efly dedicated to her spiritual
concerns. This gradual, calm decay allayed the fear of death, which had
tormented her more vigorous days; and she died with tranquillity and
trust. It is a beautiful trait of these last moments that she desired
not to be buried with her family, or even at Port Royal, among her
saintly and noble companions--but in the cemetery of her parish, like one
of the people, without pomp or ceremony.

It is worth while to notice, that with Madame de Sable, as with some
other remarkable French women, the part of her life which is richest in
interest and results is that which is looked forward to by most of her
sex with melancholy as the period of decline. When between fifty and
sixty, she had philosophers, wits, beauties, and saints clustering around
her; and one naturally cares to know what was the elixir which gave her
this enduring and general attraction. We think it was, in a great
degree, that well-balanced development of mental powers which gave her a
comprehension of varied intellectual processes, and a tolerance for
varied forms of character, which is still rarer in women than in men.
Here was one point of distinction between her and Madame de Longueville;
and an amusing passage, which Sainte-Beuve has disinterred from the
writings of the Abbe St. Pierre, so well serves to indicate, by contrast,
what we regard as the great charm of Madame de Sable's mind, that we
shall not be wandering from our subject in quoting it.

"I one day asked M. Nicole what was the character of Mme. de
Longueville's intellect; he told me it was very subtle and delicate
in the penetration of character; but very small, very feeble, and
that her comprehension was extremely narrow in matters of science and
reasoning, and on all speculations that did not concern matters of
sentiment. For example, he added, I one day said to her that I could
wager and demonstrate that there were in Paris at least two
inhabitants who had the same number of hairs, although I could not
point out who these two men were. She told me I could never be sure
of it until I had counted the hairs of these two men. Here is my
demonstration, I said: I take it for granted that the head which is
most amply supplied with hairs has not more than 200,000, and the
head which is least so has but one hair. Now, if you suppose that
200,000 heads have each a different number of hairs, it necessarily