is hers, in having been
strong enough in womanly and motherly honor to preserve, against many
dazzling temptations, amid general bad example, and even under malignant
aspersions, a chaste and spotless name. When it is added, that, besides
access to the royal court itself, this gifted woman enjoyed the familiar
acquaintance of La Rochefoucauld and other high-bred wits, less famous,
not a few, enough will have been said to show that her position was such
as to give her talent its best possible chance. The French history of
the times of Louis XIV. is hinted in glimpses the most vivid and the
most suggestive, throughout the whole series of the letters.

We owe it to our readers (and to Madame de Sevigne no less) first of all
to let them see a specimen of the affectionate adulation that this
French woman of rank and of fashion, literally in almost every letter of
hers, effuses on her daughter,--a daughter who, by the way, seems very
languidly to have responded to such demonstrations:--

THE ROCKS, Sunday, June 28, 1671.

You have amply made up to me my late losses; I have received two
letters from you which have filled me with transports of joy. The
pleasure I take in reading them is beyond all imagination. If I
have in any way contributed to the improvement of your style I did
it in the thought that I was laboring for the pleasure of others,
not for my own. But Providence, who has seen fit to separate us so
often, and to place us at such immense distances from each other,
has repaid me a little for the privation in the charms of your
correspondence, and still more in the satisfaction you express in
your situation, and the beauty of your castle; you represent it to
me with an air of grandeur and magnificence that enchants me. I
once saw a similar account of it by the first Madame de Grignan;
but I little thought at that time, that all these beauties were one
day to be at your command. I am very much obliged to you for having
given me so particular an account of it. If I could be tired in
reading your letters, it would not only betray a very bad taste in
me, but would likewise show that I could have very little love or
friendship for you. Divest yourself of the dislike you have taken
to circumstantial details. I have often told you, and you ought
yourself to feel the truth of this remark, that they are as dear to
us from