapidity with which the young girl developed in such an atmosphere. The abbe Costar, "most gallant of pedants and most pedantic of gallants," who had an equal taste for literature and good dinners, calls her "the incomparable," sends her his books, corresponds with her, and expresses his delight at finding her "so beautiful, so spirituelle, so full of reason." The poet Scarron speaks of her as "toute lumineuse, toute precieuse."
The circle she met in the salon of her godmother, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, had no less influence in determining her future fortunes. With her rare reputation for beauty and esprit, as well as learning, she took her place early in this brilliant and distinguished society in which she was to play so graceful and honored a part. She was sought and admired not only by the men of letters who were so cordially welcomed by the favorite niece of Richelieu, but by the gay world that habitually assembled at the Petit Luxembourg. It was here that she perfected the tone of natural elegance which always distinguished her and made her conspicuous even at court, where she passed so many years of her life.
She was not far from twenty-one when she became the wife of the Comte de La Fayette, of whom little is known save that he died early, leaving her with two sons. He is the most shadowy of figures, and whether he made her life happy or sad does not definitely appear, though there is a vague impression that he left something to be desired in the way of devotion. A certain interest attaches to him as the brother of the beautiful Louise de La Fayette, maid of honor to Anne of Austria, who fled from the compromising infatuation of Louis XIII, to hide her youth and fascinations in the cloister, under the black robe and the cherished name of Mere Angelique de Chaillot.
The young, brilliant, and gifted comtesse goes to the convent to visit her gently austere sister-in-law, and meets there the Princess Henrietta of England, than a child of eleven years. The attraction is mutual and ripens into a deep and lasting friendship. When this graceful and light-hearted girl becomes the Duchesse d'Orleans, and sister-in-law of the king, she attaches her friend to her court and makes her the confidante of her romantic experiences. "Do you not think," she said to her one day, "that if all which has happened to me, and the things relating to it, were told it would make a fine story? You write well; write; I will furnish you good materials." The interesting memorial, to which madame herself contributes many pages, is interrupted by the mysterious death of the gay and charming woman who had found so sympathetic and so faithful a chronicler. She breathed her last sigh in the arms of this friend. "It is one of those sorrows for which one never consoles one's self, and which leave a shadow over the rest of one's life," wrote Mme. de La Fayette. She had no heart to finish the history, and added only the few simple lines that record the touching incidents which left upon her so melancholy and lasting an impression. She did not care to remain longer at court, where she was constantly reminded of her grief, and retired permanently from its gaieties; but in these years of intimacy with one of its central figures, she had gained an insight into its spirit and its intrigues, which was of inestimable value in the memoirs and romances of her later years.
The natural place of Mme. de La Fayette was in a society of more serious tone and more lettered tastes. In her youth she had been taken by her mother to the Hotel de Rambouillet, and she always retained much of its spirit, without any of its affectations. We find her sometimes at the Samedis, and she belonged to the exclusive coterie of the Grande Mademoiselle, at the Luxembourg, where her facile pen was in demand for the portraits so much in vogue. She was also a frequent visitor in the literary salon of Mme. de Sable, at Port Royal. It was here that her friendship with La Rochefoucauld glided imperceptibly into the intimacy which became so important a feature in her life. This intimacy was naturally a matter of some speculation, but the world made up its mind of its perfectly irreproachable character. "It appears to be only friendship," writes Mme. de Scudery to Bussy-Rabutin; "in short the fear of God on both sides, and perhaps policy, have cut the wings of love. She is his favorite and his first friend." "I do not believe he has ever been what one calls in love," writes Mme. de Sevigne. But this friendship was a veritable romance, without any of the storms or vexations or jealousies of a passionate love. "You may imagine the sweetness and charm of an intercourse full of all the friendship and confidence possible between two people whose merit is not ordinary," she says again; "add to this the circumstance of their bad health, which rendered them almost necessary to each other, and gave them the leisure not to be found in other relations, to enjoy each other's good qualities. It seems to me that at court people have no time for affection; the whirlpool which is so stormy for others was peaceful for them, and left ample time for the pleasures of a friendship so delicious. I do not believe that any passion can surpass the strength of such a tie."
In the earlier stages of this intimacy, Mme. de La Fayette was a little sensitive as to how the world might regard it, as may be seen in a note to Mme. de Sable, in which she asks her to explain it to the young Comte de Saint-Paul, a son of Mme. de Longueville.
"I beg of you to speak of the matter in such a way as to put out of his head the idea that it is anything serious," she writes. "I am not sufficiently sure what you think of it yourself to feel certain that you will say the right thing, and it may be necessary to begin by convincing my embassador. However, I must trust to your tact, which is superior to ordinary rules. Only convince him. I dislike mortally that people of his age should imagine that I have affairs of gallantry. It seems to them that every one older than themselves is a hundred, and they are astonished that such should be regarded of any account. Besides, he would believe these things of M. de La Rochefoucauld more readily than of any one else. In fine, I do not want him to think anything about it except that the gentleman is one of my friends."
The picture we have of La Rochefoucauld from the pen of Mme. de Sevigne has small resemblance to the ideal that one forms of the cynical author of the Maxims. He had come out of the storms of the Fronde a sad and disappointed man. The fires of his nature seem to have burned out with the passions of his youth, if they had ever burned with great intensity. "I have seen love nowhere except in romances," he says, and even his devotion to Mme. de Longueville savors more of the ambitious courtier than of the lover. His nature was one that recoiled from all violent commotions of the soul. The cold philosophy of the Maxims marked perhaps the reaction of his intellect against the disenchanting experiences of his life. In the tranquil atmosphere of Mme. de Sable he found a certain mental equilibrium; but his character was finally tempered and softened by the gentle influence of Mme. de La Fayette, whose exquisite poise and delicacy were singularly in harmony with a nature that liked nothing in exaggeration. "I have seen him weep with a tenderness that made me adore him," writes Mme. de Sevigne, after the death of his mother. "The heart or M. de La Rochefoucauld for his family is a thing incomparable." When the news came that his favorite grandson had been killed in battle, she says again: "I have seen his heart laid bare in this cruel misfortune; he ranks first among all I have ever known for courage, fortitude, tenderness, and reason; I count for nothing his esprit and his charm." In all the confidences of the two women, La Rochefoucauld makes a third. He seems always to be looking over the shoulder of Mme. de La Fayette while she writes to the one who "satisfies his idea of friendship in all its circumstances and dependences"; adding usually a message, a line or a pretty compliment to Mme. de Grignan that is more amiable than sincere, because he knows it will gladden the heart of her adoring mother.
The side of Mme. de La Fayette which has the most fascination for us is this intimate life of which Mme. de Sevigne gives such charming glimpses. For a moment it was her ambition to establish a popular salon, a role for which she had every requisite of position, talent, and influence. "She presumed very much upon her esprit," says Gourville, who did not like her, "and proposed to fill the place of the Marquise de Sable, to whom all the young people were in the habit of paying great deference, because, after she had fashioned them a little, it was a passport for entering the world; but this plan did not succeed, as Mme. de La Fayette was not willing to give her time to a thing so futile." One can readily understand that it would not have suited her tastes or her temperament. Besides, her health was too delicate, and her moods were too variable. "You know how she is weary sometimes of the same thing," wrote Mme. de Sevigne. But she had her coterie, which was brilliant in quality if not in numbers. The fine house with its pretty garden, which may be seen today opposite the Petit Luxembourg, was a favorite meeting place for a distinguished circle. The central figure was La Rochefoucauld. Every day he came in and seated himself in the fauteuil reserved for him. One is reminded of the little salon in the Abbaye-aux-Bois, where more than a century later Chateaubriand found the pleasure and the consolation of his last days in the society of Mme. Recamier. They talk, they write, they criticize each other, they receive their friends. The Cardinal de Retz comes in, and they recall the fatal souvenirs of the Fronde. Perhaps he thinks of the time when he found the young Mlle. De LaVergne pretty and amiable, and she did not smile upon him. The Prince de Conde is there sometimes, and honors her with his confidence, which Mme. de Sevigne thinks very flattering, as he does not often pay such consideration to women. Segrais has transferred his allegiance from the Grande Mademoiselle to Mme. de La Fayette, and is her literary counselor as well as a constant visitor. La Fontaine, "so well known by his fables and tales, and sometimes so heavy in conversation," may be found there. Mme. de Sevigne comes almost every day with her sunny face and her witty story. "The Mist" she calls Mme. de La Fayette, who is so often ill and sad. She might have called herself The Sunbeam, though she, too, has her hours when she can only dine tete-a-tete with her friend, because she is "so gloomy that she cannot support four people together." Mme. de Coulanges adds her graceful, vivacious, and sparkling presence. Mme. Scarron, before her days of grandeur, is frequently of the company, and has lost none of the charm which made the salon of her poet-husband so attractive during his later years. "She has an amiable and marvelously just mind," says Mme. de Sevigne... "It is pleasant to hear her talk. These conversations often lead us very far, from morality to morality, sometimes Christian, sometimes political." This circle was not limited however to a few friends, and included from time to time the learning, the elegance and the aristocracy of Paris.
But Mme. de La Fayette herself is the magnet that quietly draws together this fascinating world. In her youth she had much life and vivacity, perhaps a spice of discreet coquetry, but at this period she was serious, and her fresh beauty had given place to the assured and captivating grace of maturity. She had a face that might have been severe in its strength but for the sensibility expressed in the slight droop of the head to one side, the tender curve of the full lips, and the variable light of the dark, thoughtful eyes. In her last years, when her stately figure had grown attenuated, and her face was pallid with long suffering, the underlying force of her character was more distinctly defined in the clear and noble outlines of her features. Her nature was full of subtle shades. Over her reserved strength, her calm judgment, her wise penetration played the delicate light of a lively imagination, the shifting tints of a tender sensibility. Her sympathy found ready expression in tears, and she could not even bear the emotion of saying good-by to Mme. de Sevigne when she was going away to Provence. But her accents were always tempered, and her manners had the gracious and tranquil ease of a woman superior to circumstances. Her extreme frankness lent her at times a certain sharpness, and she deals many light blows at the small vanities and affectations that come under her notice. "Mon Dieu," said the frivolous Mme. de Marans to her one day, "I must have my hair cut." "Mon Dieu," replied Mme. de La Fayette simply, "do not have it done; that is becoming only to young persons." Gourville said she was imperious and over-bearing, scolding those she loved best, as well as those she did not love. But this valet-de-chambre of La Rochefoucauld, who amassed a fortune and became a man of some note, was jealous of her influence over his former master, and his opinions should be taken with reservation. Her delicate satire may have been sometimes a formidable weapon, but it was directed only against follies, and rarely, if ever, used unkindly. She was a woman for intimacies, and it is to those who knew her best that we must look for a just estimate of her qualities. "You would love her as soon as you had time to be with her, and to become familiar with her esprit and her wisdom," wrote Mme. de Sevigne to her daughter, who was disposed to be critical; "the better one knows her, the more one is attached to her."
One must also take into consideration her bad health. People thought her selfish or indifferent when she was only sad and suffering. For more than twenty years she was ill, consumed by a slow fever which permitted her to go out only at intervals. La Rochefoucauld had the gout, and they consoled each other. Mme. de Sevigne thought it better not to have the genius of a Pascal, than to have so many ailments. "Mme. De La Fayette is always languishing, M. de La Rochefoucauld always lame," she writes; "we have conversations so sad that it seems as if there were nothing more to do but to bury us; the garden of Mme. de La Fayette is the prettiest spot in the world, everything blooming, everything perfumed; we pass there many evenings, for the poor woman does not dare go out in a carriage." "Her health is never good," she writes again, "nevertheless she sends you word that she should not like death better; AU CONTRAIRE." There are times when she can no longer "think, or speak, or answer, or listen; she is tired of saying good morning and good evening." Then she goes away to Meudon for a few days, leaving La Rochefoucauld "incredibly sad." She speaks for herself in a letter from the country house which Gourville has placed at her disposal.
"I am at Saint Maur; I have left all my affairs and all my husbands; I have my children and the fine weather; that suffices. I take the waters of Forges; I look after my health, I see no one. I do not mind at all the privation; every one seems to me so attached to pleasures which depend entirely upon others, that I find my disposition a gift of the fairies.
"I do not know but Mme de Coulanges has already sent you word of our after-dinner conversations at Gourville's about people who have taste above or below their intelligence. Mme. Scarron and the Abbe Tetu were there; we lost ourselves in subtleties until we no longer understood anything. If the air of Provence, which subtilizes things still more, magnifies for you our visions, you will be in the clouds. You have taste below your intelligence; so has M. de La Rochefoucauld; and myself also, but not so much as you two. VOILA an example which will guide you."
She disliked writing letters, and usually limited herself to a few plain facts, often in her late years to a simple bulletin of her health. This negligence was the subject of many passages-at-arms between herself and Mme. de Sevigne. "If I had a lover who wished my letters every morning, I would break with him," she writes. "Do not measure our friendship by our letters. I shall love you as much in writing you only a page in a month, as you me in writing ten in eight days." Again she replies to some reproach: "Make up your mind, ma belle, to see me sustain, all my life, with the whole force of my eloquence, that I love you still more than you love me. I will make Corbinelli agree with me in a quarter of an hour; your distrust is your sole defect, and the only thing in you that can displease me."
But in spite of a certain apparent indolence, and her constant ill health, there were many threads that connected with the outside world the pleasant room in which Mme. de La Fayette spent so many days of suffering. "She finds herself rich in friends from all sides and all conditions," writes Mme. de Sevigne; "she has a hundred arms; she reaches everywhere. Her children appreciate all this, and thank her every day for possessing a spirit so engaging." She goes to Versailles, on one of her best days, to thank the king for a pension, and receives so many kind words that it "suggests more favors to come." He orders a carriage and accompanies her with other ladies through the park, directing his conversation to her, and seeming greatly pleased with her judicious praise. She spends a few days at Chantilly, where she is invited to all the fetes, and regrets that Mme. de Sevigne could not be with her in that charming spot, which she is "fitted better than anyone else to enjoy." No one understands so well the extent of her influence and her credit as this devoted friend, who often quotes her to Mme. de Grignan as a model. "Never did any one accomplish so much without leaving her place," she says.
But there was one phase in the life of Mme. de La Fayette which was not fully confided even to Mme. de Sevigne. It concerns a chapter of obscure political history which it is needless to dwell upon here, but which throws much light upon her capacity for managing intricate affairs. Her connection with it was long involved in mystery, and was only unveiled in a correspondence given to the world at a comparatively recent date. It was in the salon of the Grande Mademoiselle that she was thrown into frequent relations with the two daughters of Charles Amedee de Savoie, Duc de Nemours, one of whom became Queen of Portugal, the other Duchesse de Savoie and, later, Regent during the minority of her son. These relations resulted in one of the ardent friendships which played so important a part in her career. Her intercourse with the beautiful but vain, intriguing, and imperious Duchesse de Savoie assumed the proportion of a delicate diplomatic mission. "Her salon," says Lescure, "was, for the affairs of Savoy, a center of information much more important in the eyes of shrewd politicians than that of the ambassador." She not only looked after the personal matters of Mme. Royale, but was practically entrusted with the entire management of her interests in Paris. From affairs of state and affairs of the heart to the daintiest articles of the toilette her versatile talent is called into requisition. Now it is a message to Louvois or the king, now a turn to be adroitly given to public opinion, now the selection of a perfume or a pair of gloves. "She watches everything, thinks of everything, combines, visits, talks, writes, sends counsels, procures advice, baffles intrigues, is always in the breach, and renders more service by her single efforts than all the envoys avowed or secret whom the Duchesse keeps in France." Nor is the value of these services unrecognized. "Have I told you," wrote Mme. de Sevigne to her daughter, "that Mme. de Savoie has sent a hundred ells of the finest velvet in the world to Mme. de La Fayette, and a hundred ells of satin to line it, and two days ago her portrait, surrounded with diamonds, which is worth three hundred louis?"
The practical side of Mme. de La Fayette's character was remarkable in a woman of so fine a sensibility and so rare a genius. Her friends often sought her counsel; and it was through her familiarity with legal technicalities that La Rochefoucauld was enabled to save his fortune, which he was at one time in danger of losing. In clear insight, profound judgment, and knowledge of affairs, she was scarcely, if at all, surpassed by Mme. de Maintenon, the feminine diplomatist par excellence of her time, though her field of action was less broad and conspicuous. But her love of consideration was not so dominant and her ambition not so active. It was one of her theories that people should live without ambition as well as without passion. "It is sufficient to exist," she said. Her energy when occasion called for it does not quite accord with this passive philosophy, and suggests at least a vast reserved force; but if she directed her efforts toward definite ends it was usually to serve other interests than her own. She had been trained in a different school from Mme. de Maintenon, her temperament was modified by her frail health, and the prizes of life had come to her apparently without special exertion. She was a woman, too, of more sentiment and imagination. Her fastidious delicacy and luxurious tastes were the subject of critical comment on the part of this austere censor, who condemned the gilded decorations of her bed as a useless extravagance, giving the characteristic reason that "the pleasure they afforded was not worth the ridicule they excited." The old friendship that had existed when Mme. Scarron was living in such elegant and mysterious seclusion, devoting herself to the king's children, and finding her main diversion in the little suppers enlivened by the wit of Mme. de Sevigne and Mme. de Coulanges, and the more serious, but not less agreeable, conversation of Mme. de La Fayette, had evidently grown cool. They had their trifling disagreements. "Mme. de La Fayette puts too high a price upon her friendship," wrote Mme. de Maintenon, who had once attached such value to a few approving words from her. In her turn Mme. de La Fayette indulged in a little light satire. Referring to the comedy of Esther, which Racine had written by command for the pupils at Saint Cyr, she said, "It represents the fall of Mme. de Montespan and the rise of Mme. de Maintenon; all the difference is that Esther was rather younger, and less of a precieuse in the matter of piety." There was certainly less of the ascetic in Mme. de La Fayette. She had more color and also more sincerity. In symmetry of character, in a certain feminine quality of taste and tenderness, she was superior, and she seems to me to have been of more intrinsic value as a woman. Whether under the same conditions she would have attained the same power may be a question. If not, I think it would have been because she was unwilling to pay the price, not because she lacked the grasp, the tact, or the diplomacy.
It is mainly as a woman of letters that Mme. de La Fayette is known today, and it was through her literary work that she made the strongest impression upon her time. Boileau said that she had a finer intellect and wrote better than any other woman in France. But she wrote only for the amusement of idle or lonely hours, and always avoided any display of learning, in order not to attract jealousy as well as from instinctive delicacy of taste. "He who puts himself above others," she said, "whatever talent he may possess, puts himself below his talent." But her natural atmosphere was an intellectual one, and the friend of La Rochefoucauld, who would have "liked Montaigne for a neighbor," had her own message for the world. Her mind was clear and vigorous, her taste critical and severe, and her style had a flexible quality that readily took the tone of her subject. In concise expression she doubtless profited much from the author of the MAXIMS, who rewrote many of his sentences at least thirty times. "A phrase cut out of a book is worth a louis d'or," she said, "and every word twenty sous." Unfortunately her "Memoires de la Cour de France" is fragmentary, as her son carelessly lent the manuscripts, and many of them were lost. But the part that remains gives ample evidence of the breadth of her intelligence, the penetrating, lucid quality of her mind, and her talent for seizing the salient traits of the life about her. In her romances, which were first published under the name of Segrais, one finds the touch of an artist, and the subtle intuitions of a woman. In the rapid evolution of modern taste and the hopeless piling up of books, these works have fallen somewhat into the shade, but they are written with a vivid naturalness of style, a truth of portraiture, and a delicacy of sentiment, that commend them still to all lovers of imaginative literature. Fontenelle read the "Princesse de Cleves" four times when it appeared. La Harpe said it was "the first romance that offered reasonable adventures written with interest and elegance." It marked an era in the history of the novel. "Before Mme. de La Fayette," said Voltaire, "people wrote in a stilted style of improbable things." We have the rare privilege of reading her own criticism in a letter to the secretary of the Duchesse de Savoie, in which she disowns the authorship, and adds a few lines of discreet eulogy.
"As for myself," she writes, "I am flattered at being suspected of it. I believe I should acknowledge the book, if I were assured the author would never appear to claim it. I find it very agreeable and well written without being excessively polished, full of things of admirable delicacy, which should be read more than once; above all, it seems to be a perfect presentation of the world of the court and the manner of living there. It is not romantic or ambitious; indeed it is not a romance; properly speaking, it is a book of memoirs, and that I am told was its title, but it was changed. VOILA, monsieur, my judgment upon Mme. De Cleves; I ask yours, for people are divided upon this book to the point of devouring each other. Some condemn what others admire; whatever you may say, do not fear to be alone in your opinion."
Sainte-Beuve, whose portrait of Mme. de La Fayette is so delightful as to make all others seem superfluous, has devoted some exquisite lines to this book. "It is touching to think," he writes, "of the peculiar situation which gave birth to these beings so charming, so pure, these characters so noble and so spotless, these sentiments so fresh, so faultless, so tender;" how Mme. de La Fayette put into it all that her loving, poetic soul retained of its first, ever-cherished dreams, and how M. de La Rochefoucauld was pleased doubtless to find once more in "M. De Nemours" that brilliant flower of chivalry which he had too much misused—a sort of flattering mirror in which he lived again his youth. Thus these two old friends renewed in imagination the pristine beauty of that age when they had not known each other, hence could not love each other. The blush so characteristic of Mme. De Cleves, and which at first is almost her only language, indicates well the design of the author, which is to paint love in its freshest, purest, vaguest, most adorable, most disturbing, most irresistible—in a word, in its own color. It is constantly a question of that joy which youth joined to beauty gives, of the trouble and embarrassment that love causes in the innocence of early years, in short, of all that is farthest from herself and her friend in their late tie."
But whatever tints her tender and delicate imaginings may have taken from her own soul, Mme. de La Fayette has caught the eternal beauty of a pure and loyal spirit rising above the mists of sense into the serene air of a lofty Christian renunciation.
The sad but triumphant close of her romance foreshadowed the swift breaking up of her own pleasant life. In 1680, not long after the appearance of the "Princesse de Cleves," La Rochefoucauld died, and the song of her heart was changed to a miserere. "Mme. de La Fayette has fallen from the clouds," says Mme. de Sevigne. "Where can she find such a friend, such society, a like sweetness, charm, confidence, consideration for her and her son?" A little later she writes from The Rocks, "Mme. de La Fayette sends me word that she is more deeply affected than she herself believed, being occupied with her health and her children; but these cares have only rendered more sensible the veritable sadness of her heart. She is alone in the world... The poor woman cannot close the ranks so as to fill this place."
The records of the thirteen years that remain to Mme. de La Fayette are somber and melancholy. "Nothing can replace the blessings I have lost," she says. Restlessly she seeks diversion in new plans. She enlarges her house as her horizon diminishes; she finds occupation in the affairs of Mme. Royale and interests herself in the marriage of the daughter of her never-forgotten friend, the Princess Henrietta, with the heir to the throne of Savoy. She writes a romance without the old vigor, occupies herself with historic reminiscences, and takes a passing refuge in an ardent affection for the young Mme. de Schomberg, which excites the jealousy of some older friends. But the strongest link that binds her to the world is the son whose career opens so brilliantly as a young officer and for whom she secures an ample fortune and a fine marriage. In this son and the establishment of a family centered all her hopes and ambitions. She was spared the pain of seeing them vanish like the "baseless fabric of a vision." The object of so many cares survived her less than two years; her remaining son and the only person left to represent her was the abbe who had so little care for her manuscripts and her literary fame. A century later, through a collateral branch of the family, the glory of the name was revived by the distinguished general so dear to the American heart. It was in the less tangible realm of the intellect that Mme. de La Fayette was destined to an unlooked-for immortality.
But in spite of these interests, the sense of loneliness and desolation is always present. Her few letters give us occasional flashes of the old spirit, but the burden of them is inexpressibly sad. Her sympathies and associations led her toward a mild form of Jansenism, and as the evening shadows darkened, her thoughts turned to fresh speculations upon the destiny of the soul. She went with Mme. de Coulanges to visit Mme. de La Sabliere, who was expiating the errors and follies of her life in austere penitence at the Incurables. The devotion of this once gay and brilliant woman, who had been so deeply tinged with the philosophy of Descartes, touched her profoundly, and suggested a source of consolation which she had never found. She sought the counsels of her confessor, who did not spare her, and though she was never sustained by the ardor and exaltation of the religieuse, her last days were not without peace and a tranquil hope. To the end she remained a gracious, thoughtful, self-poised, calmly-judging woman whose illusions never blinded her to the simple facts of existence, though sometimes throwing over them a transparent veil woven from the tender colors of her own heart. Above the weariness and resignation of her last words written to Mme. de Sevigne sounds the refrain of a life that counts among its crowning gifts and graces a genius for friendship.