r than
themselves. Well, a pyramid wants to come in, one of those pyramids
which make everybody exclaim from one end of the table to the other; but
so far from that boding damage, people are often, on the contrary, very
glad not to see any more of what they contain. This pyramid, then, with
twenty or thirty porcelain dishes, was so completely upset at the door,
that the noise it made put to silence the violins, hautbois, and
trumpets. After dinner, M. de Locmaria and M. de Coetlogon danced with
two fair Bretons some marvellous jigs (passe pipds) and some minuets in a
style that the court-people cannot approach; wherein they do the Bohemian
and Breton step with a neatness and correctness which are charming. I
was thinking all the while of you, and I had such tender recollections of
your dancing and of what I had seen you dance, that this pleasure became
a pain to me. The States are sure not to be long; there is nothing to do
but to ask for what the king wants; nobody says a word, and it is all
done. As for the governor, he finds, somehow or other, more than forty
thousand crowns coming in to him. An infinity of presents, pensions,
repairs of roads and towns, fifteen or twenty grand dinner-parties,
incessant play, eternal balls, comedies three times a week, a great show
of dress, that is the States. I am forgetting three or four hundred
pipes of wine which are drunk; but, if I did not reckon this little item,
the others do not forget it, and put it first. This is what is called
the sort of twaddle to make one go to sleep on one's feet; but it is what
comes to the tip of your pen when you are in Brittany and have nothing
else to say."

Even in Brittany and at the Rochers, Madame de Sevigne always has
something to say. The weather is frightful; she is occupied a good deal
in reading the romances of La Calprenede and the _Grand Cyrus,_ as well
as the _Ethics_ of Nicole. "For four days it has been one continuous
tempest; all our walks are drowned; there is no getting out any more.
Our masons, our carpenters keep their rooms; in short, I hate this
country, and I yearn every moment for your sun; perhaps you yearn for my
rain; we do well, both of us. I am going on with the _Ethics_ of Nicole,
which I find delightful; it has not yet given me any lesson against the
rain, but I am expecting it, for I find everything there, and conformity
to the will of God might answer my purpose, if I did not want a specific
remedy. I