I am going to tell you a thing the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most miraculous, the most triumphant, the most astounding, the most unheard of, the most singular, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most unexpected, the grandest, the smallest, the rarest, the most common, the most dazzling, the most secret even until today, the most brilliant, the most worthy of envy . . . . a thing in fine which is to be done Sunday, when those who see it will believe themselves dazed; a thing which is to be done Sunday and which will not perhaps have been done Monday . . . M. de Lauzun marries Sunday, at the Louvre–guess whom? . . . He marries Sunday at the Louvre, with the permission of the King, Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle de, Mademoiselle; guess the name; he marries Mademoiselle, MA FOI, PAR MA FOI, MA FOI JUREE, Mademoiselle, la grande Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle, daughter of the late Monsieur, Mademoiselle, grand-daughter of Henry IV, Mademoiselle d’Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mademoiselle d’Orleans, Mademoiselle, cousin of the king, Mademoiselle, destined to the throne, Mademoiselle, the only parti in France worthy of Monsieur. VOILA a fine subject for conversation. If you cry out, if you are beside yourself, if you say that we have deceived you, that it is false, that one trifles with you, that it is a fine bit of raillery, that it is very stupid to imagine, if, in fine, you abuse us, we shall find that you are right; we have done as much ourselves.
In spite of the prudent warnings of her friends, the happy princess could not forego the eclat of a grand wedding, and before the hasty arrangements were concluded, the permission was withdrawn. Her tears, her entreaties, her cries, her rage, and her despair, were of no avail. Louis XIV took her in his arms, and mingled his tears with hers, even reproaching her for the two or three days of delay; but he was inexorable. Ten years of loyal devotion to her lover, shortly afterward imprisoned at Pignerol, and of untiring efforts for his release which was at last secured at the cost of half her vast estates, ended in a brief reunion. A secret marriage, a swift discovery that her idol was of very common clay, abuse so violent that she was obliged to forbid him forever her presence, and the disenchantment was complete. The sad remnant of her existence was devoted to literature and to conversation; the latter she regarded as “the greatest pleasure in life, and almost the only one.” When she died, the Count de Lauzun wore the deepest mourning, had portraits of her everywhere, and adopted permanently the subdued colors that would fitly express the inconsolable nature of his grief.
Without tact or fine discrimination, the Grande Mademoiselle was a woman of generous though undisciplined impulses, loyal disposition, and pure character; but her egotism was colossal. Under different conditions, one might readily imagine her a second Joan of Arc, or a heroine of the Revolution. She says of herself: “I know not what it is to be a heroine; I am of a birth to do nothing that is not grand or elevated. One may call that what one likes. As for myself, I call it to follow my own inclination and to go my own way. I am not born to take that of others.” She lacked the measure, the form, the delicacy of the typical precieuse; but her quick, restless intellect and ardent imagination were swift to catch the spirit of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and to apply it in an original fashion. Though many subjects were interdicted in her salon, and many people were excluded, it gives us interesting glimpses into the life of the literary noblesse, and furnishes a complete gallery of pen- portraits of more or less noted men and women. With all the brilliant possibilities of her life, it was through the diversion of her idle hours that this princess, author, amazon, prospective queen, and disappointed woman has left the most permanent trace upon the world.
CHAPTER V. A LITERARY SALON AT PORT ROYAL Mme. de Sable–Her Worldly Life–Her Retreat–Her Friends– Pascal–The Maxims of La Rochefoucauld–Last Days of the Marquise
The transition from the restless character and stormy experiences of the Grande Mademoiselle, to the gentler nature and the convent salon of her friend and literary confidante, Mme. de Sable, is a pleasant one. Perhaps no one better represents the true precieuse of the seventeenth century, the happy blending of social savoir-faire with an amiable temper and a cultivated intellect. Without the genius of Mme. de Sevigne or Mme. de La Fayette, without the force or the rare attractions of Mme. de Longueville, without the well-poised character and catholic sympathies of Mme. de Rambouillet, she played an important part in the life of her time, through her fine insight and her consummate tact in bringing together the choicest spirits, and turning their thoughts into channels that were fresh and unworn. Born in 1599, Madeleine de Souvre passed her childhood in Touraine, of which province her father was governor. In the brilliancy of her youth, we find her in Paris among the early favorites of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and on terms of lifelong intimacy with its hostess and her daughter Julie. Beautiful, versatile, generous, but fastidious and exacting in her friendships, with a dash of coquetry–inevitable when a woman is fascinating and French–she repeated the oft-played role of a mariage de convenance at sixteen, a few brilliant years of social triumphs marred by domestic neglect and suffering, a period of enforced seclusion after the death of her unworthy husband, a brief return to the world, and an old age of mild and comfortable devotion.
“The Marquise de Sable,” writes Mme. de Motteville, “was one of those whose beauty made the most sensation when the Queen (Anne of Austria) came into France. But if she was amiable, she desired still more to appear so. Her self-love rendered her a little too sensible to that which men professed for her. There was still in France some remnant of the politeness which Catherine de Medicis had brought from Italy, and Mme. de Sable found so much delicacy in the new dramas, as well as in other works, in prose and verse, which came from Madrid, that she conceived a high idea of the gallantry which the Spaniards had learned from the Moors. She was persuaded that men may without wrong have tender sentiments for women; that the desire of pleasing them leads men to the greatest and finest actions, arouses their spirit, and inspires them with liberality and all sorts of virtues; but that, on the other side, women, who are the ornaments of the world, and made to be served and adored, ought to permit only respectful attentions. This lady, having sustained her views with much talent and great beauty, gave them authority in her time.”
The same writer says that she has “much light and sincerity,” with “penetration enough to unfold all the secrets of one’s heart.”
Mlle. de Scudery introduces her in the “Grand Cyrus,” as Parthenie, “a tall and graceful woman, with fine eyes, the most beautiful throat in the world, a lovely complexion, blonde hair, and a pleasant mouth, with a charming air, and a fine and eloquent smile, which expresses the sweetness or the bitterness of her soul.” She dwells upon her surprising and changeful beauty, upon the charm of her conversation, the variety of her knowledge, the delicacy of her tact, and the generosity of her tender and passionate heart. One may suspect this portrait of being idealized, but it seems to have been in the main correct.
Of her husband we know very little, excepting that he belonged to the family of Montmorency, passed from violent love to heart- breaking indifference, and died about 1640, leaving her with four children and shattered fortunes. To recruit her failing health, and to hide her chagrin and sorrow at seeing herself supplanted by unworthy rivals, she had lived for some time in the country, where she had leisure for the reading and reflection which fitted her for her later life. But after the death of her husband she was obliged to sell her estates, and we find her established in the Place Royale with her devoted friend, the Comtesse de Maure, and continuing the traditions of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Her tastes had been formed in this circle, and she had also been under the instruction of the Chevalier de Mere, a litterateur and courtier who had great vogue, was something of an oracle, and molded the character and manners of divers women of this period, among others the future Mme. de Maintenon. His confidence in his own power of bringing talent out of mediocrity was certainly refreshing. Among his pupils was the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, who said to him one day, “I wish to have esprit.”–“Eh bien, Madame,” replied the complaisant chevalier, “you shall have it.”
How much Mme. de Sable may have been indebted to this modest bel esprit we do not know, but her finished manner, fine taste, exquisite tact, cultivated intellect, and great experience of the world made her an authority in social matters. To be received in her salon was to be received everywhere. Cardinal Mazarin watched her influence with a jealous eye. “Mme. de Longueville is very intimate with the Marquise de Sable,” he writes in his private note book. “She is visited constantly by D’Andilly, the Princesse de Guemene, d’Enghien and his sister, Nemours, and many others. They speak freely of all the world. It is necessary to have some one who will advise us of all that passes there.”
But the death of her favorite son–a young man distinguished for graces of person, mind, heart, and character, who lost his life in one of the battles of his friend and comrade, the Prince de Conde–together with the loss of her fortune and the fading of her beauty, turned the thoughts of the Marquise to spiritual things. We find many traces of the state of mind which led her first into a mild form of devotion, serious but not too ascetic, and later into pronounced Jansenism. In a note to a friend who had neglected her, she dwells upon “the misery and nothingness of the world,” recalls the strength of their long friendship, the depth of her own affection, and tries to account for the disloyalty to herself, by the inherent weakness and emptiness of human nature, which renders it impossible for even the most perfect to do anything that is not defective. All this is very charitable, to say the least, as well as a little abstract. Time has given a strange humility and forgivingness to the woman who broke with her dearest friend, the unfortunate Duc de Montmorency, because he presumed to lift his eyes to the Queen, saying that she “could not receive pleasantly the regards which she had to share with the greatest princess in the world.”
The fashion of the period furnished a peaceful and dignified refuge for women, when their beauty waned and the “terrible forties” ended their illusions. To go into brief retreat for penitence and prayer was at all times a graceful thing to do, besides making for safety. It was only a step further to retire altogether from the scenes of pleasure which had begun to pall. The convent offered a haven of repose to the bruised heart, a fresh aim for drooping energies, a needed outlet for devouring emotions, and a comfortable sense of security, not only for this world, but for the next. It was the next world which was beginning to trouble Mme. de Sable. She had great fear of death, and after many penitential retreats to Port Royal, she finally obtained permission to build a suite of apartments within its precincts, and retired there about 1655 to prepare for that unpleasant event which she put off as long as possible by the most assiduous care of her health. “If she was not devoted, she had the idea of becoming so,” said Mademoiselle. But her devotion was in quite a mundane fashion. Her pleasant rooms were separate and independent, thus enabling her to give herself not only to the care of her health and her soul, but to a select society, to literature, and to conversation. She never practiced the severe asceticism of her friend, Mme. de Longueville. With a great deal of abstract piety, the iron girdle and the hair shirt were not included. She did not even forego her delicate and fastidious tastes. Her elegant dinners and her dainty comfitures were as famous as ever. “Will the anger of the Marquise go so far, in your opinion, as to refuse me her recipe for salad?” writes Mme. de Choisy at the close of a letter to the Comtesse de Maure, in which she has ridiculed her friend’s Jansenist tendencies; “If so, it will be a great inhumanity, for which she will be punished in this world and the other.” She had great skill in delicate cooking, and was in the habit of sending cakes, jellies, and other dainties, prepared by herself, to her intimate friends. La Rochefoucauld says, “If I could hope for two dishes of those preserves, which I did not deserve to eat before, I should be indebted to you all my life.” Mme. de Longueville, who is about to visit her, begs her not to give a feast as she has “scruples about such indulgence.”
This spice of worldliness very much tempered the austerity of her retreat, and lent an added luster to its intellectual attractions. But the Marquise had many conflicts between her luxurious tastes and her desire to be devout. Her dainty and epicurean habits, her extraordinary anxiety about her health, and her capricious humors were the subject of much light badinage among her friends. The Grande Mademoiselle sketches these traits with a satiric touch in the “Princesse de Paphlagonie,” where she introduces her with the Comtesse de Maure. “There are no hours when they do not confer together upon the means of preventing themselves from dying, and upon the art of rendering themselves immortal,” she writes. “Their conferences are not like those of other people; the fear of breathing an air too cold or too hot, the apprehension that the wind may be too dry or too damp, a fancy that the weather is not as moderate as they judge necessary for the preservation of their health–these are sufficient reasons for writing from one room to another . . . . If one could find this correspondence, one might derive great advantages in every way; for they were princesses who had nothing mortal, except the knowledge of being so . . . Of Mme. de Sable she adds: “The Princess Parthenie had a taste as dainty as her mind; nothing equaled the magnificence of her entertainments; all the viands were exquisite, and her elegance was beyond anything that one could imagine.” The fastidious Marquise suffered, with all the world, from the defects of her qualities. Her extreme delicacy and sensibility appear under many forms and verge often upon weakness; but it is an amiable weakness that does not detract greatly from her fascination. She was not cast in a heroic mold, and her faults are those which the world is pleased to call essentially feminine.
The records of her life were preserved by Conrart, also by her friend and physician, Valant. They give us a clear picture of her character, with its graces and its foibles, as well as of her pleasant intercourse and correspondence with many noted men and women. They give us, too, interesting glimpses of her salon. We find there the celebrated Jansenists Nicole and Arnauld, the eminent lawyer Domat, Esprit, sometimes Pascal, with his sister, Mme. Perier; the Prince and Princesse de Conti, the Grand Conde, La Rochefoucauld, the penitent Mme. de Longueville, Mme. de La Fayette, and many others among the cultivated noblesse, who are attracted by its tone of bel esprit and graceful, but by no means severe, devotion. The Duc d’Orleans and the lovely but unfortunate Madame were intimate and frequent visitors.
In this little world, in which religion, literature, and fashion are curiously blended, they talk of theology, morals, physics, Cartesianism, friendship, and love. The youth and gaiety of the Hotel de Rambouillet have given place to more serious thoughts and graver topics. The current which had its source there is divided. At the Samedis, in the Marais, they are amusing themselves about the same time with letters and Vers de Societe. At the Luxembourg, a more exclusive coterie is exercising its mature talent in sketching portraits. These salons touch at many points, but each has a channel of its own. The reflective nature of Mme. de Sable turns to more serious and elevated subjects, and her friends take the same tone. They make scientific experiments, discuss Calvinism, read the ancient moralists, and indulge in dissertations upon a great variety of topics. Mme. de Bregy, poet, dame d’honneur and femme d’esprit, who amused the little court of Mademoiselle with so many discreetly flattering pen-portraits, has left two badly written and curiously spelled notes upon the merits of Socrates and Epictetus, which throw a ray of light upon the tastes of this aristocratic and rather speculative circle. Mme. de Sable writes an essay upon the education of children, which is very much talked about, also a characteristic paper upon friendship. The latter is little more than a series of detached sentences, but it indicates the drift of her thought, and might have served as an antidote to the selfish philosophy of La Rochefoucauld. It calls out an appreciative letter from d’Andilly, who, in his anchorite’s cell, continues to follow the sayings and doings of his friends in the little salon at Port Royal.
“Friendship,” she writes, “is a kind of virtue which can only be founded upon the esteem of people whom one loves–that is to say, upon qualities of the soul, such as fidelity, generosity, discretion, and upon fine qualities of mind.”
After insisting that it must be reciprocal, disinterested, and based upon virtue, she continues: “One ought not to give the name of friendship to natural inclinations because they do not depend upon our will or our choice; and, though they render our friendships more agreeable, they should not be the foundation of them. The union which is founded upon the same pleasures and the same occupations does not deserve the name of friendship because it usually comes from a certain egotism which causes us to love that which is similar to ourselves, however imperfect we may be.” She dwells also upon the mutual offices and permanent nature of true friendship, adding, “He who loves his friend more than reason and justice, will on some other occasion love his own pleasure and profit more than his friend.”
The Abbe Esprit, Jansenist and academician, wrote an essay upon “Des Amities en Apparence les Plus Saints des Hommes avec les Femmes,” which was doubtless suggested by the conversations in this salon, where the subject was freely discussed. The days of chivalry were not so far distant, and the subtle blending of exalted sentiment with thoughtful companionship, which revived their spirit in a new form, was too marked a feature of the time to be overlooked. These friendships, half intellectual, half poetic, and quite platonic, were mostly formed in mature life, on a basis of mental sympathy. “There is a taste in pure friendship which those who are born mediocre do not reach,” said La Gruyere. Mme. de Lambert speaks of it as “the product of a perfect social culture, and, of all affections, that which has most charm.”
The well-known friendship of Mme. de La Fayette and La Rochefoucauld, which illustrates the mutual influence of a critical man of intellect and a deep-hearted, thoughtful woman who has passed the age of romance, began in this salon. Its nature was foreshadowed in the tribute La Rochefoucauld paid to women in his portrait of himself. “Where their intellect is cultivated,” he writes, :”I prefer their society to that of men. One finds there a gentleness one does not meet with among ourselves; and it seems to me, beyond this, that they express themselves with more neatness, and give a more agreeable turn to the things they talk about.”
Mme. de Sable was herself, in less exclusive fashion, the intimate friend and adviser of Esprit, d’Andilly, and La Rochefoucauld. The letters of these men show clearly their warm regard as well as the value they attached to her opinions. “Indeed,” wrote Voiture to her many years before, “those who decry you on the side of tenderness must confess that if you are not the most loving person in the world, you are at least the most obliging. True friendship knows no more sweetness than there is in your words.” Her character, so delicately shaded and so averse to all violent passions, seems to have been peculiarly fitted for this calm and enduring sentiment which cast a soft radiance, as of Indian summer, over her closing years.
At a later period, the sacred name of friendship was unfortunately used to veil relations that had lost all the purity and delicacy of their primitive character. This fact has sometimes been rather illogically cited, as an argument not only against the moral influence of the salons but against the intellectual development of women. There is neither excuse nor palliation to be offered for the Italian manners and the recognized system of amis intimes, which disgraced the French society the next century. But, while it is greatly to be deplored that the moral sense has not always kept pace with the cultivation of the intellect, there is no reason for believing that license of manners is in any degree the result of it. There is striking evidence to the contrary, in the incredible ignorance and laxity that found its reaction in the early salons; also in the dissolute lives of many distinguished women of rank who had no pretension to wit or education. The fluctuation of morals, which has always existed, must be traced to quite other causes. Virtue has not invariably accompanied intelligence, but it has been still less the companion of ignorance.
It was Mme. de Sable who set the fashion of condensing the thoughts and experiences of life into maxims and epigrams. This was her specific gift to literature; but her influence was felt through what she inspired others to do rather than through what she did herself. It was her good fortune to be brought into contact with the genius of a Pascal and a La Rochefoucauld,–men who reared immortal works upon the pastime of an idle hour. One or two of her own maxims will suffice to indicate her style as well as to show the estimate she placed upon form and measure in the conduct of life:
A bad manner spoils everything, even justice and reason. The HOW constitutes the best part of things, and the air which one gives them gilds, modifies, and softens the most disagreeable.
There is a certain command in the manner of speaking and acting, which makes itself felt everywhere, and which gains, in advance, consideration and respect.
We find here the spirit that underlies French manners, in which form counts for so much.
There is another, which suggests the delicate flavor of sentiment then in vogue:
Wherever it is, love is always the master. It seems truly that it is to the soul of the one who loves, what the soul is to the body it animates.
Among the eminent men who lent so much brilliancy to this salon was the great jurist Domat. He adds his contribution and falls into the moralizing vein:
A little fine weather, a good word, a praise, a caress, draws me from a profound sadness from which I could not draw myself by any effort of meditation. What a machine is my soul, what an abyss of misery and weakness!
Here is one by the Abbe d’Ailly, which foreshadows the thought of the next century:
Too great submission to books, and to the opinions of the ancients, as to the eternal truths revealed of God, spoils the head and makes pedants.
The finest and most vigorous of these choice spirits was Pascal, who frequented more or less the salon of Mme. de Sable previous to his final retirement to the gloom and austerity of the cloister. His delicate platonism and refined spirituality go far towards offsetting the cold cynicism of La Rochefoucauld. Each gives us a different phase of life as reflected in a clear and luminous intelligence. The one led to Port Royal, the other turned an electric light upon the selfish corruption of courts. Many of the pensees of Pascal were preserved among the records of this salon, and Cousin finds reason for believing that they were first suggested and discussed here; he even thinks it possible, if not probable, that the “Discours sur les Passions de L’amour,” which pertains to his mundane life, and presents the grave and ascetic recluse in a new light, had a like origin.
But the presiding genius was La Rochefoucauld. He complains that the mode of relaxation is fatiguing, and that the mania for sentences troubles his repose. The subjects were suggested for conversation, and the thoughts were condensed and reduced to writing at leisure. “Here are all the maxims I have,” he writes to Mme. de Sable; “but as one gives nothing for nothing, I demand a potage aux carottes, un ragout de mouton, etc.”
“When La Rochefoucauld had composed his sentences,” says Cousin, “he talked them over before or after dinner, or he sent them at the end of a letter. They were discussed, examined, and observations were made, by which he profited. One could lessen their faults, but one could lend them no beauty. There was not a delicate and rare turn, a fine and keen touch, which did not come from him.”
After availing himself of the general judgment in this way, he took a novel method of forestalling crtiticism before committing himself to publication. Mme. de Sable sent a collection of the maxims to her friends, asking for a written opinion. One is tempted to make long extracts from their replies. The men usually indorse the worldly sentiments, the women rarely. The Princesse de Guemene, who, in the decline of her beauty, was growing devout, and also had apartments for penitential retreat at Port Royal, responds: “I was just going to write to beg you to send me your carriage as soon as you had dined. I have yet seen only the first maxims, as I had a headache yesterday; but those I have read appear to me to be founded more upon the disposition of the author than upon the truth, for he believes neither in generosity without interest, nor in pity; that is, he judges every one by himself. For the greater number of people, he is right; but surely there are those who desire only to do good.” The Countesse de Maure, who does not believe in the absolute depravity of human nature, and is inclined to an elevated Christian philosophy quite opposed to Jansenism, writes with so much severity that she begs her friend not to show her letter to the author. Mme. de Hautefort expresses her disapproval of a theory which drives honor and goodness out of the world. After many clever and well-turned criticisms, she says: “But the maxim which is quite new to me, and which I admire, is that idleness, languid as it is, destroys all the passions. It is true, and he had searched his heart well to find a sentiment so hidden, but so just . . . I think one ought, at present, to esteem idleness as the only virtue in the world, since it is that which uproots all the vices. As I have always had much respect for it, I am glad it has so much merit.” But she adds wisely: “If I were of the opinion of the author, I would not bring to the light those mysteries which will forever deprive him of all the confidence one might have in him.”
There is one letter, written by the clever and beautiful Eleonore de Rohan, Abbess de Malnoue, and addressed to the author, which deserves to be read for its fine and just sentiments. In closing she says:
The maxim upon humility appears to me perfectly beautiful; but I have been so surprised to find it there, that I had the greatest difficulty in recognizing it in the midst of all that precedes and follows it. It is assuredly to make this virtue practiced among your own sex, that you have written maxims in which their self-love is so little flattered. I should be very much humiliated on my own part, if I did not say to myself what I have already said to you in this note, that you judge better the hearts of men than those of women, and that perhaps you do not know yourself the true motive which makes you esteem them less. If you had always met those whose temperament had been submitted to virtue, and in whom the senses were less strong than reason, you would think better of a certain number who distinguish themselves always from the multitude; and it seems to me that Mme. de La Fayette and myself deserve that you should have a better opinion of the sex in general.
Mme. de La Fayette writes to the Marquise: “All people of good sense are not so persuaded of the general corruption as is M. de La Rochefoucauld. I return to you a thousand thanks for all you have done for this gentleman.”–At a later period she said: “La Rochefoucauld stimulated my intellect, but I reformed his heart.” It is to be regretted that he had not known her sooner.
At his request Mme. de Sable wrote a review of the maxims, which she submitted to him for approval. It seems to have been a fair presentation of both sides, but he thought it too severe, and she kindly gave him permission to change it to suit himself. He took her at her word, dropped the adverse criticisms, retained the eulogies, and published it in the “Journal des Savants” as he wished it to go to the world. The diplomatic Marquise saved her conscience and kept her friend.
The maxims of La Rochefoucauld, which are familiar to all, have extended into a literature. That he generalized from his own point of view, and applied to universal humanity the motives of a class bent upon favor and precedence, is certainly true. But whatever we may think of his sentiments, which were those of a man of the world whose observations were largely in the atmosphere of courts, we are compelled to admit his unrivaled finish and perfection of form. Similar theories of human nature run through the maxims of Esprit and Saint Evremond, without the exquisite turn which makes each one of La Rochefoucauld’s a gem in itself. His tone was that of a disappointed courtier, with a vein of sadness only half disguised by cold philosophy and bitter cynicism. La Bruyere, with a broader outlook upon humanity, had much of the same fine analysis, with less conciseness and elegance of expression. Vauvenargues and Joubert were his legitimate successors. But how far removed in spirit!
“The body has graces,” writes Vauvenargues, “the mind has talents; has the heart only vices? And man capable of reason, shall he be incapable of virtue?”
With a fine and delicate touch, Joubert says: “Virtue is the health of the soul. It gives a flavor to the smallest leaves of life.”
These sentiments are in the vein of Pascal, who represents the most spiritual element of the little coterie which has left such a legacy of condensed thought to the world.
The crowning act of the life of Mme. de Sable was her defense of Port Royal. She united with Mme. de Longueville in protecting the persecuted Jansenists, Nicole and Arnauld, but she had neither the courage, the heroism, nor the partisan spirit of her more ardent companion. With all her devotion she was something of a sybarite and liked repose. She had the tact, during all the troubles which scattered her little circle, to retain her friends, of whatever religious color, though not without a few temporary clouds. Her diplomatic moderation did not quite please the religieuses of Port Royal, and chilled a little her pleasant relations with d’Andilly.
Toward the close of her life, the Marquise was in the habit of secluding herself for days together, and declining to see even her dearest friends. The Abbe de la Victoire, piqued at not being received, spoke of her one day as “the late Mme. la Marquise de Sable.”
La Rochefoucauld writes to her, “I know no more inventions for entering your house; I am refused at the door every day.” Mme. de La Fayette declares herself offended, and cites this as a proof of her attachment, saying, “There are very few people who could displease me by not wishing to see me.” But the friends of the Marquise are disposed to treat her caprices very leniently. As the years went by and the interests of life receded, Mme. de Sable became reconciled to the thought that had inspired her with so much dread. When she died at the advanced age of seventy- nine, the longed-for transition was only the quiet passing from fevered dreams to peaceful sleep.
It is a singular fact that this refined, exclusive, fastidious woman, in whom the artistic nature was always dominant to the extent of weakness, should have left a request to be buried, without ceremony, in the parish cemetery with the people, remote alike from the tombs of her family and the saints of Port Royal.
CHAPTER VI. MADAME DE SEVIGNE
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.
CHAPTER VII. MADAME DE LA FAYETTE
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.
“Alas, ma belle, all I have to tell you of my health is very bad; in a word, I have repose neither night nor day, neither in body nor in mind. I am no more a person either by one or the other. I perish visibly. I must end when it pleases God, and I am submissive. BELIEVE ME, MY DEAREST, YOU ARE THE PERSON IN THE WORLD WHOM I HAVE MOST TRULY LOVED.”
Mme. de La Fayette represents better than any other woman the social and literary life of the last half of the seventeenth century. Mme. de Sevigne had an individual genius that might have made itself equally felt in any other period. Mme. de Maintenon, whom Roederer regards as the true successor of Mme. de Rambouillet, was narrowed by personal ambition, and by the limitations of her early life. Born in a prison, reared in poverty, wife in name, but practically secretary and nurse of a crippled, witty, and licentious poet over whose salon she presided brilliantly; discreet and penniless widow, governess of the illegitimate children of the king, adviser and finally wife of that king, friend of Ninon, model of virtue, femme d’esprit, politician, diplomatist, and devote–no fairy tale can furnish more improbable adventures and more striking contrasts. But she was the product of exceptional circumstances joined to an exceptional nature. It is true she put a final touch upon the purity of manners which was so marked a feature of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and for a long period gave a serious tone to the social life of France. But she ruled through repression, and one is inclined to accept the opinion of Sainte-Beuve that she does not represent the distinctive social current of the time. In Mme. de La Fayette we find its delicacy, its courtesy, its elegance, its intelligence, its critical spirit, and its charm.
In considering the great centers in which the fashionable, artistic, literary, and scientific Paris of the seventeenth century found its meeting ground, one is struck with the practical training given to its versatile, flexible feminine minds. Women entered intelligently and sympathetically into the interests of men, who, in turn, did not reserve their best thoughts for the club or an after-dinner talk among themselves. There was stimulus as well as diversity in the two modes of thinking and being. Men became more courteous and refined, women more comprehensive and clear. But conversation is the spontaneous overflow of full minds, and the light play of the intellect is only possible on a high level, when the current thought has become a part of the daily life, so that a word suggests infinite perspectives to the swift intelligence. It is not what we know, but the flavor of what we know, that adds”sweetness and light” to social intercourse. With their rapid intuition and instinctive love of pleasing, these French women were quick to see the value of a ready comprehension of the subjects in which clever men are most interested. It was this keen understanding, added to the habit of utilizing what they thought and read, their ready facility in grasping the salient points presented to them, a natural gift of graceful expression, with a delicacy of taste and an exquisite politeness which prevented them from being aggressive, that gave them their unquestioned supremacy in the salons which made Paris for so long a period the social capital of Europe. It was impossible that intellects so plastic should not expand in such an atmosphere, and the result is not difficult to divine. From Mme. de Rambouillet to Mme. de La Fayette and Mme. de Sevigne, from these to Mme. de Stael and George Sand, there is a logical sequence. The Saxon temperament, with a vein of La Bruyere, gives us George Eliot.
This new introduction of the feminine element into literature, which is directly traceable to the salons of the seventeenth century, suggests a point of special interest to the moralist. It may be assumed that, whether through nature or a long process of evolution, the minds of women as a class have a different coloring from the minds of men as a class. Perhaps the best evidence of this lies in the literature of the last two centuries, in which women have been an important factor, not only through what they have done themselves, but through their reflex influence. The books written by them have rapidly multiplied. Doubtless, the excess of feeling is often unbalanced by mental or artistic training; but even in the crude productions, which are by no means confined to one sex, it may be remarked that women deal more with pure affections and men with the coarser passions. A feminine Zola of any grade of ability has not yet appeared.
It is not, however, in literature of pure sentiment that the influence of women has been most felt. It is true that, as a rule, they look at the world from a more emotional standpoint than men, but both have written of love, and for one Sappho there have been many Anacreons. Mlle. de Scudery and Mme. de La Fayette did not monopolize the sentiment of their time, but they refined and exalted it. The tender and exquisite coloring of Mme. de Stael and George Sand had a worthy counterpart in that of Chateaubriand or Lamartine. But it is in the moral purity, the touch of human sympathy, the divine quality of compassion, the swift insight into the soul pressed down by
The heavy and weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
that we trace the minds of women attuned to finer spiritual issues. This broad humanity has vitalized modern literature. It is the penetrating spirit of our century, which has been aptly called the Woman’s Century. We do not find it in the great literatures of the past. The Greek poets give us types of tragic passions, of heroic virtues, of motherly and wifely devotion, but woman is not recognized as a profound spiritual force. This masculine literature, so perfect in form and plastic beauty, so vigorous, so statuesque, so calm, and withal so cold, shines across the centuries side by side with the feminine Christian ideal–twin lights which have met in the world of today. It may be that from the blending of the two, the crowning of a man’s vigor with a woman’s finer insight, will spring the perfected flower of human thought.
Robert Browning in his poem “By the Fireside” has said a fitting word:
Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine, Your heart anticipate my heart.
You must be just before, in fine,
See and make me see, for your part, New depths of the Divine!
CHAPTER VIII. SALONS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Characteristics of the Eighteenth Century – Its Epicurean Philosophy – Anecdote of Mme. du Deffand–the Salon an Engine of Political Power–Great Influence of Women–Salons Defined Literary Dinners–Etiquette of the Salons–An Exotic on American Soil.
The traits which strike us most forcibly in the lives and characters of the women of the early salons, which colored their minds, ran through their literary pastimes, and gave a distinctive flavor to their conversation, are delicacy and sensibility. It was these qualities, added to a decided taste for pleasures of the intellect, and an innate social genius, that led them to revolt from the gross sensualism of the court, and form, upon a new basis, a society that has given another complexion to the last two centuries. The natural result was, at first, a reign of sentiment that was often over-strained, but which represented on the whole a reaction of morality and refinement. The wits and beauties of the Salon Bleu may have committed a thousand follies, but their chivalrous codes of honor and of manners, their fastidious tastes, even their prudish affectations, were open though sometimes rather bizarre tributes to the virtues that lie at the very foundation of a well-ordered society. They had exalted ideas of the dignity of womanhood, of purity, of loyalty, of devotion. The heroines of Mlle. de Scudery, with their endless discourses upon the metaphysics of love, were no doubt tiresome sometimes to the blase courtiers, as well as to the critics; but they had their originals in living women who reversed the common traditions of a Gabrielle and a Marion Delorme, who combined with the intellectual brilliancy and fine courtesy of the Greek Aspasia the moral graces that give so poetic a fascination to the Christian and medieval types. Mme. de la Fayette painted with rare delicacy the old struggle between passion and duty, but character triumphs over passion, and duty is the final victor. In spite of the low standards of the age, the ideal woman of society, as of literature, was noble, tender,