第30章 CHAPTER VI. (4)

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;