t of
the information we possess regarding events in the life of Mme. de La
Fayette is obtained from their letters. Said Mme. de Sevigne: "Never
did we have the smallest cloud upon our friendship. Long habit had not
made her merit stale to me--the flavor of it was always fresh and new.
I paid her many attentions, from the mere promptings of my affection,
not because of the propriety by which, in friendships, we are bound. I
was assured, too, that I was her dearest consolation--which, for forty
years past, had been the case."

Shortly before her death, she wrote to Mme. de Sevigne: "Here is what
I have done since I wrote you last. I have had two attacks of fever;
for six months I had not been purged; I am purged once, I am purged
twice; the day after the second time, I sit down at the table; oh,
dear! I feel a pain in my heart--I do not want any soup. Have a little
meat, then? No, I do not wish any. Well, you will have some fruit? I
think I will. Very well, then, have some. I don't know--I think I
will have some by and by. Let me have some soup and some chicken
this evening.... Here is the evening, and there are the soup and the
chicken; I don't desire them. I am nauseated, I will go to bed--I
prefer sleeping to eating. I go to bed, I turn round, I turn back,
I have no pain, but I have no sleep either. I call--I take a book--I
close it. Day comes--I get up--I go to the window. It strikes four,
five, six--I go to bed again, I doze until seven, I get up at eight,
I sit down to table at twelve--to no purpose, as yesterday.... I lay
myself down in my bed, in the evening, to no purpose, as the night
before. Are you ill? Nay, I am in this state for three days and three
nights. At present, I am getting some sleep again, but I still eat
mechanically, horsewise--rubbing my mouth with vinegar. Otherwise, I
am very well, and I haven't so much as a pain in my head."

Her depressing melancholy kept her indoors a great deal; in fact,
after 1683, after the death of the queen, who was one of her best
friends, she was seldom seen at court. Mme. de Sevigne gives good
reason for this in her letter:

"She had a mortal melancholy. Again, what absurdity! is she not the
most fortunate woman in the world? That is what people said; it needed
that she should die to prove that she had good reason for not going
out and for being melancholy. Her reins and her heart were all
gone--was not that enough to cause those fits of despondency of which
she