time, to wind up all accounts, visited Britany. Her letters become more
agreeable than ever; her affection for her daughter even increasing: her
advice about her grandchildren[74]; her annoyance with regard to her
son; is the interior portion of the story to which we are admitted. The
news of the court is mentioned, and the progress of madame de
Maintenon's favour, so puzzling to the courtiers; and, lastly, the
picture of the provincial court of the duke and duchess de Chaulnes, who
had the government of Britany. She describes their guards, their suite
of provincial nobles, with their wives and daughters; and a little
discontent creeps out, as it sometimes does, with regard to the court,
that she had never risen above a private station. "I have seen you in
Provence," she writes to her daughter, "surrounded by as many ladies,
and M. de Grignan followed by as many men, of quality, and receive, at
Lambesc, with as much dignity, as M. de Chaulnes can here. I reflected
that you held your court there; I come to pay mine here: thus has
Providence ordered." She enjoyed, however, the dinners, suppers, and
festivals of the duke, who made much of her; and her anecdotes are full
of vivacity. Her eyes never rest: they see all: sometimes a grace,
sometimes a folly; now a _bon mot_, now a stupidity, salutes her eyes or
ears: it is all transmitted to her daughter; and we, at this distance of
time and place, enjoy the accounts, which, being true to human nature,
often seem as fresh and _à propos_ as if they had occurred yesterday.
And then she quits all, and writes, "I am at length in the quiet of my
woods, and in that state of abstinence and silence for which I longed."
And she plunges into the depths of jansenism, and discusses the knotty
subject of the grace of God.[75]
On her return to the capital, she was made perfectly happy by the
arrival of her daughter, in better health than she had been for a long
time, and who remained in Paris for several years. Her son, also, whose
youthful follies had cost her many a pang, made an advantageous
marriage.
[Sidenote: 1684.
Ætat.
58.]
She writes to the count de Bussy, "After much trouble, I at last marry
my poor boy. One must never despair of good luck. I feared that my son
could no longer hope for a good match, after so many storms and wrecks,
without employment or opening for fortune; and, while I was engaged in
these sorrowful thoughts, Providence brought about a marriage, so
advantageous that I could not have desired a better when my son's hopes
were highest. It is thus that we walk blindly, taking for bad that which
is good, and for good that which is bad, and always in utter ignorance."
M. de Sévigné married Jeanne-Marguerite de Brehaut de Mauron, an
amiable and virtuous woman, whose gentleness, and common sense, and turn
for piety, joined to a caressing and playful disposition, suited
admirably both mother and son. In the autumn of this year she visited
the new married pair at the Rochers. It was a sad blow to her to quit
Paris, where her daughter was residing. Motives of economy, or, rather,
the juster motive of paying her debts, enforced this exile, which was
hard to bear. We read her letters for the variety of amusement and
instruction we find in them; and, as we read, we are struck by the
change of tone that creeps over them. From the period of this long visit
of eight years, which madame de Grignan paid to Paris, we find the most
perfect and unreserved friendship subsisting between mother and
daughter. Their ages agree better: the one, now forty, understands the
other, who is sixty, better than the young woman of twenty did her of
forty. Other interests, also, had risen for madame de Grignan in her
children. Her anxiety for her son's advancement was fully shared by
madame de Sévigné. A more sober, perhaps a less amusing, but certainly
a far more interesting (if we may make this distinction), tone pervades
the later letters. Her daughter, before, was the affection that weaned
her from the world; now it mingled with higher and better thoughts. The
Rochers were more peaceful than ever. Her son had not good health: his
wife was cheerful only at intervals: she was delicate; she never went
out: by nine in the evening her strength was exhausted, and she retired,
leaving madame de Sévigné to her letters. She was gentle and kind
withal; attentive, without putting herself forward; so that her
mother-in-law never felt that there was another mistress in the house,
though all her comforts were attended to sedulously.
We pause too long over these minutia. We turn over madame de Sévigné's
pages: an expression, a detail strikes us; we are impelled to put it
down; but the memoir grows too long, and we must curtail. She returned
to Paris in August, 1685, and enjoyed for three years more the society
of her daughter.
[Sidenote: 1687.
Ætat.
61.]
During this period she lost her uncle, the abbé de Coulanges. "You know
that I was under infinite obligations to him," she, writes to count de
Bussy: "I owed him the agreeableness and repose of my life; and you owed
to him the gladness that I brought to your society: without him we had
never laughed together. You owe to him my gaiety, my good humour, my
vivacity; the gift I had of understanding you; the ability of
comprehending what you had said, and of guessing what you were going to
say. In a word, the good abbé, by drawing me from the gulf in which M.
de Sévigné had left me, rendered me what I was, what you knew me, and
worthy of your esteem and friendship. I draw the curtain before the
wrong you did me: it was great, but must be forgotten; and I must tell
you that I have felt deeply the loss of this dear source of the peace of
my whole life. He lived with honour, and died as a Christian. God give
us the same grace! It was at the end of August that I wept him bitterly.
I should never have left him, had he lived as long as myself."
[Sidenote: 1688.
Ætat.
62.]
The subsequent separation of mother and daughter renewed the
correspondence. This division lasted only a year and a half, when madame
de Sévigné repaired to Grignan, which she did not quit again. The
letters written during these few months are very numerous and long. The
growing charms and talents of Pauline de Grignan; the _début_ of the
young marquis de Grignan, who began his career at sixteen in the siege
of Philipsburg; and the deep interest felt by both, is the first subject.
The arrival of James II. in France, and the court news, which had the
novelty of the English royal family being established at St. Germain,
fills many of the letters. The account of the acting of Esther[76],
which enlivened the royal pleasures; and her naïve delight at having
been spoken to by the king is one of her most agreeable passages. Added
to this pleasure was that of M. de Grignan receiving the order of the
saint esprit. Soon after she repaired to Britany, where her time was
spent partly at Rennes, with the duchess de Chaulnes, partly at the
Rochers. Her absence from Paris was felt bitterly by her friends: her
motive, the payment of her debts, was, however, appreciated and
applauded; and she was at once mortified and gratified by the offer of a
loan of money to facilitate her return. Madame de la Fayette wrote to
make her the proposition; but the money was to come from her kind friend
the duchess de Chaulnes. The proposal was made with some _brusquerie_:
"You must not, my dear, at any price whatever, pass the winter in
Britany. You are old; the Rochers are thickly wooded; catarrhs and colds
will destroy you; you will get weary; your mind will become sad and lose
its tone: this is certain; and all the business in the world is nothing
in comparison. Do not speak of money nor of debts, I am to put an end to
all that;" and then follows a proposition for her to take up her abode
at the Hôtel de Chaulnes, and of the loan of a thousand crowns. "No
arguments," the letter continues, "no words, no useless correspondence.
You must come. I will not even read what you may write. In a word, you
consent, or renounce the affection of your dearest friends. We do not
choose that a friend shall grow old and die through her own fault." This
tone of command gave pleasure to madame de Sévigné, though she at once
refused to lay herself under the obligation. But there was a sting in
the letter which she passed over; madame de Grignan discovered it, and
her mother allowed that she felt it; and writes, "You were, then, struck
by madame de la Fayette's expression, mingled with so much kindness.
Although I never allow myself to forget this truth, I confess I was
quite surprised, for as yet I feel no decay to remind me: however, I
often reflect and calculate, and find the conditions on which we enjoy
life very hard. It seems to me that I was dragged, in spite of myself,
to the fatal term when one must suffer old age. I see it,--am there. I
should, at least, like to go no further in the road of decrepitude,
pain, loss of memory, and disfigurement, which are at hand to injure me.
I hear a voice that says, even against your will you must go on; or, if
you refuse, you must die; which is another necessity from which nature
shrinks. Such is the fate of those who go a little too far. But a return
to the will of God, and the universal law by which we are condemned,
brings one to reason, and renders one patient."
As madame de Sévigné was resolved to give up her Parisian life, for
the admirable motive of paying her debts before she died, she felt that
the only compensation she could receive was residing at Grignan. Madame
de la Fayette, on hearing of her intention of going thither, writes,
"Your friends are content that you should go to Provence, since you will
not return to Paris. The climate is better; you will have society, even
when madame de Grignan is away; there is a good mansion, plenty of
inhabitants; in short, it is being alive to live there; and I applaud
your son for consenting to lose you, for your own sake."
[Sidenote: 1690.
Ætat.
64.]
On the 3d of October, therefore, she set off; and friendship, as she
says, rendering so long a journey easy, she arrived on the 24th; when
madame de Grignan received her with open arms, and with such joy,
affection, and gratitude, "that," she says, "I found I had not come soon
enough nor far enough." From this time the correspondence with her
daughter entirely ceases. The letters that remain to her other friends
scarcely fill up the gap. She visited Paris once again with her
daughter; but her time was chiefly spent at Grignan.
[Sidenote: 1694.
Ætat.
68.]
She witnessed the establishment of her grandchildren. The marriage of
the young marquis de Grignan was, of course, a deeply interesting
subject; nor was she less pleased when Pauline, whom she had served so
well in her advice to her mother, married, at the close of the following
year, the marquis de Simiane.
[Sidenote: 1695.
Ætat.
69.]
Early in the spring of 1696 madame de Grignan was attacked by a
dangerous and lingering illness. Her mother attended on her with
tenderness and zeal; but she felt her strength fail her. She wrote to
her friends, that, if her daughter did not soon recover, she must sink
under her fatigues,--words proved too fatally true.
[Sidenote: 1696.
Ætat.
70.]
After a sudden and short illness, she died, in April of the same year,
at the age of seventy. The blow of her death was severely felt by her
friends,--a gap was made in their lives, never to be filled up.
In describing her character, her malicious cousin, count de Bussy,
darkens many traits, which, in their natural colouring, only rendered
her the more agreeable. He blames her for being carried away by a love
of the agreeable rather than the solid; but he allows, at the same time,
that there was not a cleverer woman in France; that her manners were
vivacious and diverting, though she was a little too sprightly for a
woman of quality. Madame de la Fayette addressed a portrait to her, as
was the fashion of those times. Madame de Sévigné was three-and-thirty
when it was written. It is, of course, laudatory: it speaks of the
charms of her society, when all constraint was banished from the
conversation; and says that the brilliancy of her wit imparted so bright
a tinge to her cheek, and sparkle to her eye, that, while others pleased
the ears, she dazzled the eyes of her listeners; so that she surpassed,
for the moment, the most perfect beauty. The portrait speaks of the
affectionate emotions of her heart, and of her love of all that was
pleasing and agreeable. "Joy is the natural atmosphere of your soul," it
says; "and annoyance is more displeasing to you than to any other." It
mentions her obliging disposition, and the grace with which she obliged;
her admirable conduct, her frankness, her sweetness.
Of course fault has been found with her. In the first place, Voltaire
says, after praising her letters, "It is a pity that she was absolutely
devoid of taste; that she did not do Racine justice; and that she puts
Mascaron's funeral oration on Turenne on a par with the _chef-d'œuvre_
of Fléchier." We need not say much concerning the first of these
accusations. It may be thought that madame de Sévigné showed good
taste in her criticisms on Racine. The truth was that, accustomed to
Corneille in her youth, she adhered to his party, and was faithful to
tastes associated with her happiest days. Of the second, we must mention
that she heard Mascaron's oration delivered: and the effect of delivery
is often to dazzle, and to inspire a false judgment. She wrote to her
daughter on the spur of the moment; and her opinion had no pretensions
to a criticism meant for posterity. Afterwards, when she read
Fléchier's oration at leisure, she did not hesitate to prefer it. She
is a little inclined to a false and flowery style in her choice of
books; but her letters exonerate her from the charge of too vehement an
admiration for such, or they would not he, as they are, models for
grace, ease, and nature.
Another accusation brought against her is, that she was a little
malicious in her mode of speaking of persons. It is strange how people
can find dark spots in the sun: for, as that luminary is indeed
conspicuous for its universal light, and not for its partial darkness,
so madame de Sévigné's letters are remarkable for their absence of
ill-nature; and, when we reflect with what unreserve and pouring out of
the heart they were written, we admire the more the gentle and kindly
tone that pervades the whole. "There is a person here," she writes to
her daughter, of her uncle, the abbé de Coulanges, "who is so afraid of
misdirecting his letters after they are written, that he folds them and
puts the addresses before he writes them." The spirit of hyper-criticism
alone could discover ill-nature in the quick sense for the ludicrous
that the mention of this most innocuous piece of caution displays. In a
few of her letters we find her record with pleasure some ill-natured
treatment of a certain lady; but this lady had calumniated madame de
Grignan, and so drawn on herself the mother's heaviest displeasure.
The last fault brought against her is her being dazzled by
greatness:--her saying to her cousin, Bussy, after Louis XIV. had danced
with her, "We must allow that he is a great king," which, as a
frondeuse, she was at that time bound to deny: but he _was_ a great
king, and posterity may therefore forgive her. She made no sacrifices to
greatness, and was guilty of no truckling. She allows she should have
liked a court life. She traces her exclusion from it to her alliance
with the fronde, her friendship for Fouquet, and her jansenist opinions;
but she never repines; and this is the more praiseworthy, with regard to
her jansenism, since she only adhered to it from entertaining the
opinions which received that name, not from party spirit; and had not,
therefore, the support and sympathy of the party. She revered the
virtues of their leaders; but there was nothing either bigotted or
controversial in her admiration or piety.
The only reproach that madame de Sévigné at all deserves is her
approval of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the stain and
disgrace of Louis XIV.'s reign, which banished from his country his best
and most industrious subjects. We blame Philip III. for extirpating the
Moriscos from Spain; but they, at least, were of a different race, and a
gulf of separation subsisted between them and the Spaniards. The
huguenots were the undoubted and native subjects of the kingdom: the
times, also, were more enlightened and refined; and our contempt is the
more raised when we find Louis the dupe of two ministers. Le Tellier and
Louvois, who were influenced by their hatred of Colbert, one of the
greatest and most enlightened ministers of France. We cannot but believe
that the French revolution had worn a different aspect had the huguenots
remained in France, and, as a consequence, the population had been held
in less ignorance and barbarism. We cannot believe that madame de
Sévigné really approved the atrocities that ensued. As a good
jansenist, she was bound to detest forced conversions. Much of her
praise, no doubt, was foisted in from fear that her letters might be
opened at the post and read by officials; and it may be remembered, that
M. de Grignan had evinced a suspicion that her jansenism had impeded the
advancement of his family, as it certainly had of her own. She was at a
distance, too, from the scene of action: still she says too much; and
cannot be excused, except on the plea that she knew not what she
did.[77]
The question has been asked, "In what does madame de Sévigné's merit
consist? Did she show herself above her age?" La Harpe says, in his
panegyric, "Even those who love this extraordinary woman do not
sufficiently estimate the superiority of her understanding. I find in
her every species of talent: argumentative or frivolous, witty or
sublime, she adopts every tone with wonderful facility." To the
question, however, of whether she was superior to her age, we answer, at
once, no; but she was equal to the best and highest portion of it. We
pass in review before us the greatest men of that day--the most profound
thinkers, the most virtuous,--Pascal, Rochefoucauld, Racine, Boileau.
Her opinions and sentiments were as liberal and enlightened as theirs;
and that is surely sufficient praise for a woman absolutely without
pretensions; and who, while she bares the innermost depths of her mind
to her daughter, had no thought of dressing and educating that mind for
posterity.
The race of madame de Sévigné is extinct. Her son continued childless.
The marquis de Grignan died also without offspring. He died young, of
the small-pox; and his broken-hearted mother soon followed him to the
tomb. Pauline, marquise de Simiane, left children, who became allied to
the family of Créqui; but that, also, is now extinct.
[Footnote 61: Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, was one of those
unfortunate men who, from some malconformity in the structure of their
minds, inherit infamy from the use they make of their talents. His youth
was spent in gambling, dissipation, duels, and all the disorders of a
disorderly period. He was in the army during his early years, and became
attached to the great Condé. He served under him when that prince
blockaded Paris, and was one of the faction of young men of quality who
attempted to govern the court on its return, and who received the name
of _Petits-Maîtres_ from the witty Parisians, a name afterwards
preserved to designate young coxcombs of fashion in almost all
countries. When Condé was arrested, he made war against the king in
Berri. When liberated, he abandoned him. Insolent and presumptuous, he
made an enemy of this great man as well as of Turenne. Bussy attacked
the latter in a dull epigram. Turenne's reply was far more witty: he
wrote to the king, that "Bussy was the best officer, for songs, that he
had in his troop." In like manner, he at first paid his court to
Fouquet, and afterwards caballed against him. He had frequently been
imprisoned in the Bastille. In 1569 he was exiled. He amused himself
during his banishment by writing his "Amours des Gaules," a scandalous
history of the time, whose wit cannot redeem the infamy attached to his
becoming the betrayer and chronicler of the faults and misfortunes of
his friends. Allowed to return to court, he entered into a cabal for the
ruin of the duchesse de la Vallière--his own was the consequence.
Deprived of his employment, imprisoned in the Bastille, and afterwards
exiled, he drank deep of the cup of disappointment and mortification. He
continued his work in his retreat; but the exercise of malice and
calumny did not compensate for being driven from the arena on which he
delighted to figure. Sixteen years after, wards he was allowed to return
to court; but it had then lost its charms, especially as the king did
not regard him with an eye of favour, so he returned once again to his
country retreat. He died in 1693, aged seventy-one. Ill brought up and
uneducated, wit, sharpened by malice, was his chief talent. He wrote a
pure style, but his letters are stiff and dull; and his chief work is
remarkable for its license and malice rather than for talent.]
[Footnote 62: "J'admire comment j'eus le courage de vous y mettre (au
couvent); la pensée de vous voir souvent, et de vous en retirer me fit
résoudre à cette barbarie, qui étoit trouvée alors une bonne
conduite, et une chose nécessaire à votre éducation."--_Lettre à
Mad. de Grignan_, 6 _May_, 1676.]
[Footnote 63: Il faut que je vous conte ce que j'ai fait. Imaginez vous
que des dames m'ont proposé d'aller dans une maison qui regarde droit
dans l'arsenal pour voir revenir notre pauvre ami. J'étais masquée; je
l'ai vu venir d'assez loin. M. d'Artagnan étoit auprès de lui;
cinquante mousquetaires à trente à quarante pas dernière. Il
parroissoit assez rêveur. Pour moi, quand je l'ai apperçu, les jambes
m'ont tremblé, et le cœur m'a battu si fort, que je ne pouvois plus.
En s'approchant de nous pour entrer dans son trou M. d'Artagnan l'a
pousse, et lui a fait remarquer que nous étions là. Il nous a donc
saluées, et pris cette mine riante que vous lui connoissez. Je ne croie
pas qu'il m'a reconnue, mais je vous avoue que j'ai été étrangement
saisie quand je l'ai vu entrer dans cette petite porte. Si vous saviez
combien on est malheureux quand on a le cœur fait comme je l'ai, je
suis assurée que vous auriez pitié de moi; mais je pense que vous n'en
etes pas quitte à meilleur marché de la manière dont je vous
connois. J'ai été voir votre chère voisine, je vous plains autant de
ne l'avoir plus, que nous nous trouvons heureux de l'avoir. Nous avons
bien parlé de notre cher ami: elle a vu Sapho (mademoiselle de Scuderi)
qui lui a redonné du courage. Pour moi, j'irai demain le reprendre chez
elle car de temps en temps, je sens que j'ai besoin de réconfort: ce
n'est pas que, l'on ne dise mille choses qui doivent donner de
l'espérance; mais mon dieu, j'ai l'imagination si vive, que tout ce qui
est incertain me fait mourir."--_Lettre à M. de Pomponne_, 27
_Novembre_, 1664.]
[Footnote 64: On the 3d April, 1680, Madame de Sévigné writes to her
daughter, "My dear child, M. Fouquet is dead. I am grieved. Mademoiselle
de Scuderi is deeply afflicted. Thus ends a life which it cost so much to
preserve." Gourville, in his memoirs, speaks of his being liberated from
prison as a certain thing: "M. Fouquet, being some time after set at
liberty, heard how I had acted towards his wife, to whom I had lent more
than a hundred thousand livres, for her subsistence, for the suit, and
even to gain over some of the judges. After having written to thank me,"
&c. This seems to set the matter at rest. Voltaire says, in the "Siècle
de Louis XIV.," that the countess de Vaux (Fouquet's daughter-in-law)
confirmed the fact of his liberation: a portion of his family, however,
believed differently in after times. His return, if set free, was
secret, and did not take place long before his death.]
[Footnote 65: Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV. chap. XXV.]
[Footnote 66: In the verses made on this occasion the poet alludes also
to the beauty of her mother:--
"Vous travestir ainsi, c'est bien ingénu,
Amour, c'est comme si, pour n'être pas connu,
Avec une innocence extreme
Vous vous déguisez en vous-meme
Elle a vos traits, vos yeux, votre air engageant,
Et de même que vous, sourit en égorgéant;
Enfin qui fit l'un a fait l'autre,
Et jusque à sa mère, elle est comme la votre."]