to share with the greatest princess in the world."

The fashion of the period furnished a peaceful and dignified refuge for
women, when their beauty waned and the "terrible forties" ended their
illusions. To go into brief retreat for penitence and prayer was at all
times a graceful thing to do, besides making for safety. It was only a
step further to retire altogether from the scenes of pleasure which
had begun to pall. The convent offered a haven of repose to the bruised
heart, a fresh aim for drooping energies, a needed outlet for devouring
emotions, and a comfortable sense of security, not only for this world,
but for the next. It was the next world which was beginning to trouble
Mme. de Sable. She had great fear of death, and after many penitential
retreats to Port Royal, she finally obtained permission to build a suite
of apartments within its precincts, and retired there about 1655 to
prepare for that unpleasant event which she put off as long as possible
by the most assiduous care of her health. "If she was not devoted, she
had the idea of becoming so," said Mademoiselle. But her devotion was
in quite a mundane fashion. Her pleasant rooms were separate and
independent, thus enabling her to give herself not only to the care of
her health and her soul, but to a select society, to literature, and to
conversation. She never practiced the severe asceticism of her friend,
Mme. de Longueville. With a great deal of abstract piety, the iron
girdle and the hair shirt were not included. She did not even forego
her delicate and fastidious tastes. Her elegant dinners and her dainty
comfitures were as famous as ever. "Will the anger of the Marquise go so
far, in your opinion, as to refuse me her recipe for salad?" writes Mme.
de Choisy at the close of a letter to the Comtesse de Maure, in which
she has ridiculed her friend's Jansenist tendencies; "If so, it will be
a great inhumanity, for which she will be punished in this world and the
other." She had great skill in delicate cooking, and was in the habit of
sending cakes, jellies, and other dainties, prepared by herself, to her
intimate friends. La Rochefoucauld says, "If I could hope for two dishes
of those preserves, which I did not deserve to eat before, I should be
indebted to you all my life." Mme. de Longueville, who is about to
visit her, begs her not to give a feast as she has "scruples about such
indulgence."

This spice of worldliness very much tempered the austeri